Not having home internet service feels like living in the dark ages these days
I still don't have home internet service. I am spitting mad about this. The short version of why is that Speakeasy screwed up our order bigtime. If you're very bored, you can read the long version below:
I just emailed this to Speakeasy management, at the tech support guy's suggestion:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I was a loyal customer of yours for several years, but Speakeasy's
botched handling of a house move has just pushed me away. Here's what
happened:
In 2005, my wife and I moved to Seattle, while I was still a student
at a university in Cleveland. This made it very important for us to
have reliable high speed internet up and running quickly. Because
Qwest is a good deal cheaper than Speakeasy, I tried to set us up with
them, but they screwed something up so we tried you instead. The
install was a breeze and the customer service fantastic, which was all
a huge relief and made me quite happy to pay the extra money.
Later that year we moved within Seattle, and the transfer of service
was fairly straightforward, so all continued to be good. In almost 3
years since then we only had issues with reliability once, and the
tech support people were very helpful, so that was resolved with no
harm done.
On August 29th of this year, we moved house again, this time moving
half a mile and staying on the same telephone exchange. Qwest were
able to transfer our phone line that day without any trouble, and by
the time we had unpacked a phone to test the line with, it was working
at the new address.
We considered signing up for WiMax service from Clearwire, for three reasons:
- my wife gets a discount through her employer, making it less than
half the price of the equivalent speed package from Speakeasy.
- occasionally the portability of it could be useful (though
admittedly for that to really be a compelling advantage Clearwire
would have to make additional modems _much_ cheaper).
- they could set us up next working day, because all they would need
to do is overnight their hardware to us, whereas setting up DSL on the
phone line was apparently going to take 1-2 weeks and I didn't want to
have to wait.
We decided to stay with Speakeasy because your customer service had
been so good in the past, and as a general rule good customer service
in the ISP world is very hard to find. In other words, we were
willing to pay a premium of about $30/month and put up with some
short-term inconvenience because your customer had been so outstanding
in the past. So I set up the transfer with Speakeasy, and the
following sequence of events unfolded:
- Friday September 5th I received a phone call while co-ordinating a
field trip for work, saying that a technician needed access to the
telecoms room in our building and couldn't get in in spite of making
repeated attempts to contact me. No-one had attempted to contact me
or even rung the doorbell, which I know because the doorbell rings my
cellphone, and there is a building manager in that building office
hours every weekday. I suspect that this was really Qwest's or
Covad's problem, not directly yours, but had anybody thought to notify
me that access would be required I could have given you the building
manager's cellphone number and made arrangements for someone to be at
home to meet the technician.
- Friday September 12th Qwest came back and set up the phone line.
- Today, Monday September 15th, my lunchbreak at work was interrupted
by the home doorbell; a different technician who apparently this time
needed access to my condo. Once again, no-one had warned me, and this
time he said that even if I called the building manager that wouldn't
be good enough because I personally had to be present. It really
doesn't strike me as strange that one would be out at work during the
day, so surely someone should have notified us? Without warning,
there was no way I could get home in good time, and in any case I was
surprised that anyone needed physical access - the last time a
technician had to actually enter my home to set up internet service
was in the very early days of DSL.
- I phoned Speakeasy to try and figure out what was going on, and
learned that this was all because mine was a OneLink order. I don't
need OneLink because we have a phone line (which has been working at
the new address since August 29th), so I asked if they could set up
service on a shared line without a home visit. I was told to expect a
call back by 5pm with an answer.
- Shortly after 5pm, I called Speakeasy for an update. I was bounced
between several people, each giving a different story, until finally I
refused let one poor (and very patient) individual pass me along. He
put me on hold for a while to really dig into this, and while he was
extremely helpful and did seem to be doing everything he could, he was
still not able to give me a date when we would have internet service.
All the while, I had in the back of my mind that I was being a chump,
since I could still go with Clearwire, save about $30/month and be
online by Wednesday.
Eventually I decided to give up and cancel the order. I will have
Clearwire service on Wednesday, and if I had gone with them in the
first place I would have had internet service since September 2nd, not
to mention not having had to waste several hours of work time on the
phone over successive days.
