| No Surprise I was a SpeedFactory customer from sometime early this decade until two months ago.
We jumped ship after 6+ months of regular, unexplained outages and over a year's worth of billing problems (which started in late 2006 with 5 months of no billing, followed by a whopping bill for all 5 months at once.) I sent a formal cancellation notice on February 26 and despite that was billed for both March and April service (2008). When I called early last week (for the third time) to get it straightened out, I asked for Drew - the person who had been running things at SF (so far as I can tell.) I was told he was no longer with the company, but that they would get it cleared up with corporate in California (read: NextPhase) ASAP.
I called later last week after not hearing back, and got the "Circuits overloaded" phone message. NextPhase and SF's sites are both gone from the net, and no one's answering the phones.
NextPhase destroyed SpeedFactory. Ever since the acquisition, it's been clear that NextPhase has been slashing support and infrastructure. The systems administrators were doing phone support, including billing. Several times late last year, someone who sounded like a janitor answered the phone, and would only take messages - not offer any help at all.
This is an incredibly sad end to what was one of the best local ISPs in the country for the first half of this decade. During times when Bellsouth could hardly keep their DSL up and running, SpeedFactory was solid as a rock, with fantastic customer service.
We switched to Atlantic Nexus two months ago and have been thrilled with the service - it's like how SF used to be. SF refugees would do well to check it out. (No, I am not working for them. I'm just very happy with the service thus far.) |
