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Rob_
join:2008-07-19
|  A month and two days. A ton of excuses. Still no service.
A month and two days.
It's been a month and two days since I was told that I had service through DSL Extreme. Unfortunately, I still don't.
I've been patient. I've jumped through the hoops. I've spent endless hours on the phone. But I _still_ don't have DSL service through DSL Extreme.
Here's the story so far:
On June 8th, I ordered DSL Extreme's 6 mbit plan. I was given an activation date of June 16th. As I was switching from Earthlink, I elected to do an ISP change.
June 16th came and went. Still, I had no service through DSL Extreme -- my Earthlink service persisted.
So I waited. I talked with DSL Extreme multiple times. (I've lost count.) All the while, I was given the impression that we'd get DSL Extreme's service "real soon now" -- that there was just one more problem had to be resolved, and then we'd be all set.
Eventually DSL Extreme told us that Covad didn't seem to believe that we were still on Earthlink. They said that we needed to get a Covad tech out to our house so that they [Covad] would see that we weren't set up. Fine. We scheduled a Covad tech to come out to our house.
The Covad tech confirmed that we still didn't have correctly provisioned service. He said that we'd have to cancel Earthlink.
This past Monday, we cancelled Earthlink. So far, the only thing this has accomplished was to downgrade us from a 1.5mbit DSL connection to a 56kbit dialup connection.
I spoke with DSL Extreme last night. They said that "AT&T still has a pending order" on the line, and thus they could not establish service. The technician with whom I spoke initially said that I would need to call Earthlink or AT&T and get them to "clear any orders on the line". When I pointed out that I shouldn't have to do this (after all, DSL Extreme is the ISP, not me), the technician said that he would contact Covad on my behalf and tell them to ignore all pending orders other than DSL Extreme's provisioning order. He said that he'd call back, and that it was possible that the provisioning order would be placed and we'd get an activation date before the weekend.
When the technician called me again a couple hours later to follow up, he said that he had no updates, and that we'd basically have to wait until Monday. So much for DSL Extreme helping on my behalf.
So a month and two days after I'm supposed to have DSL Extreme's service, I _still_ have no service from them. Furthermore, since they were not able to do an ISP switch, I cancelled Earthlink -- therefore I have no broadband at all. I don't even have an estimate of when I'll get service through DSL Extreme.
A month and two days. Are you kidding me?
This is ridiculous.
I know I know... it's not DSL Extreme's fault. There's a million and one reasons why it's AT&T's, or Earthlink's, or Covad's fault, why it's not a typical experience, why the ILEC screwed up, etc...
But the fact remains, I paid DSL Extreme (not Earthlink, not AT&T, not Covad -- DSL Extreme) to provide DSL service, and they have not done so. I've been billed $55.07 (when I called to inquire about this charge, I was told the charge covered service for part of June as well as July) and in return I've gotten a month of telephone conversations, a list of excuses, and no DSL service.
Hopefully the general manager of DSL Extreme will see this and help ensure that I get DSL service. If not... well... I hope this serves as an example of what happens when Murphy's law holds true. I don't think that my experience is typical of DSL Extreme (I hope not), but I wanted to share my experience so that anyone who's considering switching knows what can go wrong.
The ticket number for this is 3089927. You can PM me if you need more information, or call me at the phone number listed on my account. | |
dslx_gm
Premium,VIP
join:2002-12-26
Winnetka, CA
| reply to Rob_
Re: A month and two days. A ton of excuses. Still no service.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the information and your patience. I reviewed your post and the ticket on your account as well as the open ticket with Covad. It appears that the request from Earthlink to disconnect your service in turn caused Bell South to process an order to disconnect the line share from your line. Since there is a pending order on the line that needs to be cleared Covad couldn't re-establish line share. Based on the notes from the account our team has escalated it to within Covad to try to get your back up and running as soon as possible. I will follow up with them in the morning and ensure that you get an update tomorrow.
Once again I appreciate your patience. Although the issue is on the ILEC side as you mentioned, since you are our client we do take responsibility. We will do everything possible to get you back up and running right away.
Thanks
--
George
General Manager
DSL Extreme
Will work for reviews.  | |
Rob_
join:2008-07-19
| Well as of yesterday (July 23rd) we have a DSL signal!
Kinda.
When I spoke with a Tier 2 rep on Monday, I was given an activation date of Wednesday. When I returned home from work yesterday, I found that we had no DSL signal on the line. I called DSL Extreme, and spoke to a Tier 2 rep who informed me that Covad had (for some reason) locked down the port. He unlocked it, my modem found a signal, synched at 900kbit (or thereabouts,) and promptly dropped synch. The rep informed me that my port was in "safe mode". He then took my line out of safe mode, and provisioned it at the full 6/0.8. It was unable to sustain synch for more than a few seconds (despite being in interleave mode). He then provisioned my port at 3mbit down. Same story. He told me that the noise margin was 6db, and my modem reported a similar figure (7-8db). In an attempt to isolate the problem, I plugged my modem directly into the test jack in the junction box on the side of my house. Same story, same noise margins. (At least that rules out internal wiring as the cause of the issue.)
I also tested another DSL modem that I knew was functioning correctly (a Zyxel modem that I had lying around). Same problem (couldn't sustain synch, reported low noise margins and very high attenuation.)
Since I had accidentally disconnected from DSL Extreme's tech support when testing the modem (I forgot which junction the phone I was using was on  ) I called back and spoke to a different Tier 2 rep (Chris.) He was very helpful, and said that he would contact Covad and give me an update tomorrow (today, July 24th).
So apparently, someone (Covad, I presume) managed to provision my line in a way that the line noise is so bad that I can't maintain a stable synch at any speed.
Sigh. Yet again, I find myself being told to wait for DSL Extreme to contact Covad.
DSL Extreme's tech support staff are always very knowledgeable and very friendly, but I gotta say, this whole experience is wearing on my nerves considering:
1) It's been well over a month since our first activation date, and well still have no functional internet connection.
2) Earthlink seemed to have no problem provisioning the port correctly the first time around, some 3 years ago. I had a high noise margin (in the 20s), a low attenuation (usually around 20-30db) and a stable connection.
I'll be sending my account information to DSLX_Zak after I post this message. Hopefully we'll be able to resolve this soon. | |
djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
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| What speed of service were you on with Earthlink? Noise margin is relative to your service speed. If you had a 14db noise margin at 1.5mbps, you will have considerably less with 3mbps service.
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams. | |
Rob_
join:2008-07-19
| That's quite true, but if I was consistently getting in the mid to high 20s with Earthlink at 1.5, I'd think it pretty unlikely that a stable sync at 3mbit is impossible.
Furthermore, the connection wasn't even stable at 900kbit (the safe mode speed is somewhere around there IIRC) -- so it's pretty clearly a new issue, rather than a preexisting condition. | |
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