I wonder is it possible to have worse DSL experience than mine. Anyway, here is what happened.
First, when I signed up, they promised not to charge installation fee. They charged it anyway.
Second, they had never told me that my place was too far away from their central office until I had subscribed for almost 3 years. They told me the truth only because connection was getting worse and they couldn't fix it.
Last, but not least, I still have to pay for all the down time. Outrageous, isn't it?
It's indeed getting worse. It was down for 4 days last week, 2 days so far this week, and there is no sign of it being fixed soon. Finally, enough is enough, I called to cancel my subscription.
Some of you may be wondering why I dont argue with them to get refund. Well, I did call for installation fee, but they refused.
If you think this is bad enough, it gets a lot worse when it comes to regular phone line problem. During the past 10 years, I have had such problems a few times. None got solved smoothly. Typically, I have to wait a long time for a representative, then s/he would insist that my line is fine. If I could come up with some solid proof, s/he would insist that the problem is in my home and I'll have to pay.
It happned once that I even had to file complaint with State attorney to get the problem fixed, because no matter how good my proof was, their representative just wouldn't listen.
If only we can have more than one local phone company, then I would switch in no time.
snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (keelung) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
How is cell phone coverage in your area? If it's good then dump the landline phone completely. As far as switching phone companies I would bet that it won't help the technical problems at all since the other phone companies use SBC's lines to get service to your house.
I completely agree that SBC is getting worse. Here's an email that I just sent to their customer service folks that describes some of the pains I've been having lately...
[begin email message] I just want to spend a minute to complain about your DSL service. I was originally a Pacific Bell DSL subscriber and have been happy with the service that I've received for the past 5+ years. However, I just moved across town to a new home, and the experience with moving my DSL has been nothing short of a nightmare.
My problems began when I spent a little over 45 minutes on the phone (I have a timer on my phone so I know exactly how long it took) submitting an order to have my phone and DSL service moved. At that time I was told that I would get a call back from the DSL folks confirming my move date. After I didn't hear anything back for a week I called the DSL group to confirm and found out that they had no order for moving my service. I had to start all over again from scratch. I was issued another new phone number at that time and the 45 minutes that I had previously spent on the phone turned out to be a complete waste. On this second call I spent another almost 40 minutes trying to get everything straightened out.
The date for my move came and went and I was excited about getting connected back to the internet, but when I tried to connect I wasn't able to reach the Internet. To make a very long story short, I have now spent over 6 hours on the phone with various departments within SBC.
SBC's DSL service has now moved to PPPoE which has been a nightmare. When I placed the order, nobody told me that I would have to buy new hardware just to get the same service that I've been enjoying. (I believe it's called enhanced DSL service that gives me 5 static IP addresses) I think it's very unfair to make a customer purchase equipment just to get the same service that they've had in the past, especially since there's no technical reason why my connection couldn't have been moved as it was.
The biggest frustration that I have is that SBC has taken the power away from their employees to be able to resolve customer issues. Several of the technical folks that I have spoken to on the phone have said "this used to be something I could fix for you, but I don't have that ability anymore." For some reason nobody has been able to fix even simple things such as my basic account information. (when I call tech support I still have to explain that my name isn't on my account because of database issues that they're having and the name on the account is the name of the person who used to have my phone number) Every time I call tech support they show a different name registered to my DSL account. Last time I called the name on the account was my street address.
I have also been very unimpressed with the tech support that SBC has outsourced to in Manila. (I'm assuming it's an outsource situation) The people in that group have been very polite, but the quality of the technical support in that group has been far below par. If other customers are getting the same service that I've received from that group I would suspect that there are a lot of angry customers.
I hope this email doesn't fall on deaf ears and that SBC's senior management has a chance to read of the frustrations that their customers are going through. While writing this note I have been on hold with the tier one tech support group again trying to get to tier two, but was just hung up on while I was waiting. [end email]
I'm seriously considering moving to another DSL provider. The technical support anywhere else has to be better than I've seen at SBC. I've thought about Covad, but they're a little more expensive. Is there a good DSL provider in the San Francisco East Bay that I should look at?
I had been using SBC/Pacbell dailup for a number of years, then decided to switch to DSL service. I figured that since I was already using them as my ISP that I would switch over to their DSL service. I checked out the upgrade page, and over a couple of weeks time the price of the package that I wanted change three times. I called as I had some questions, and couldn't get answers. I then checked out AT&T Worldnet and was able to get the answers that I needed, and noticed that the price never changed. I'm enjoying it the service, and in fact get a faster speed than what I apllied for. ATT Worldnet is provided by Covad. One other thing that I like is that they have Tech folk involved in their users newgroups. They actually work on the prvention of spam, whereas I was getting over 500 spams a day with SBC and they wouldn't do a thing about it. I have a friend who has Earthlink's DSL and from the things that he has told me about their service makes me glad that I went the way that I did.
"Dan Pike" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...
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