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“And there you have it: Earthlink is killing kittens.” -PD

I don’t know how to break this gently Reid, but the truth is actually far worse in moral terms: They’re outsourcing kitten killing.

Now, about those new-fangled cable modem thingies…

“They’re outsourcing kitten killing.”

Feline rendition. To quote Victor Davis Hanson, “It’s hypocritical, and it will blow up in your face.”

As for your comment about cable thingeys, I’m afraid I’m a bit like a deer in the headlights at this moment. I’ve even been too timid to ask Earthstink what it would take to upgrade from 1.5M to 3.0M service (though it appears you can only get it if you’re provisioned by Covad … which I’m not).

Other than the “no servers” issue I mentioned to the Donkey, I wonder about the fact I live in a much higher density area than you or the Donkey. More people on the same bandwidth limited loop. I kinda like having my own dedicated connection.

The truth is I don’t feel bandwidth limited at 1.5M, given my usage habits, and the connection itself has been commendably stable for a long long time. My sole motivation for switching would be to deny Earthlink and BellSouth a chunk of my monthly budget, due to the ongoing customer disservice they (both) offer.

But Ima skeered. I gotta go buy a chicken, new moon’s comin’...

Oh, one other thing I noticed … when I dug back into my old invoices, I found that about 20% of them … had never been opened. I was likely busy when they came in, I thought, “yep, it’s that time of month,” and moved on.

How many people got overcharged this month … and don’t even know it?

Just think positive. You survived an ordeal, you might get your money back, and so far it looks like they didn’t press the wrong switch and delete your account.

Paul can affirm to you that the myth that DSL circuits don’t get overloaded too, is indeed a myth. However, you can always try it out fer 6 months for chickenscratch

But there’s still the no server thing. If Earthlink completely bombs on you, try Speedfactory. They’re small, they’re customer oriented, the connection will be the same quality and you can run any server you can imagine. In fact, after a couple of months, if you call Support and get someone after a minute or so and say, “It’s Photodude”, you’ll hear, “hey man, what’s happening?” instead of a strange voice where you could swear they just said, “Welcome to Deddy Queen”.

“You survived an ordeal, you might get your money back”

And Earthlink has sunk to the point … I should be thankful for that? I know what you’re saying. I should be thankful it wasn’t $1,070. I should be thankful they didn’t remotely cause my modem to spontaneously combust and burn down my home.

I was so thankful last night, I spent some time looking at both Speedfactory’s and Covad’s sites (even with them, I don’t think I can get 3.0M here). The thing is, I can’t afford down time right now, not even a few days. My current deadlines have no bandwidth wiggle room. Nor do I have any more “surge capacity” on the frustration front. Maxed out.

Appropo to my last comment about unopened invoices, my good friend Marti read my site today, and thought “I guess I better dig out my invoice and look at it.” Sure enough, she got the three figure screwing, too. Got her red hair on today, she does, but if she didn’t happen to read it on my site, she wouldn’t have even known.

So I decided to do something I have not done in ages … post in Earthlink’s Usenet forums (pointing to this article, of course). I haven’t officially been an Asshole in quite some time (though I do wear the t-shirt on occasion). While I still have two or three very large trees I can shake high up in the Earthlink Powers That Be … why should I? The other 5 million Earthlink customers are unable to call on them for help, so why should I take advantage of my nine years of company intimacy? There was a time when I would have done so as a tip off … “hey, you guys got a problem you need to address quick before you get slammed over it.” No longer. Let them flounder. They’ve burned every bit of the customer loyalty I once had. Customer loyalty they had earned the hard way. So much that it took a big fire a long time to burn it down.

And then this morning my inbox brought me … a customer survey request from Earthlink, asking “How Did We Do?”

You really want to know? Unfortunately, it was mostly a multiple choice survey…

1. Thinking about the service you received on your most recent contact with EarthLink, would you say that you were: Very Dissatisfied

2. How likely are you to recommend EarthLink to a friend or an associate? Are you: Very Unlikely

3. When I contacted EarthLink, I worked with a representative who was knowledgeable and capable of answering my questions: Agree

4. I left my most recent contact with EarthLink knowing what would happen next: Disagree

5. When I contacted EarthLink, my request was resolved satisfactorily: Strongly Disagree

6. EarthLink makes me feel valued as a customer: Strongly Disagree

7. Please share any additional comments that you might have or any suggestions on how we can improve our services to you:

You’ll find over 1300 words, plus comments from others about this, here:

http://photodude.com/article/2640/earthlink-fee-recovery

I’ve already spoken with two friends who got stiffed by this same three figure overcharge. You have burned tremendous goodwill with this huge mistake, and have so far done absolutely nothing in an attempt to regain it. The company I signed up with (Mindspring) would never have made that mistake, or let this linger a single day.

