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 Review by Gomez 
UPDATED: 33 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 4760 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Atlanta,Dekalb,GA
 $89 per month (12 month contract)
 about 10 days
 BellSouth
 "Good speed (around 1200/600), zero problems in set up, responsive support. Static ip."
 "None yet. Update: To many alternatives with better cost/Mb."
 "So far so good. Update: Terminating service"
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Put in the order 1/27, after cancelling earthlink. There was one minor delay in waiting for earthlink to release the line, and get it reprovisioned. This likely could have been avoided had I waited to order, but ordering got me dialup access I would need during the transation.
The one call to support was due to an Auth error which ended up being "no more minutes" for dialup. This was handled quickly, and at no cost.
Up on 02/11 (10 business days later) with no difficulties as of yet. Now that this is working to satisfaction, I'll be upgrading to the 3.0/768 plan. Which will prompt a rereview, in which I'll have a better feel for overall reliability.
10/19/09 - Update.
Performance has been degrading over time. Since the recent rains, mostly unusable. Constant 20%, presumably as it's re-syncing. To the point now that uploading a 20 meg file to work is next to impossible.
Opened ticket, got a response that I need to call voice while having access to the modem. Understandable, I guess.
In the mean time, I explored alternatives, and decided that I could get a lot more bandwidth for much less money.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
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Review by charden420
Posted: 87 days ago
member for 233 days, 19 visits, last login: 54 days ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 Business customer
$2000 per month (12 month contract)
AT&T
"There are a couple honest reps."
"Promised speed vs. delivered speed, billing accuracy, correction of billing mistakes"
"Don't bother unless you have tons of time to monitor & call to battle for what you were promised"
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We picked Speakeasy as a provider and became a Partner even though they weren't the least expensive for the benefit of a Dedicated Account Manager, and because at the time they had an excellent customer service rating, all of which quickly faded into oblivion. I'd like to begin by stating that we signed up 4 of our satellite locations for service. It took over 1 year and many calls and emails to receive our commissions for these other locations. The service disappeared into a black hole shortly after upgrading from a single T1 to a bonded T1, requesting an additional ADSL for our original service location (Location 1), and adding 2 additional service locations (Locations 2 and 3). Location 1: We never received the promised rebate for a very over priced Cisco router; in addition to that we were overbilled for the service ordered. To add insult to injury the 2nd ADSL ordered at the same time ended up being installed over the existing circuit leaving us with 1 ADSL line and 2 monthly line items, and as if that weren’t enough we never achieved the speed on the ADSL that was promised and were in turn severely overbilled for it. When we contacted them to have this rectified we were at first told that we didn't call soon enough to have the item removed, and it took 6 weeks of battling front line Cust. Svc up the food chain and then having to play semantics with upper management until they could no longer deny the proof provided (and declined to send a Tech out to verify and split the cost) and finally credited our account, and adjusted the billing to reflect what we were promised. Location 2: was promised 6.0/768, it took over 45 days to have this service installed. Upon install they were unable to sync the line, so the service was turned down to 3.0/768, billing was not adjusted accordingly, and a loop test was not preformed until 8mos later and only after persistent calls to tech support and finally getting a decent tech who actually followed up. Once the loop test was performed it was determined that the location was over 13k ft. from the CO and the highest speed that could be achieved was 1.5/384, despite our experience w/Location 1, credit was offered up immediately, our best guess as to why is because this was a line running to a residence/home office. Location 3: fantastic to start with, installed in record time, and speed/up time was as promised.... Until the phone number for the location was ported away from Verizon and 6mos later Verizon reclaimed their line, upon reinstall there have been numerous erroneous charges that effectively more than doubled the cost of service and they continued to bill for the initial service/circuit that Verizon removed, we're still fighting to have these charges explained and removed, and will update once the issues have been resolved. All 3 locations' services have been discontinued and new providers have been put into place. I have fought with my fair share of "utility and phone companies". We are not alone in our suffering of Speakeasy's Illegal Billing Practices, and if you've experienced similar we urge you to contact the FTC as we did.
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Review by jtl10
UPDATED: 232 days ago
member for 2.7 years, 31 visits, last login: 136 days ago
New York,New York,NY
$464 per month (24 month contract)
about 35 days
Verizon
"Was an OK T1 provider for a while"
"Grossly understaffed customer support, lies about callbacks"
"A BAD choice for T1 service"
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UPDATED:
By and large our experience with SpeakEasy was OK, until Yesterday. Since we were out of contract we decided to look for a better deal. SpeakEasy was advertising 3x3 (3mbps up/down) service in our area for about the same price as our existing T1. However, we were able to find a better deal from another company so we went with them and decided to just cancel our T1 service.