I am sorry to tell you that this mess has lost you a formerly loyal
and happy customer, who had been spending over $600/year with you and
recommending your service to others.
I just emailed this to Speakeasy management, at the tech support guy's suggestion:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I was a loyal customer of yours for several years, but Speakeasy's
botched handling of a house move has just pushed me away. Here's what
happened:
In 2005, my wife and I moved to Seattle, while I was still a student
at a university in Cleveland. This made it very important for us to
have reliable high speed internet up and running quickly. Because
Qwest is a good deal cheaper than Speakeasy, I tried to set us up with
them, but they screwed something up so we tried you instead. The
install was a breeze and the customer service fantastic, which was all
a huge relief and made me quite happy to pay the extra money.
Later that year we moved within Seattle, and the transfer of service
was fairly straightforward, so all continued to be good. In almost 3
years since then we only had issues with reliability once, and the
tech support people were very helpful, so that was resolved with no
harm done.
On August 29th of this year, we moved house again, this time moving
half a mile and staying on the same telephone exchange. Qwest were
able to transfer our phone line that day without any trouble, and by
the time we had unpacked a phone to test the line with, it was working
at the new address.
We considered signing up for WiMax service from Clearwire, for three reasons:
- my wife gets a discount through her employer, making it less than
half the price of the equivalent speed package from Speakeasy.
- occasionally the portability of it could be useful (though
admittedly for that to really be a compelling advantage Clearwire
would have to make additional modems _much_ cheaper).
- they could set us up next working day, because all they would need
to do is overnight their hardware to us, whereas setting up DSL on the
phone line was apparently going to take 1-2 weeks and I didn't want to
have to wait.
We decided to stay with Speakeasy because your customer service had
been so good in the past, and as a general rule good customer service
in the ISP world is very hard to find. In other words, we were
willing to pay a premium of about $30/month and put up with some
short-term inconvenience because your customer had been so outstanding
in the past. So I set up the transfer with Speakeasy, and the
following sequence of events unfolded:
- Friday September 5th I received a phone call while co-ordinating a
field trip for work, saying that a technician needed access to the
telecoms room in our building and couldn't get in in spite of making
repeated attempts to contact me. No-one had attempted to contact me
or even rung the doorbell, which I know because the doorbell rings my
cellphone, and there is a building manager in that building office
hours every weekday. I suspect that this was really Qwest's or
Covad's problem, not directly yours, but had anybody thought to notify
me that access would be required I could have given you the building
manager's cellphone number and made arrangements for someone to be at
home to meet the technician.
- Friday September 12th Qwest came back and set up the phone line.
- Today, Monday September 15th, my lunchbreak at work was interrupted
by the home doorbell; a different technician who apparently this time
needed access to my condo. Once again, no-one had warned me, and this
time he said that even if I called the building manager that wouldn't
be good enough because I personally had to be present. It really
doesn't strike me as strange that one would be out at work during the
day, so surely someone should have notified us? Without warning,
there was no way I could get home in good time, and in any case I was
surprised that anyone needed physical access - the last time a
technician had to actually enter my home to set up internet service
was in the very early days of DSL.
- I phoned Speakeasy to try and figure out what was going on, and
learned that this was all because mine was a OneLink order. I don't
need OneLink because we have a phone line (which has been working at
the new address since August 29th), so I asked if they could set up
service on a shared line without a home visit. I was told to expect a
call back by 5pm with an answer.
- Shortly after 5pm, I called Speakeasy for an update. I was bounced
between several people, each giving a different story, until finally I
refused let one poor (and very patient) individual pass me along. He
put me on hold for a while to really dig into this, and while he was
extremely helpful and did seem to be doing everything he could, he was
still not able to give me a date when we would have internet service.
All the while, I had in the back of my mind that I was being a chump,
since I could still go with Clearwire, save about $30/month and be
online by Wednesday.
Eventually I decided to give up and cancel the order. I will have
Clearwire service on Wednesday, and if I had gone with them in the
first place I would have had internet service since September 2nd, not
to mention not having had to waste several hours of work time on the
phone over successive days.
I am sorry to tell you that this mess has lost you a formerly loyal
and happy customer, who had been spending over $600/year with you and
recommending your service to others.