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 Review by djdanska 
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 4571 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Chicago,Cook,IL
 $9 per month
 about 1 days
 "Affordable, many tools, fast, tech support/sales is good"
 "Updated plans not automatically changed, must call to do. Tech support hard to understand sometimes."
 "Good and affordable hosting with tons of good tools."
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Edit2: Reactivated another domain with them. Doing very good again. The new site is just as fast as my original site. I installed drupal on both and it runs very well. I hate the outbound firewall as i can't get drupal updates or anything, that's a pain. But, i understand why they have it. It took 15 minutes for the new hosting to start and about 24 hours for the domain to work. (It was previously registered with aplus.net, so that was already done). I don't know why i hear so many bad things with aplus.net but i have been and still am very happy with them. The only thing that kinda sucks is if i upload a file via http (at the website, using drupal) it uploads at about 400 kbps vs. ftp which is 1500 kbps. Ftp is over 3 times faster. I upload via ftp and use drupal's import feature if i am at home. Otherwise i just live with the slower http upload speeds.
Edit: Things are doing fine so far. I have a 20/2 home connection and was able to upload to my website a about 1.5 meg so it's a lot better than its ever been. Even with my old 768kbps connection, i was only able to upload at about 500kbps. (and this was for like years). I welcome the added bandwidth. Speed of my website is still acceptable. They are trying a new control panel. I mostly like it but one thing bothers me. I like to pay for my web services in advance. I usually don't have the payment ready when they request it. So, when i get paid, i go online and pay for it then. The new control panel only lets you pay the current amount due, not anything else. I have to revert to the old control panel to pay anything extra. I like to have all of my bills paid on the first of the month. Even if it's 10 days before the bill is processed. Just makes my life easier. I uploaded a large file (about 1 gig) and it uploaded fine. No errors or anything. I am very pleased with the services they provide and plan on using them again with a possible future site. (using drupal again). I don't know why so many people get a negative vibe from them, but they have not done anything wrong with me so far. And i do understand about the outbound firewall issue. Not a huge deal. I will just have to deal with it.
Edit: Still going ok. I don't get outbound access. That kinda sucks with the rss feeds but i can live with that. Tech support is not bad. I thought they where based in the states but it can be hard to understand the accent though. I don't use their email services. I prefer google's apps instead. Gmail for my domain? Works for me. Still would recommend regardless. Doing ok..
I'm on the Solo XR plan for $9.95 a month.
I have been with aplus.net for a while now and want to review them. They have recently changed their plans. My plan includes 12000 MB of storage, 500 GB of transfer, and 500 email addresses. (with imap support)
I mainly used my account for storage. I put photos and other various stuff on it for other forums or for my friends. They have tons of tools to make a website and they where very simple to install. I was able to choose from various designs for free. They include:
tiki wiki, media wiki, phpBB, and many others.
It gave me tons of things to choose from and i don't have to ftp the files and install manually. The speeds are very good. The page transfers are pretty good too. I occasionally get a slight delay but its still acceptable.
They have changed around their plans a lot in the past year or so. If you don't look on their webpage for changes, you would never know. You have to call them up and ask them to change your plan to the new one.
I highly recommend them for those who want a webpage, blog, or forum and don't know what to look for.
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Review by jonmc12
Posted: 3.5 years ago
member for 8.1 years, 4 visits, last login: 3.5 years ago
Austin,Travis,TX
$50 per month (12 month contract)
"Terrible downtime record; even worse technical support; lies lies lies"
"Stay away unless you like downtime"
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Aplus.net review
I have a folder in outlook where I keep 3 things:
1) the alerts sent to me from www.Montastic.com - this tells me when the server hosted by aplus.net goes down.
2) my correspondences with support@aplus.net, letting them know that my server is down.
3) My correspondences with the FTC and Better Business Bureau.
There are 127 messages in this folder since September 2005. That pretty much says it all about my experiences. 99.5% uptime guarantee - flat out lie. Possibly the worst customer service I have ever encountered in founding 3 different companies.
But what about others? I would encourage you to look at the profile for aplus.net, under their corporate name Abacus America:
»www.sandiego.bbb.org/commonrepor···=7000253
"The Bureau processed a total of 237 complaints about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total 237 complaints in the last 36 months, 46 of those were closed in the last 12 months."
