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Review by tkdslr 
member for 8.9 years, 1122 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 114 days ago
 Pompano Beach,Broward,FL
 $55 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 6 days AT&T "Order status updates are nice.." " taxes and/or fees placed on invoices. (Very high latency to internet)" "expensive .. but the alternatives are quickly disappearing."
| Pre Sales information:
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Install ok.
I had a pre-existing Bridged service (Static IP) through a Bell South reseller ...
I opted out of having them ship another me yet modem, I used to be one a Directv DSL's beta sites for DSL modems.. except they never responded to my email about correct VPI and VCI settings.. I did some research and had to guess.
.. speed is what I expected for a 1536/384 connection.
Bellsouth wires.. Covad switch in CO..
MY. biggest peeve.. Speakeasy tacking on all sorts of bogus taxes and doubling billing. Without consent.. they billed two months up front.. OH.. A gave them a credit card to establish service.
Florida is a ZERO internet tax state.. neither state nor local governments can add any taxes to the bill..
Here is a break down of my bill ..
49.95 Monthly DSL line charge
1.87 Federal regulatory fees
Tax Reimbursements:
2.38 Utility tax city
2.72 Utility tax State
0.95 Statutory Gross receipts tax
1.50 Regulatory Compliance fee
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59.37 (total fees and other crap for each month service. )
Everything below Federal regulatory fee is a fraud..
snip.. I eventually won that argument, and SE removed the extra taxes..
Invoices now read..
Monthly DSL line charge 49.95
Regulatory Compliance Fee 3.50
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Monthly total 53.45
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Several years of slowly degrading down to 768/384 and then improved(normal 1.5M/384) service after BS removed bridge taps on all the phone lines in the neighborhood as a prelude to deploying their Universe TV service.
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Update... 10/13/2010... Latency to 1st hop concentrator router & DNS server is now absurdly high.. 82ms.. (30-34ms is normal)
I first reported high 52 ms latency 9/22/2010, after I notice my router losing sync and renegotiating. So I opened a repair ticket #3191188 and SE tech support replied..
"Anything lower that 100ms is considered fine. If the connection keeps dropping, you will want to contact our support @ 800-556-5829 for further assistance."
Needless to say, that's totally unacceptable.. And my reply minced no words about my dis-satisfaction with SE's statement I've started looking for alternative service.
Note: After a week or two, my connection latency to Atlanta dropped back to normal range of 32ms.
But, last weekend(10/10/2010) best case latency to Atlanta was back up 72ms, and right now(10/13/2010) its 82 ms. I'm still pissed off from my previous repair ticket exchange, so I'm not even going to report it. I'll be dumping SE shortly after I shift my website/email/ftp/proxy functions to a virtual Linux hosting firm and switch to PPPoE, yuck, gag, AT&T aDSL for 1/3 the price.
I really despise paying a premium rates for shitty service.
I've downgraded my review ratings appropriately.
Update 3/14/2012, This is my final review.. I placed disconnect request in today via trouble ticket, I will follow up with a voice call when they .
My adsl speed has degraded to 928K/384K.. sometimes even lower.. 384K/384K
due to at&t deploying nearby Uverse customers.. Not much Covad/Megapath/Speakeasy can do.. it's a line crosstalk issue controlled/created by at&t..
I signed up with ipath.com for my website/email hosting($3/mo, 2yrs) and a 50gb($12) block of usenet access with NewsGroupDirect.com. My new I-net dhcp/nat access via wireless, it's much faster, up to 7Mb/2Mb wayy cheaper, but capped, @5GB/month, and not nearly as reliable. Such as life, compromises.
Next step.. port my old POTs line to low cost prepaid cell phone and kiss at&t goodbye forever. Grrr, at&t has been a real pain in^&%/nightmare for me.
Update 12/14/2012
Well, I've been gone from SE/Megapath for 9 months now.. And the new Megapath has managed to surprise me once more!!! At least one of their Email, Problem trouble report, and/or Account databases have been compromised.