Wow, Usenet? I take it there’s no mindspring.* groups anymore. Wonder how many old timers are in the earthlink.* groups. This is reminding me of an hour I spent on hold trying to resolve a client’s serious domain problem with ELNK web hosting. When I finally got help, I was getting nowhere and asked for escalation to Tier 2. Suddenly my phone went dead. With my old Mindspring loyalty, I thought I should call management, thought about another hour on hold just to help them and decided my time was more valuable than that. Their commercials are still cool, though. Too bad they don’t reflect reality.

I felt a disturbance in the force.

Speedfactory , just do it.

Save yourself. I filed a referral for you (I can use the $25 credit)

I was once part of the beast. But I am feeling much better now.

There is a reason why they call their software, “Total Access” ...

“More people on the same bandwidth limited loop. I kinda like having my own dedicated connection.” -PD

The practicality of this arguement against early cable ISP service has long since become moot, Reid. The capacity of cable infrastructure is for all practical purposes, far greater for each subscriber than the phone system. Your “dedicated connection” is uniquely yours only for the last few thousand feet, from your wire pair emerges from the DSLAM to your home. At the DSLAM, your traffic is aggregated with those of your neighbors, and put on the fiber link to the CO switch, and then on to your ISP’s POP on the fiber network, along with all the other voice and data traffic the telephone company carries.

A bigger concern for cable customers is the robustness of the head end, and the savvy of the tech support people running the network infrastructure. In Atlanta, I had Charter, which wasn’t great until I signed up for business class service, and got people I could yell at 24×7, but here in Jacksonville, I have Comcast, which so far, is terrific. Comcast made a big committment to this market, taking over a cable franchise from AT&T which was legendary for bad customer service, and frequent technical problems, and they’ve really delivered value and service in spades. My basic residential service here is delivering 3851/352 this morning, and I can step up from there, if I’m willing to pay the rate, to symmetrical T3 speeds. I’m one 9ms hop off the public internet according to traceroutes, and I’ve seen 0 packet loss in Comcast’s network anytime I’ve checked it in almost 2 months.

I live 2600 feet from a Bell South CO here, and I never really considered DSL. YMMV, depending on your cable franchise operator, but if they know their stuff, cable is sweet.

I’m happy with the stability and low latency I’m getting with Comcast, hell, even their tech support is good. On the other hand, if I had a non-flaky phone connection, unrelated to ISP, I’d still be with Speedfactory. When DirectvDSL closed, I brought a bunch of people over to SF and I’m not sure any of us had more than a day’s downtime. Because they have people who know what they’re doing taking personal interest in every subscriber. When I upgraded to 3000/384, they had to completely rebuild a new circuit; I was going from routered over ATM to PPPoE. I had zero downtime (that I noticed). A week after I ordered it, a new router came in the mail with complete instructions. That night around midnight, my connection went down for about an hour while they switched circuits. I’ve heard that if a new customer voices concern about downtime, they can perform similar magic. When I first set up my mail server, switching from sendmail to qmail, I ran a bunch of relay tests from the web to make sure I hadn’t left anything open. Not to worry, logs showed that they were probing me too. Wow, more advice than you ever wanted in one thread!

“The practicality of this arguement against early cable ISP service has long since become moot, Reid”

I bow to your superior experience and knowledge, but once again point out big density differences. I’m going to guess that within 300 yards of his home out in the burbs, Mr. Turner has maybe 12-20 homes. I have about 200. Now, I know cable companies factor in this density as well, but it’s an order of magnitude of difference. Still, if they’re giving everybody 6.0M, that’s some serious bandwidth to each loop. It is likely a moot point.

Locally we have Comcast, who I have no real bias against (unlike BellSouth, for example). Servers are my only real issue with them. That, and though I hear you two crow about your Phat Pipes Pumping Barrels of Bandwidth. I simply haven’t found myself pushing any walls there. I’m not a P2P file hog, nor am I shipping out 100MB files to clients.