Cancelling our service was a NIGHTMERE. I called twice and was promised a call back both times (both in less than 30 minutes) - and no one called. I called again and waited on hold nearly 30 minutes - and despite answering a long series of voice prompts to get the right department was told that the person who answered would be unable to cancel our service and that I needed to be transferred to another division that would be able to help - with another 15-30 minutes on hold... however, as I was being transferred I was hung up on.
Called again, promised a call back, no one called.
Called again, promised a call back within 30 minutes, received a call 3 HOURS later... and I cancelled. And I will never, ever do business with speakeasy again.
It's too bad... the service was OK... but they simply don't have anywhere near enough customer support reps to operate a business. Thank goodness we never had any major connection problems... we could be out for a long time with customer service like this.
Bottom line - STAY Away.
--
Our company was looking for T1 service to supplement our existing DSL connection. Since cable or direct fiber wasn't available in our building, the only choice was a traditional T1 with local loop. After some problems negotiating a contract with another provider, we went with Speakeasy.
Since this connection was going to be backed up by a DSL link, reliability wasn't the most important concern for us; however, so far we haven't had any problems with the service. Uploads and downloads have been very near to rated speeds and there has been no problems with excessive packet loss or latency.
Installation was delayed a bit, solely because of delays by Verizon getting the local loop to work. This is typical of my experiences with Verizon.
One nice thing is the myspeakeasy web site. It works well and had very detailed notes durring the entire installation process.
Compared to other T1 providers this service was a good deal. However, it's still a bit disapointing to pay so much for a connection that a good deal slower than my cable modem service at home (at least for downloading).
Overall, I'd definately recommend Speakeasy to others. Their staff is friendly and helpful and we've been very pleased with the service so far.
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Review by Omnifarious0
Posted: 256 days ago
member for 256 days, 3 visits, last login: 178 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
$56 per month (12 month contract)
"Responsive"
"Won't do anything, charge for service not provided, charge disconnect fee for service not provided"
"Avoid"
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I ordered Speakeasy broadband for the apartment of my girlfriend so I could have net access when I was there. I've had generally good luck with Speakeasy in the past, but not this time.
First they complained about her telephone number. She uses a number that can automatically roll over to her cell phone. Apparently, despite the fact that the physical line terminates in a nearby central office, this prohibits them from providing service over that same line.
So I went for service over her second line, which exists, but is disconnected. Speakeasy does not require an active telephone line and has a service that works with an inactive one.
This appears to go better, but when the technician comes out he complains about some detail of the apartment building's wiring and suggests I go for Comcast (Never!) or ClearWire. Speakeasy then wants me to take responsibility for the wiring in the apartment building. I refuse to do this, but ask them to keep the ticket open in the hopes that they find some way to provide service.
A few months later, I give up and ask them to cancel it. They then want to charge me a $300 disconnect fee. They never connected. It was never properly installed. But they charged me right along for the service and then wanted to charge me a $300 disconnect fee.
This is totally unacceptable.
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Review by shortmexican
UPDATED: 261 days ago
member for 261 days, 4 visits, last login: 176 days ago
Seattle,King,WA
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
"employ's American workers"
"out of date out of touch"
"not the worst, just bad"
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Everyone at Speakeasy hates DSL few of us even use Speakeasy, Despite the employee discount that makes it almost competitive. Slow DSL is for losers that are too upset with Comcast to see reason. As for working at Speakeasy? I think you get better treatment in prison.
after two years I have had enough. I have seen people fired for minor infractions or just honest mistakes as sacrifices to paperwork. While others spend the day spoofing emails on the clock to harass other employees without consequence.
Thank god I am out. Management is the lowest rung of bureaucrats rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Nothing we offer can't be found for less somewhere else. Please avoid at all costs. even in this economy I would rather find work elsewhere.
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Review by gariac
UPDATED: 364 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 14 visits, last login: 364 days ago
Fremont,Alameda,CA
$52 per month
AT&T
"no port blocking"
"flaky tech support; expensive"
"I'm looking for a new provider"
| Pre Sales information:
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I've been a subscriber to Speakeasy DSL for more years than I can remember. Here is my history. I started with Telogy, which became DirectTV DSL. It was great. It went bust. I was on Covad for a while. Back then it was quite expensive. I changed to Speakeasy, but used my Covad hardware per Speakeasy's suggestion.
The change from Covad was pretty simple. They do their magic, I get a new set of "numbers", plug them into the router and it's done.
Now here is the trick with Speakeasy. They change plans to be competitive, but don't bother telling their subscribers of the change. For instance, I had upload speeds around 245kbps. Speakeasy updated this to 380kbps or so. The only way I found out was to see the new plan on their website. So I call tech support. They insist I am at the higher speed. I insist I'm not. After much arm twisting, Speakeasy calls Covad (who is the first provider in my DSL chain) and gets my speed up to the 380kbps (or whatever, since I don't recall the exact number.)
