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Review by tkdslr 
member for 9 years, 1165 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 156 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."
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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 218 days, 2 visits, last login: 174 days ago
updated 174 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 6.8 years, 43 visits, last login: 119 days ago
updated 186 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 8.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 8.6 years ago
updated 314 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 (hidden by request)
(review was emailed from domain speakeasy.net)
lodged 1.1 years 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 lbservice.com)
lodged 1.5 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.
Comments:
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Review by Mino Taoyama
member for 10 years, 3369 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.6 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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Review by paulwermer
member for 1.6 years, 3 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
lodged 1.6 years ago
- San Francisco,San Francisco,CA
- $142 per month
- "reliable connection"
- "customer service; E-mail blocked by other services"
- "Doesn;t want small customers any more- Just MEGA ones"
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Some years back, I switched from ATT Worldnet to Speakeasy - and life (at least Internet life) was good
Then I started finding my e-mail to folks with Hotmail, Yahoo, Comcast blocked
and this is now getting worse. They do not provide accurate information on System status, and they do not try to notify customers when mail servers are blocked (it's only a few blocked servers try sending it again"
Then I discovered my VOIP service blocks some area code/prefix combinations - for good reason, but finding the info is hard. The initial customer service response was classic bafflegab, not taking the time to give me real information.
The previously reliable customer service (esp out of normal working hours) has dropped significantly - excessive hold times, bad connections (over their VOIP), bad phone tree.
And the Upload/download speed is not guaranteed; not a minimum, it's a maximum
I realize other major ISPs are no better - but I can get equally bad service for a lot less money.
Comments:
gariac
join:2004-01-30
Fremont, CA | Megapath tech support I was on the phone to Megapath tech support today from 4PM to 4:45PM. Well not really on the phone, but on hold. I gave up after 45 minutes.
My question? Have you started some port blocking. Speakeasy was simple. They didn't block anything. All I want to know is if Megapath changed this. The UMA on my phone no longer works. I spent hours hacking it, then drove to a hotspot to only to find it does work. Argh! | |
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 Review by Kambriel
member for 12.2 years, 1405 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
updated 1.6 years ago
- North Arlington,Bergen,NJ
- $85 per month
- about 27 days
- Verizon
- "Not Verizon. This is a real ISP. Decent value, depending on your needs."
- "Bandwidth caps on the newsgroups. Unacceptable hold times for techs during normal business hours and evenings.."
- "It's far better than Verizon"
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What started out like a racehorse is now running like a snail during peak hours. I am just at 10000 feet from the main office and was getting above my 1500/384 performance for the first week or two in January 2001. Speakeasy has been reporting congestion issues on the NY POP, but have blamed "a few users" who are using full bandwidth 24x7 for the slow down in the area. If a few users can take down an entire region, what does that say about that ISPs ability to manage and cover that region?
In all fairness, I am waiting to see the results of the upcoming upgrade proposed by Speakeasy to the NY POP before I start calling to complain like a madman. I'm paying for the speed I want and I'm not near the max I was told I can get in my area. They would happily get my monthly fee if they provided what I was paying for in the first place. To never interface with anyone other than the billing department after an install is my idea of a perfect ISP.
My interaction with the billing department has been horrific. My original order was for 2 IP addresses and 3 e-mail accounts (including the 2 offered in my speed package). I followed the FAQ on their site for my request to have the additional e-mail addresses created and sent an e-mail to them with the two names I wanted along with alternates. I was lucky to get the two additional e-mail addresses I wanted, but they created 5 accounts... using a couple of the alternates as well as my first choices. I spoke to tech twice about this and billing once (a second time via e-mail). They were billing me for the extra e-mail accounts even after tech claimed they removed them. I have still yet to get a credit on my account for the charges they imposed for those extra e-mail addresses.
However, my insult to injury story is when I finally managed to get through to a tech to report the speed drop. I told the tech that my download speeds were great a few days before on the newsgroups and on the web/ftp. As soon as he heard "newsgroups" I started getting a lecture about how newsgroups are a haven for pornographers and warez distributors and were not designed to transfer files. Okay... I didn't need to hear your personal politics but what about the speed drop? He went on to say that they cap the bandwidth to 20kbps to their newsgroup servers. Hello? Where the hell was this in the TOS? I was told that I was lucky that I was getting between 10kbps and 17kbps from the newsgroups. Newsgroups weren't designed to transfer files? That tech better talk to all those alt.binaries moderator/admins. 