Now, the BBB says they process about 12k complaints per year (as per recent email from them). By my math this means that aplus.net accounts for 0.6% of ALL BBB complaints. They don't look to good on the FTC site either.
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 Review by Mason
Posted: 3.6 years ago
member for 3.8 years, 181 visits, last login: 153 days ago
New York,New York,NY
Contract price not specified.
"No required dialing application - they just give a username, password and access number!"
"Nothing!"
"Easy dialup at a fair price that lets you use your OSs native dialing application."
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Dialup ISP Review
If you are in an area where there is no broadband available and you dont
want to pay the outrageous prices for satellite (or dont have the sufficient
southern exposure) then you are in my boat... stuck with dialup.
Finding an unlimited plan for 10 bucks or less monthly is easy. What drove
me batty about all the names you already know (Earthlink, PeoplePC,
Netscape) is that they all force you to use their dummy-proof dialing
application. No thanks. Windows already has a perfectly acceptable dialer
built in and if Im just going to get dial-up, I have no need for any
toolbars, accelerators etc.
Aplus simply signed me up, gave me a username and password, a list of local
numbers to dial in on and let me go my merry way.
Access is always instant. Call is never dropped. Speeds are as good as
theyll ever get on damnable dialup.
So... I give Aplus ISP an A+.
-Mason
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Dialup ISP ReviewIf you are in an area where there is no broadband =
available and you dont want to pay the outrageous prices for satellite (or =
dont have the sufficient southern exposure) then you are in my boat... stuc=
k with dialup.
Finding an unlimited plan for 10 bucks or less monthly is easy. Wha=
t drove me batty about all the names you already know (Earthlink, PeoplePC,=
Netscape) is that they all force you to use their dummy-proof dialing appl=
ication. No thanks. Windows already has a perfectly acceptable dialer built=
in and if Im just going to get dial-up, I have no need for any toolbars, a=
ccelerators etc.
Aplus simply signed me up, gave me a username and password, a list =
of local numbers to dial in on and let me go my merry way.Access is=
always instant. Call is never dropped. Speeds are as good as theyll ever g=
et on damnable dialup.
So... I give Aplus ISP an A+.-Mason
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Review by formeraplus
Posted: 6.7 years ago
member for 6.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
San Diego,San Diego,CA
Contract price not specified.
"NONE"
"ALL LIES"
"DON"T FALL FOR IT"
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I have been reading the reviews on this site & would like to state the facts once & for all. Aplus has some great employees working for them unfortunately though they are like puppets to the owners Ivan & Lilian Vachovsky. They are unable to make their own decisions due to the lack of trust from them. They are from Bulgaria & only trust their own people. All of the positions that involve $$ are run by Bulgarians other than the billing department. I know this because I am a former employee. The management cannot make a decision on their own without first checking with the owners. In fact I don't know why they are even given the title with manager in it. They have went through 2 tech support managers,3 billing managers, & 2 COO's in the last year & a half. They believe that everyone is replaceable & do not care about their employees. I watched some of the most valuable people leave this company & instead of realizing they made a mistake & letting their pride go & taking responsibility for their actions they lose great employees who are the best at what they do. Most people who stay at the company really just need a paycheck & will take the abuse. I have witnessed many of the employees & managers receive verbal harrassment from the owners of the company. I don't think any reasonable person would want to sign up for a service that is going to be run by miserable employees. The service provided is usually pretty good if you are getting hosting or dialup. These are the services that are automated by their billing platform Rodopi. Any service that is outsourced will not work great with Rodopi because the interface that they integrate never works right & subsequently causes billing errors, technical errors & customer frustration. Instead of realizing the issues however the owners will figure out a way to make the end user/Customer (YOU) think you owe the $$. Example: they offer unlimited dial up accounts but in reality you are only allowed somewhere in the area of 200 hours & then you get charged. UNLIMITED means UNLIMITED!! I feel very sorry for the folks who still work for this company and have to deal with the everday BS from Lilian & Ivan. They are very greedy & will think of any way to scam you. Be aware. I know this review will have them wondering who posted it & the reality is it doesn't really matter. It is not going to change the way things are. The only way they will change is if they are bought out & Lilian & Ivan are not behind the wheel. So remember when you call for assistance with Sales, Support or Billing please be kind to the employees because they are only unhappy due to their environment.