OK, time passes. I notice the plan I have with Speakeasy is now $10 cheaper a month. I call, I bitch, I get the new rate. I have no idea how long they were screwing me for the extra $10.
Now once in a while my DSL modem locked up. It was a Prestige from the old Covad days. Speakeasy agrees to send me a new modem if I stay with them another year. I should have dropped them then, but changing DSL providers is work, and Speakeasy kind of worked. The new modem arrives. Well, make that recycled modem. It is some sort of box from Creative. The new modem was dead on arrival. I send it back and get another one. This one worked and thus far doesn't lock up. However, it has a different problem. If there is an interruption in power, the modem locks up. This is actually worse than the prestige modem which would only lock up once a month. This new modem is total crap. The only way I can get the modem to work is to power it down for about 10 minutes, then plug it in again. Clearly I can't do any remote desktop with such a garbage modem.
Now Speakeasy doesn't totally suck. The download speed of 1.2Mbps is close to the 1.5mbps target. The upload speed reaches about 300kbps. However, the service is over-priced.
Regarding tech support, everyone speaks English. Beyond that, it is quite poor. Case in point, the DSL goes down. I do all sorts of reboots on my end. I give up and call tech support. They insist on me rebooting the modem, even though I already did ths. I had the fool on the line for the 10 minutes it takes that crappy Creative moden to reset. Of course, the reboot has no effect. I knew that would be the case since I did a reboot of everything prior to my call. They set up an appointment. What typically happens with these appointments is nobody shows up because the problem is not on my end. The usual outcome is the DSL mysteriously starts to work again. For this last so-called service call, I twist the arm of Speakeasy to find out what Covad actually did. All Covad did was pull and reseat a card in their rack. So the flaky hardware is still there.
As most people know, Speakeasy was bought out by Best Buy. The company was going down hill before the buy out, but Best Buy did nothing to improve the service.
I encourage you to log into the Speakeasy.net website and try to find the pricing plans. All you get is "starts from." This may be to prevent customers like me from finding out the prices have dropped and insisting on getting the new rate. Thus far the only other provider I looked at was DSLextreme. I can't vouch for them, but I can tell what their service costs from their website.
As soon as this modem contract is up, I'm dropping Speakeasy. I may just dropped them sooner since the competition is about $20 less a month for the same service.
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4/5/2008 follow-up
In the middle of a "session", the internet connection quits. The modem is happy (DSL light on), but websites are not found. I unplugged the modem for two minutes, but that wasn't enough due to the crappy power on reset Creative Broadxent DSL modem uses. So I leave it alone for about 10, then boot. It still doesn't work so I boot the linksys router. This is nuts. I can tolerate the booting, but the 10 minute wait for the Broadxent DSL modem is intolerable. If I could find decent test data and reviews, I'd go buy a modem.
------------
11/20/2008
Well, I finally got around to buying another DSL modem. Doing some research, I concluded that 2wire gear was a good as it gets. Unfortunately, they only sell to ISPs (providers), but you can get 2wire modems used, mostly from people that "upgrade" to cable (subject to debate) or just move out of town. At the time of this writing, the top of the line 2wire is the 2701HG-B, commonly used by AT&T, and goes for around $40 used.
I was having trouble with the Broadxent locking up, especially with bit torrent. That is now history. The 2wire has no issues with bit torrent. My upload speed is slightly faster. Download is about the same. There are umpteen things to tweak in a 2wire modem, so I don't want to post any hard number until I'm sure it is as good as it gets.
Ultimately, I'm still going to dump Speakeasy. Just too expensive for what you get. The nice thing about the 2wire modem is there are diagnostics that read out phone line related quality parameters. Next up is tweaking my house wiring to insure there is nothing funky on my end. I'm about 5db too high in loss to go up to the next speed level. The 2wire reads out loss up and down, signal levels, noise, and uncanceled echo. It's really worth the money. I can't understand why any ISP would just insist on a 2wire rather than waste the time of their customers with garbage like the Broadxent BritePort. You can poke around DSLreports and see similar complaints about that modem.
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 Review by nixen
UPDATED: 1 year ago
member for 7.1 years, 3510 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Alexandria,Fairfax,VA
$120 per month (12 month contract)
about 40 days
Verizon
"If you can get through the initial install problems and instabilities, they tend to leave things alone."
"Getting a human to talk to is an ordeal. Their automated systems are even worse. Customer service is not their forte."
"Too expensive for the speeds and service."