How do I know??. For ten years now, I've been giving each vendor I do business with, a UNIQUE email address. (A hard coded sender id)... Yesterday, 12/13/2012, I received several AMEX card email phishings from Burgas, Bulgaria using the email account name I only gave to SE and nobody else. Can we say .. Busted.. That will cost them another notch in tech support category..
Lucky for me..I no longer have an Amex card(>15years), and I run my own email domain.. I'll just re-alias that old SE account to the automatic discard bin..
Comments:
 | | Latency I has a lot to do with agreements with Covad. Covad as a vendor won't do anything if the latency is below 100ms.
Though you will get the same thing with any provider. I've taken a look at several and they all say the same thing. | |
| | | Speakeasy I had the same thing with Speakeasy - serve degrade- and it was BEFORE u-Verse was turned on in the area. Speakeasy would refuse to do anything. Ended up canceling service.
They're not the same company as they were when they first came out. And this is proof all good things must come to an end. | |
| | tkdslr
join:2004-04-24
Pompano Beach, FL | Re: Speakeasy The same problem can happen with standard ADSL deployments..
Too many DSL circuits in multiple mile long cables with other impairments. | |
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Review by keh
member for 176 days, 2 visits, last login: 132 days ago
updated 132 days ago
- Seattle,King,WA
- $59 per month
- Qwest
- "Works fine, when it works."
- "Reliability and support are really bad."
- "Stay away from Speakeasy/Megapath."
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Except for three years, we've been with Speakeasy since they started in the early 90's. Up until several years ago the service was first-rate, which you would expect for $59 a month.
But then Best Buy (??) bought them; then Megapath; and then Covad. As the company has gotten bigger and bigger, the service reliability and tech support has degraded to the point that we're going elsewhere for service. A support call that was once answered here in Seattle by the third ring - and was usually resolved in a few minutes - now is answered in Canada after navigating a lengthy phone tree, and sometimes 15 minutes on hold.
In 2007 they neglected to cancel the service at our old house when transferring it to the new place, and later billed us for several months of service at the old place. They refused to look at the old account logs to verify that it had been unused for months; claiming that they were too big to do that for every customer. That took weeks to resolve.
This is the third time our 1.5Mb DSL has dropped to 256Kb for days at a time, and often takes 24 hours to resolve. The support people just don't seem to care, and billing problems seem to come up once or twice a year.
UPDATE (11/26/12): Finally cancelled Speakeasy/Megapath service and ordered from a new ISP. No one at Megapath even asked why we were leaving, and it appears that they are not forwarding e-mails to another address for 60 days as it says on the service ticket. Megapath is awful!
Comments:
Tanster
join:2006-07-08
New York, NY
kudos:1 Reviews:
 ·Speakeasy
1 edit | Re: Speakeasy now officially sucks... Aside from my other post panning their service since the Megapath buyout where they administratively shut down a circuit at a client's for a month, blamed the customer premise equipment for being faulty and then had the unmitigated gall to claim they didn't have anything to do with the shutdown, I'm pleased to report that they have now lost that client to a competitor. Serves those assholes right. | |
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Review by Tanster
member for 6.7 years, 43 visits, last login: 77 days ago
updated 144 days ago
- New York,New York,NY
- $105 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 7 days
- Verizon
- "Used to be reliable and used to have the tech-savviest tech reps ever"
- "Now the tech reps can't even find their asses with both hands plus GPS."
- "Stay away! Ever since Megapath took over, idiots reading from scripts abound."
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I started with Speakeasy back in 2000 when they were a small Seattle-based company. Everybody thought I was insane as I was based in New York City. But they were the best in that service was reliable and on the few and far between glitches, they had tech savvy reps who could fix it in under 15 minutes most times. Then Sep 11, 2011 hit and despite every other ISP and telco going down, Speakeasy kept on chugging, just reducing my 1.5Mbps/670Kbps line to 128Kbps/128Kbps just for the duration of the emergency and only going down for 6 hours when FDNY finally flooded the switching station down on West St. I figured that any company that could provide service during a national emergency of such proportions deserved my loyalty despite the higher prices they charged compared to up and comers (at the time) like Verizon and Time Warner Cable. I even became an agent for their services.