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 Review by wdoerr
UPDATED: 7.2 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 482 visits, last login: 3.9 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
Contract price not specified.
 Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"none"
"all"
"Bastards"
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Attention DSL.NET
After 16 months of service A- droped their dsl service without telling me. They notified me on 8/27/02 that my service would be
disconnected on 9/1/02. This was after the cutoff date to sign up for free transfer to DSL.NET. Thanks, bastards.
Stay away from this company.
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Review by simguru
Posted: 7.2 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 18 visits, last login: 5.8 years ago
Encinitas,San Diego,CA
$55 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
SBC
CLEC party: Covad
"Good connection when I first got on board"
"It was all downhill from there"
"Good for the past, bad for the present, deplorable for the future!"
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I first got on with A+ Net in November 1999. It was great. The gave me a good connection as well as a free domain name to use. I used the connection to run a UNIX server. Life was good.
Fast forward into 2002. Seems like all of a sudden I was to be included in the swarms of people complaining about their overzelous and imcompetent billing department. They raised my rate without warning and billed me twice in one month. They then made a big deal when I refused to pay one of the bills. In addition to the billing conflict, I notice my speed steadily degrading and the level of service by all departments (billing, tech support, sales) was rapidly degrading.
I've been with another ISP for about a month now and am very happy. DSL has been transferred smoothly now after a two week long battle with their blasted billing department. But they have still secuestred my domain name and have been trying VERY hard for the past six weeks to transfer my domain to GoDaddy. More to come, I guess.
Al final de cuentas I say STAY AWAY!!! They were great in the past, but that was then...and this is now.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 7.2 years ago
(review was emailed from domain abac.com)
Westminster,Orange,CA
$50 per month (50 month contract)
Covad
CLEC party: Covad
"Getting off their service"
"Getting off their service"
"Billing issues, terrible phone support."
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This is a review of my current ISP, A+ Net:
First off, I'm floored about the consistent volume of negative reviews about this ISP. Had I known about this site and this company's reputation months ago, I'd have long since dropped them as my ADSL provider as I've had some annoying problems with them like others here have mentioned.
My relationship with A+ Net goes back to when I was a Flashcom subscriber (with a Covad installed line) and moved my account over to A+ Net when Flashcom went belly up. My dl speed was never much to write home about during my Flashcom days and plummeted when I switched over to A+ about 2 years ago. In the last few months, it dropped to a consistently puny 315kb which considering I live only 90 miles North of San Diego in Westminster, CA is *really* bad for what I have which is ADSL 128bs/608kbs but quite honestly, I rarely if ever had any real technical issues with my service such as outages, etc. Incidentally, their newsgroup "service" was atrocious and I wound up using a separate service to get decent NG access. I will say getting tech issues resolved was a 2-3 day affair simply because it took that long to get a live person on the phone to spend a few minutes to work with me. I agree with others comments that their techs are arrogant and generally sound as if they hate dealing with customers over the phone. I never got my speed issues resolved.
Billing has been another issue altogether and at one point, my service was disconnected even though they were billing a monthly charge from my credit card! It turned out to be a screw up on their end and it was resolved within a couple days but it was a tremendous hassle getting ahold of anyone on the phone.
Now of course, they have sold off their DSL accounts to DSL Net and my service is to be terminated on 9/1. Interestingly, I was billed for 2 months in advance (payable to A+) a week before I got the notice of the switch. Now I can't get ahold of my so-called Sales rep and he doesn't return any calls I leave on his voice mail.
As an addendum to this, a couple weeks ago I decided to go with Verizon/Roadrunner and that was a whole clusterfuck before I even got my hardware! Needless to say, I'm going to try cable. I'm through with DSL.
Amusingly, when I tried sending this review through my A+ (ABAC) e-mail account, it bounced back and included a virus attachment! It seems A+ Net doesn't want the word to spread (any further) and I wound up sending this review successfully via Hotmail.
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Review by digsys
Posted: 7.2 years ago
member for 8 years, 20 visits, last login: 3.5 years ago
Ellicott City,Howard,MD
 Business customer
Contract price not specified.
"They earn money"
"They steal your money"
"Stay Away At All Costs"
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they turn off your lines, just to get you to call and pay your overbilled invoices. no phone calls, no warnings, no fixes to overbilled or duplicated invoices.
they have sold off their DSL accounts to DSL.net. that can only be a good thing for end users.
seriously, stay away from all of their business units. read all of these reviews. interesting material listed. from my experiences with them, i can tell you that i wouldn't doubt what i have read about them so far.