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(ratings well below consensus)
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I've had SpeakEasy for a number of years now. They used to be a good company to do business with. It's why, after several moves, I still have them. Unfortunately, it seems that SpeakEasy's business priorities have changed. If you are looking for residential service, is simply would NOT recommend them.
While they've always been more expensive than their competition, they used to provide value for this price differential. The SpeakEasy forum used to be an example of this: they used to have employees participate in the forum to help customers. This policy seems to have ended in July of 2006. They've dropped a number of other things that made them "worth it."
Lastly, they like to advertise one price for their service then absolutely PILE on miscellaneous fees. They then like to attribute these fees to "compliance recovery" costs. Most egregious of these was with the recent repeal of the USF. Somehow, even though the USF was removed, some new "compliance fee" was introduced that pretty much offset this reduction. Requests for clarification go unanswered.
Due to the high prices, I dropped service a few months ago and switched to Cox plus a VPS. I liked Speakeasy, I just could no longer justify the price given my ther options.
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Review by (hidden by request)
Posted: 1.2 years ago
(review was emailed from domain acinvestors.net)
Lafayette,Contra Costa,CA
$95 per month (12 month contract)
"sales/install process"
"performance"
"don't recommend"
| Pre Sales information:
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My second experience with speakeasy. I ordered service 3 months ago and
was
sold and charged for the high price high bandwidth service. Its never
worked reliably as I'm on the edge of the max loop length. Email tech
support says you have to call to troubleshoot, and they are difficult to
get
through to. It was such a hassle that I just kept using my reliable
at&t
dsl ( I need a backup so I keep two). When the at&t modem fried
yesterday I
had to try to get the speakeasy connection fixed. I finally get through
and
they now claim my loop is too long for the speed I was paying for so
they
downgraded my speed and closed out the trouble ticket (no credit back to
me
for having sold me something they now claim they shouldn't have).
However
the line still has intermittent very high latency and basically is
messed
up (ping is 50% longer than when installed), so I'm back to opening a new trouble ticket and getting back on the
line
with them. I can't wait for my new modem to arrive to get the at&t dsl
back. It cost 70% less than speakeasy, performed better, and I never
needed
support. I can't recommend speakeasy - they've gotten worse
while
the rest of the market has improved.
Followup comments:  ChiTang
Premium,MVM
join:2002-08-23
Alhambra, CA | 2 broadband If you need 2 BB, why not get 1 DSl and 1 CABLE? Speakeasy may be using AT&T's gear as well, so if DSL goes out in your area, both may go out.
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I used to be indecisive, now I am not sure. | |
| | 
jerrygarcia
@pacbell.net | Re: 2 broadband i had a cable modem as backup which i should have kept, but it was costing more than the at&t dsl. i also had some pixelation problems with the cable tv that went away after turning off the modem. | |
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Review by tucci
Posted: 1.4 years ago
member for 1.4 years, 4 visits, last login: 264 days ago
Piscataway,Middlesex,NJ
$85 per month
Verizon
"no port blocking- you have have your own servers"
"reliability sucks.. and they don't pursue their vendor to fix it seems"
"I hope you don't have a job that heavily relies on your Internet connection"
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I've had them for 3 years now.
They always answer the calls quick- however it usually ends the same.. run diag, reset circuit, request a full diagnostic. The full diagnostic mean more disruption later, and the ticket always ends up closed. Wait X number of days, repeat process... 5 or 10 second interuptions 3 to 6 times a day- just enough to throw you off WoW or Conan.
Those same interruptions are a pain when you are trying to diagnose your work lan remotely.
I ended up using my Blackberry Internet on my desktop as a backup connection it was so unlreliable.
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Review by jaw1701
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 1.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
Atlanta,Fulton,GA
$55 per month (12 month contract)
BellSouth
"None"
"NO COMMUNICATION"
"Don't bother!"
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Well let's see, considering that the largest phone company in AT&T doesn't have dryline dsl, I ordered from Speakeasy. The only thing that was pleasant was the order process. From that point onward there was zero coordination and communication. The crux of the problem in the installation was allegedly Bellsouth couldn't access the premises. What premises they need to access was never told to me, and they certainly had no problem accessing anything when installing their sub par service. The taps? Downstairs in the laundry room. My apt? ZERO phone calls, knocks at the door, nothing. I never heard a peep. To add insult to injury, Speakeasy sent me a modem I told the sales guy to NOT send, and are now billing me for it. I am SUPPOSED to be getting an RMA to send it back, but that is like all other elements of Speakeasy I have seen. Inefficient and incompetent.
I ultimately cancelled the order and then was told it was cancelled and there would be someone contacting me....yeah RIGHT!
Horrible experience and ultimately no dryline service and LOUSY LOUSY REPEAT LOUSY customer service.......
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Speakeasy
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What does this have to do with isp review?
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