Today, Speakeasy is in the toilet after being bought out by Megapath. They have tech support reps who can't find their asses with both hands plus GPS and trouble tickets take days to get a response on (compared to the 15 minutes from response to solution in previous years). The last straw was when the 2nd 10Mbps/1Mbps DSL circuit at a client's was down for a whole month while Megapath insisted that all was well and that any cause for data traffic not flowing *HAD* to be with customer equipment. They finally "discovered" that the reason for no traffic flowing was because they (Megapath) had an administrative block on the line triggered from their billing software for no reason (the lines were fully paid-up). And removing the administrative block allowed traffic to immediately flow again on the 2nd DSL circuit. Big "oopsie" on Megapath's part! So much for "it has to be customer equipment causing the problem" and driving the in-house IT staff nuts looking for a non-existent problem with their equipment!!!!! Then, to add insult to injury, they refused to provide a refund for the month of non-service on the downed circuit because they claimed it never happened (they conveniently didn't document the problem). So they lost the client to a competitor.
The latest problem is that I have another circuit with 8%-30% packet loss just pinging Speakeasy/Megapath's gateway router for the circuit and they are denying it's happening. This is a circuit that has had zero packet loss for years in pings to the same gateway router...
After this fiasco, I'm so done with Megapath. They shouldn't even be selling candy in a corner nickel and dime store, let alone telecom and ISP services! I'm searching for an alternative with the exception of Verizon because they have been physically sabotaging my service (I have thrice caught Verizon technicians with the wires for my circuit in their hands and disconnected from the old-fashioned wraparound posts; a case of "in flagrante delicto" since the wires can't accidentally be dislodged and have to be unwound from the posts).
Comments:
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Review by thudson
member for 8.4 years, 0 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
updated 273 days ago
- Seattle,King,WA
- $120 per month
- "Great company"
- "Swallowed by bad company"
- "After fifteen years with Speakeasy, it is time to move on."
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I have been a customer of Speakeasy for 15 years, in multiple cities. Their tech support was always fantastic. Their commitment to service was excellent. Since Megapath took over, it has gone downhill so fast I can't believe it. My speeds have dropped to four megabits per second, even though I am paying ($120 a month) for six.
My last three tickets with them were not only never responded to, but the record of me filing tickets was deleted.
Needless to say, I'll be looking for a new provider.
Thomas Hudson
Comments:
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Review by PhReE5
member for 12.8 years, 224 visits, last login: 37 days ago
updated 360 days ago
- Sandy,Salt Lake,UT
- $59 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Qwest
- "No downtime, very smooth"
- "USwest a bit off task."
- "Second time is the charm. Damn good service"
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No longer applies
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain speakeasy.net)
lodged 1 year ago
- 2010
- $58 per month
- Verizon
- "The good disappeared."
- "Expensive; poor attitudes"
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Speakeasy was really good years ago, but after the merger with
Covad/Megapath, they went downhill. The customer service/tech support
really lacks, well, support. Whenever I had problems is the past,
they were very helpful. They had no problem in dispatching ILEC
ticket to fix the copper, but now, they want to issue a billable
dispatch out to diagnose the line. (I already know that the cause is
a bird or squirrel who eats through the line).
They are very expensive and I'm looking for a new ISP.
Stay away from Speakeasy.
Comments:
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain gmail.com)
lodged 1.2 years ago
- New York,New York,NY
- Contract price not specified.
- "Speakeasy used to be great"
- "Megapath is wretched"
- "Stay away from Megapath, Speakeasy doesn't exist anymore"
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Terrible.
We used to have Speakeasy, which was great -- rock solid, excellent service.
At some point we decided to cancel our service and switch to ATT because we
could get much higher speeds. Some months later a collection notice shows
up from a lawyer in Tampa FL claiming there is an outstanding amount from
speakeasy/megapath. We NEVER received an sort of bill from them.
Tried to call three times but there were long hold times. The third time I
had enough time to hold on and get through, and the guy claimed that they
had no information on our account, we had to talk to the collection agency,
they had all the information. He didn't even try to look up the
information, he just stonewalled, which is infuriating.