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Review by beannet6
Posted: 7.5 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 196 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
Business customer
$5000 per month
CLEC party: Covad
"the service worked for awhile"
"their internal procedures are skewed toward overbilling, extort your money by shutting you off"
"stay away, you will regret ever having met ivan and lilian vachovsky's aplusnet"
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once they started shutting our customers off, they actually called and started stealing them too! here is what i filed at ftc.gov, now onto fbi and their local office of banks and real estate:
from ftc.gov complaint form at:
»https://rn.ftc.gov/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z···ODE=PU01
Success!
Complaint Accepted. Thank you for your input.
First Name: Matthew
Last Name: Dalton
Age Range: 20 - 29
Street Address: BEAN.net
350 North Orleans Ave #C1-147
City: Chicago
State or Canadian Province: Illinois
Country: UNITED STATES
Zip Code or Postal Code: 60654
E-Mail Address: mdalton@bean.net
Work Phone: (312)6014430Ext.205
Subject of Your Complaint: Computers/Internet Services
Name of Company You Are Complaining About: Aplus.net, Abacus America, Rodopi Software, abac.com
Street Address: 10350 Barnes Canyon Rd.
City: San Diego
State or Canadian Province: California
Country: UNITED STATES
Zip Code or Postal Code: 92121
Company Web Site: »www.aplus.net
Company E-Mail Address: ivan@abac.com
Phone Number: (858)4106900Ext.
How Did the Company Initially Contact You?: Print
How Much Did the Company Ask You to Pay?: 9761.11
How Much Did You Actually Pay the Company?: 7741.14
How Did You Pay the Company?: Wire Transfer
First Name: Lilian
Last Name: Vachovsky
Date Company Contacted You: 4/8/02 (MM/DD/YYYY)
Explain Your Problem: BEAN.net (Referred to herin as 'us') contracted on or around October of 2000 with Abacus America (aka AplusNet, aka Rodopi Software, referred to herin as 'them') to resell DSL Internet Services. Since the very first day, we have been disputed their overbilling. In the past, they have Stephanie Krause as their billing manager, and she took care of our issues promptly, but they never fixed the software defects that led to the overbilling. When Stephanie left their company several months ago, their overbilling continued, but now there was nobody to correct them. Instead, they hired a new billing manager, Marti North, who would just turn off our customers circuits and demand payment in full, no credits would be discussed. Marti couldn't handle this kind of job long, and she quit. Now we were left dealing with Lilian Vachovsky, CFO, who, we believe, is a principal in the company. She worked out a deal with us that she would give us 1/2 of the credit we were asking for if we would wire the rest. We agreed and wired 7741.14. She subsequently defaulted on the signed agreement by not providing the credit she specifically agreed to. Instead, she resorted back to her draconian collection techniques and shut us down without any notice, an obvious attempt to extort additional funds from us.
We are not the only people that have had problems with Aplus.net's billing procedures. Even though you may have limited complaints in your database, you can refer to:
»User reviews - A + Net
Just reviewing the latest, it appears the BBB revoked their membership last year. Its time the FTC took action on this one. I will sign a criminal complaint against them.
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Review by SamDresser
Posted: 7.5 years ago
member for 7.5 years, 2 visits, last login: 7.5 years ago
76332
$600 per month (12 month contract)
about 60 days
Covad
CLEC party: Covad
"Absolutely nothing."
"Everything about the company."
"Look at the BBB. They got kicked out for being the crappiest company."
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»www.sandiego.bbb.org/commonrepor···=7000253
An excerpt from the BBB web page about Aplus.net:
BBB Membership
On June 27, 2001 this company's membership in the BBB was revoked by the BBB's Board of Directors due to failure to eliminate the underlying cause of complaints on file with the BBB concerning poor customer service and difficutly in obtaining a refund from the company after canceling service. In addition, some complaints were not responded to within the Bureau's timeframe.
Customer Experience
Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to a pattern of complaints. The company has resolved some complaints presented by the Bureau; however, some complaints remain unresolved. Complaints are concerning
poor customer service practices and difficutly in obtaining a refund.
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A + Net
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