Getting back to the performance issue, while I'm getting near 56k modem speed on the download during peak hours (ie. all evening), my upload speed has never dropped below 324. The upload speed is the only part of my service that has been consistently in the realm of acceptability.
Right now they are in the middle of the road since I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until the upgrade to the NY area is complete.
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Update: May 03, 2001.
A lazy Verizon installer stole my second pair that is tagged as a Covad circuit to give a person living in the basement a normal phone. I was out of service for nine days! It took Covad 6 days to get out here to find out what the problem was and then another day before Verizon showed up to correct it. The Covad rep was the same rep who did my install and he was a great guy. He explained what was wrong and why he couldn't do anything about it, but said that Verizon had to fix it. Verizon people are hit and miss - there is no middle ground with their staff. Luckily, the Verizon tech who came out was one of the good ones and within two hours fixed the lines. My speed is back up to the low end of acceptable. However, after I called Speakeasy to report that this problem was corrected but that the speed was off... I then find out another revelation: RADSL speeds have to drop below 128/64 before Covad (the CLEC) will do anything about a problem REGARDLESS of what your speed package is. I'm paying for 1500/384 and my download speeds have fluctuated greatly since my install, though the upload speed remains consistent.
In Speakeasy's defense, I will say that since the Boston POP went live about a month ago things have been better and now they are almost ready to bring the Washington, DC POP into service. This should address the remainder of my speed issues. However, I'm still waiting to hear about the installation of those DS-3 lines their CEO mentioned in his monthly e-mail to the users back in February/March. Also, I was able to get through to their billing and tech support departments within 30 minutes each. In fact, I spent a record 60 seconds getting through to level 1 support to report my problem closed (however, the level 1 tech had to put me through to level 2 support and that took 20 minutes).
I'm waiting to see what kind of credit I get for an outage that spanned nine days. Things are improving with Speakeasy, but I'm not going to be a fully satisfied customer until they go a bit further. Look for an update to this review within the next two months.
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Update several years later....
As I'm writing this, Speakeasy is essentially a memory as they were bought by MegaPath. If you are reading this, believe the other reviews and comments in the Speakeasy forum here on DSLReports.com. I've only had mail and news services with Speakeasy for the past 8 years and that was only because I couldn't get their service in Florida, but now I'm glad I don't have their service. As soon as I can figure out how many accounts were tied to my Speakeasy address and change them (and my son and wife will need to do the same), I will be dropping them.
Comments:
| | dial-up? cant you convert your account to dial-up still to keep the email addys until you convert? | |
| | | | When is this purported upgrade? About 2 weeks ago I suddenly dropped from ~1.48M down to ~650K downloads, and upload has gone into the toilet as well.
I've been shopping at Verizon FIOS *business* service (hoping I'll miss port blocking) -- but I'm not overeager to get involved with Verizon unless I have to .... | |
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Review by donfede
(review was emailed from domain casagrau.org)
lodged 1.7 years ago
- Bethesda,Montgomery,MD
- $84 per month
- "I used speakeasy for over a half decade with no problems."
- "After the recent speakeasy 3-way merger with Covad a Megapath, I have found their service to be HORRIBLE."
- "DSL line with ping latency over 4000ms when downloading other web pages. Service ticket open for TWO months with no fix."
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I had been a relatively happy customer of speakeasy.net for over a half
decade. Unfortunately, after speakeasy merged with megapath and covad, I have
had problems with their service due to very high latency (4000+ ms ping
results to their router, my first hop). Their tech support was horrendous!
After trying to get this resolved over a 2 month period, they finally
informed me that this is the quality of their service.
Needless to say, I am shopping for a different ISP. Good riddance speakeasy.
Federico Grau
frustrated (soon to be) former customer of speakeasy.net
Comments:
| | Gone Before I even had install. Service was horrible. their "partner" at the time; Covad would NEVER show up to do install, would always claim could not be serviced, etc.
Speakeasy didn't care about anything but the $$$ even after Covad told them they would NOT service me; i still got billed. | |
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