If I switch to anything, it will be solely because of terminal dissatisfaction with “customer service” at Earthlink. I really can’t fault them technically on the connection itself, it’s been 99.8% flawless. And from the advice everyone has kindly added here, I think I may have to schedule some downtime in a couple of months to switch over to Speedfactory (I’m just booked solid, but hopefully your referral credit will still be good then, Jan).

I would also note that no one has advised waiting to see how Earthlink resolves this. No one from Earthlink has contacted me in any way, to follow up my post in their Usenet support forum (which is a veritable ghost town), or as a mass e-mailed followup to what is obviously a mass mistake against an untold number of customers.

Nor has my account been credited yet.

Wait to see how ELNK resolves this? It’s a good thing I did not have a cup of tea handy or I would be cleaning my monitor and keyboard.

This subject has a bigger issue hiding between the lines… Get thee to the burbs and become a more productive, tax paying citizen; become a homeowner. Own your wires.

Well, I prefer living inside the Perimeter. And it may shock you, but you can still be a homeowner there, and own your own wires (and be a productive tax paying citizen). I have for just shy of a decade.

My wife was once an OP like you. I converted her. Half-ownership of intown property will do that to you.

If you are paying Atlanta taxes, are they really productive? I am not sure it is a house if you do not have a big yard, but I digress.

I really do think you get better service for your dollar out here, even from the monopoly utilities. I honestly do not know where you have to live anymore to get good service from Earthlink. It makes me sad.

“If you are paying Atlanta taxes, are they really productive?”

Off topic. Take it to the ‘cooler (I’m a mile outside city limits, paying what I consider to be quite reasonable Dekalb Co. taxes, and have a condo with none of the yard work I abhor).

“I honestly do not know where you have to live anymore to get good service from Earthlink”

Garry Betty’s penthouse.

What’s the cooler? Got a URL?

I would be shocked indeed if Betty did not have a T1 or SDSL.

Is Bob M still there? Call him about your bill. Tell him I said, hey.

Boy do I miss that ol’ watercooler. Where top posting and snappy one liners were not only allowed, but encouraged. Where it was practically illegal to snip 100 lines of quoted text. Where posting off-topic was with sexual innuendos was considered cool. Ahh, I remember scrolling down a couple hundred lines of quoted text only to find that the point of the article was sitting in the 6 words way at the top. The old days…it just didn’t get much better than that.

I also got screwed with this overcharge. Not to make it worse, but you probably got overcharged on the other tax – I think it’s called the Utilities Tax. Check your bill—my charge was around $15 and it’s usually only $1. If Earthlink takes the money from your credit card or checking account, call the bank/credit card and dispute the charge. My bank refunded the amount to me within a day. I’ve called EL every day for the past three days and I can’t deal with them anymore. I’ve heard from friends that Verizon DSL is better—I cancelled my Earthlink account this morning.

“Is Bob M still there? Call him about your bill.”

Why should I take advantage of a resource 5 million other Earthlink customers don’t have? I admit, I thought about it, but I want to see what happens next … without intervention From Above.

Julie, you are the second person to contact me today saying they got overcharged, too. I’m guessing there were hundreds. If not thousands.

We’ve reached the first part of that “3 to 5 days” promise, and if the second part rolls around Friday with no credit having been made, then I’ll take the next step.

They’ve got my money, and I’m going to get my $107 worth, one way or another.

Comcast? Their cable broadband internet service is wonderful. When we moved in August, they disconnected our old service and had the new one ready when I got the modem hooked up.

However.

We had them doing our phone service also at the old house… and they said it’d be 6 weeks AT LEAST to get the phones hooked up.

We told them to, in essence, stuff their phone where the sun don’t shine, and I got a Vonage account. Started at $25 a month for unlimited local and long distance, then dropped it to their $15/month unlimited local/500 min. long distance when I saw the worst month only had 400 minutes long distance. I’ve unplugged the phone lines from the outside world, plugged the Vonage unit into a regular wall outlet, and PRESTO, all my phone belong to Vonage, going out over our broadband connection.

That was last August. I’ve since checked – ComCast phone’s not available where we live (though it was listed as available when we checked before buying the house) and they have no estimate when it’ll be available.