Megapath gets 0 stars for service if possible. Speakeasy is dead, they're
just using (abusing) the name and squandering the trust and goodwill they
built up.
Comments:
tkdslr
join:2004-04-24
Pompano Beach, FL | RE: Collection notice from Megapath.. Don't ignore it... Demand written proof of the debt owed.
At no time do you ever admit to owed debt. | |
| | Qdante
join:2012-03-21
Beverly Hills, CA | Re: RE: Collection notice from Megapath.. yes! Megapath ruined a great service from speakeasy... complete sellouts. Can't wait to get rid of Megapath scam artists.
speakeasy veteran. | |
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| |  I miss Speakeasy
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Review by espertus
member for 12.2 years, 37 visits, last login: 170 days ago
updated 1.3 years ago
- San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
- $109 per month
- about 20 days
- Covad
- "Cheaper than XO for same service (384 SDSL)"
- "ISP switch was painful, long hold times"
- "Getting started with them is a hassle"
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I decided to switch from XO (formerly Concentric) because their customer service and prices were awful. I chose Speakeasy because of its lower price and good reviews for customer service. The customer service is not good. I spent over an hour on hold one time to speak to a tech support person who couldn't help me. The ISP switch was supposed to be painless but most definitely was not. I don't regret switching but wish I'd been better prepared for a multi-day downage.
UPDATE YEARS LATER (2011): I had a >2-week outage recently and spent hours on hold, while the blame was passed from agency to agency. I had to explicitly request a partial refund for the time without service; it's not automatically given. My online tickets were not responded to promptly, as they used to be before the MegaPath purchase of Speakeasy. Furthermore, they incorrectly billed me $150 for a technician call. I'm on hold yet once again trying to get that charge removed.
After that, I'm switching to sonic.net.
Comments:
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Review by (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain lbservice.com)
lodged 1.4 years ago
- Pikesville,Baltimore,MD
- $171 per month
- (24 month contract)
- Verizon
- "Service very bad, hideing from a issue."
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Since Friday afternoon, I cannot connect with any user in my isp provided
class c wan public addresses.
IE: 66.92.46.1-255
I can connect from Comcast or Verizon but cannot connect to any ip address
with the octets 66.92.46.***
There is a problem that Megapath refuses to even look at. So I have no
choice but to go back to Verizon.
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Review by Mino Taoyama
member for 9.9 years, 3338 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.5 years ago
- San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- "Reliable service."
- "Cost a bit more. Support and terms went downhill."
- "Speakeasy was great. Megapath brought them down."
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The line quality was good but after the Megapath merger support and terms went downhill. I was a customer for over a decade and I wanted to make a change. They wanted a one year contract. Not the way to treat a loyal customer. I remember the good old days when Kat was in the forums here.
Comments:
Tanster
join:2006-07-08
New York, NY
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Speakeasy
| Service has gone to shit I agree. I, too, have been Speakeasy customer for over a decade. Once Megapath took over, my trouble tickets get ignored. Customer Service Reps spout technical bullshit (I'm a professional network engineer so I know when they're trying to snow me). And when they get called on it, they suddenly ignore me.  | |
| | | | Re: Service has gone to shit Performance seemed to go down the toilet after I was cut over to Covad links (at least the reverse lookups indicate it's covad stuff) -- I dropped from regular 1.48mb/s to 650kb/s service.
Calling them up on it, I get some burned out tech stating "well, the line tests clear".
I miss the old "chit chat" I'd have with service personnel, who weren't stumped when I was working from an OS that didn't have a "start menu" nor an "apple".
Right now checking out Verizon FIOS service; which gets good reviews. Honestly, though, after being a VZ customer (largely without choice) for 30 years, I'm very wary of giving them any business. Even VZ's ordering page is shafting me; but I definitely don't want to go the cable route. | |
| | | | Service support has certainly gone downhill since the merger. Wait times have gone from a few minutes to 25 or even 50 minutes. Ticket will stay open forever unless you call back to get status. If you get an ex-covad guy on the phone you are lucky and may get help. Otherwise, you are likely to get a helpless script reader that cannot understand any technical network issues; She would log the ticket and hang up. | |
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Speakeasy now Megapath