If you’ve got ComCast broadband available, you could do a lot worse than switch to it.

As far as hosting goes – I’ve had Milblog running on 1And1.Com for a couple of years now – and it’s doing fine. (I’m a referrer for both 1And1 and Vonage, but I won’t shill for a service I don’t use or wouldn’t recommend wholeheartedly to others.)

If an outage of any length is unacceptable, just have the ComCast folks set up their link in parallel for a couple of days, then tell Earthlink to disconnect when you’re satisfied with the stability.

Hope this helps!

J.

Reid needs the ability to run servers, so I think he’s limited to Earthlink and Speedfactory (in the ATL area). I too am running a couple Vonage lines over my Comcast connection. The two biz lines plus long distance were costing me $180/mo. Now it’s $67 total (biz lines are always more expensive). Comcast’s IP phone solution is a better product in that it comes in through a completely different channel, like cable tv, so you won’t get choppy phone calls if you’re downloading linux distros, porn, music, etc. But with the 384 and 784KB uploads, you can do just about anything with Vonage over a basic Comcast internet connection.

The Vonage/Comcast combo does sound intriguing, given my long held and hard earned distaste for all things BellSouth. But I haven’t finished tilting at this windmill yet.

Today, another shoe dropped. Totally by chance, I happened to find this in the Earthlink Billing FAQ (emphasis mine):

I was given a credit. Why hasn’t it been applied to my account?
We typically process credits in three to five business days. However, EarthLink bills you on the same day each month, which means that the credit will not be submitted to your bank or credit card company until your standing bill cycle date (i.e., it will be submitted with your monthly bill). Furthermore, your credit card company or bank may send your monthly statement prior to when EarthLink submits your monthly invoice to them. As a result, you may not see the credit or refund reflected until the following statement period. Thus, it may take up to seven weeks from the time the credit or refund is processed.

It would appear that when Earthlink tells you 3 to 5 days, they really mean “up to seven weeks.”

Looks like I may be switching earlier than I’d planned.

Reid, just because 3 or 4 million people may not know who Bob is does not mean that you must or even should suffer. Last I talked to him, his job title was something like Customer Satisfaction Diva. So, it was his job to hear from customers with strange problems. He had the power to look into it, walk down the hall and smack someone who should fix it. With really big problems, maybe he could fix it for everyone, not just you. Of course, Bob may be sitting in Tahiti right now, I don’t know. Just a thought.

Few people loath BS more than I do. But the simple fact is that if you are in this part of the world and you want DSL, you will get more reliable service if you get DSL from someone who works with BS more closely than those who do not. What I mean by that is that if you want Speedfactory, you have to have it on a BS line. There’s lots of small and large reasons why this is so that have to do with whose equipment goes where in the CO, how it gets plugged into the network and routed, etc., but I do not want to type 5,000 words to explain it in detail in this little window.

But you do not understand, Sancho. This is no longer about the $106, or if I will leave Earthlink. It is about the windmill. And Bob will hear about this. Once his customer support elves fail to fulfil the promises they’ve made, as I already know they will.

And, yes, I’ve accepted my fate as an ongoing slave of BS, as Speedfactory is my choice for a switch. Reading their site in a bit more detail, it looks like downtime can be minimzed. But I’m not ready yet. The windmill, she still spins.

The windmill does not spin. When you truly understand that mind spins, you will be able snatch the pebble from my hand. Then you will have a pretty pebble, which fits in your pocket much easier than a windmill.

How much interest are they paying on your involuntary loan to them? nudge, nudge, tilt, tilt

“How much interest are they paying on your involuntary loan to them?”

Paulie Walnuts might ask, “How much interest are you paying on your involuntary loan to them”.

On the other hand, if a customer disappears from the forest, does the windmill still spin?

You might want to investigate Speakeasy, with whose service a friend of mine is delighted. (I fully expect to be a customer of theirs very soon.) I’m sure Speedfactory is fine, but it isn’t your only choice.

Now excuse me while I check my Earthlink invoice…

Thanks for the link to here from the DSLR thread.

I wonder what the total body count is? Add me as a casualty.

Also, some of us keep rather small limit cards for online purchases, with nasty monthly fees for going over the credit limit. Thank God it wasn’t $1071.40 or $10714.00. I wonder if Eartlink is going to cover those overlimit charges?

Reid, what are you serving, generically speaking, that you’d rather not outsource?

Also, Speakeasy requires Covad, which is not available in a lot of BS territory (remote terminals, etc.)

I think I’ll go look at SpeedFactory. Out in the burbs, Speakeasy isn’t a real option. And I think trying to provide remote backup for some of my clients would get killed by download caps on Comcast.

Seriously, Comcast Small Business is something I’m also looking at. Except a. $95.00 per month and b. Good Gravy they’ve got some kinda complex TOS, even for business users. You’d think they’d want to suck up the SOHO market, which create peak loads at times different from their residential market.

Reid, Reid,

Don’t you remember why so many of us left EarthStink? Customer support/service hasn’t existed since the post-Brewer days, Bob’s attempts to remedy that, notwithstanding.

I’ve actually had fairly good luck with Charter, for both broadband and phone. But I will also agree that keeping the two separate is a good idea – no issues with downloads interfering with phone calls, and quicker response if a hardware failure happens (such as a squirrel with teething pains).

Looking forward to the next chapter in your saga. I anticipate this one being a long story.

Andrew: “I wonder what the total body count is?”

That’s hard to say. EL bills their millions of customers on a rotating basis, which likely averages out to around 130,000 per day. The communication I had indicated they were aware of the problem … and still working on fixing it. In my limited circle of contacts, the incidence is damn high. I was surprised it took so long to show up in the DSL Reports forums.

It could just be a few hundred of us to a few thousand. If it was in the tens of thousands, I would think it would have showed up in the trade publications by now. But maybe not. There’s no way to know for sure.

“what are you serving, generically speaking, that you’d rather not outsource?”

At this moment, not a thing. But I plan on getting a Net-Box soon, and that would be a no-no at Comcast.

“Speakeasy requires Covad, which is not available in a lot of BS territory”

They’re available here, but comparatively expensive. And if you make the mistake of filling out the form on their web site, they will then call you incessantly (three times in three days so far).

Lady Niniane: “Don’t you remember why so many of us left EarthStink?”

Oh, yes. I know. I’m a glutton for punishment. The Laws of Inertia have been at work here, and any large business depends on them. They try to structure their business to keep from rocking your boat.

Take an extra hundred bucks or so a month from people, and you might sink their boat, eventually. Who’s to say next month it won’t be a thousand? So far, not Earthlink.

Reid,

Check your billing page. I just got an invoice dated today with $106.17 credit back to my cc.

I think you’re right. Their going to fly as close to ground as possible with this, and hope no one raises a stink.

Too late.

Bye Bye EL.

Yes, Andrew, my EL billing page shows the same thing … a credit on 3/10 for $106, supposedly refunded to my credit card. Shock of shocks. But my BoA account shows nothing online yet. Perhaps after midnight (they’re much quicker about showing charges than credits, as my lunch today at Ted’s Montana Grill was listed by the time I got home from eating it).

Just the same, I no longer feel like I can trust Earthlink with my cc number. It’s become a little too much like roulette. The most basic proposition for any business of their type … trusting your financial information to them to make ongoing charges … and they’ve blown it. By a factor of three.

OH FINALLY! I can finally share my earthlink problems with people who share an equal hatred that i do for these clowns. Well, i signed up for DSL about 5 months ago and opted to get the Home Networking, it was a Linksys wireless router w/ a wireless USB adapter, great equipment! but I was unaware of the $160 charge on my earhtlink bill + $10 for home networking support (all this is guarunteed with a 30-day moneback guarentee) The second i found out about this outrageous charge i called and sent the equipment back, this all happend in november. I never recieved a credit on the router and usb adapter so i called at the end of january asking for my refund. The man who i spoke with said that he had no record of me cancelling my homenetworking but he did have a record that they had recieved it. So he finally gave me a credit of $160. I checked my Earthlink account balance and it only said $60! They charged me a $100 early termination fee on my homenetworking contract because i “didnt cancel it within 30-days” but they did have a record of recieving the home netwokring equipment (even though earthlink mailed me pre-paid shipping labels to send the stuff back…) I finally got my credit back about a month ago, so it took them that long to credit me. AHHH! I dont understand how their customer support can win “J.D. Power and Assoc.” Because it is the most pathetic customer service i have ever dealt with, and i work customer service! I HATE Earthlink