ISP/Phone Company is Screwing me, Please - I need some Experienced Advice please read

[Mandr4ke]

I will try to elaborate for you. Several people including myself that I know have not had the best luck with DSL Internet service providers as of late. I originally ordered DSL 768k package from Ameritech.net, out local phone carrier back in December of 1999. At the time of getting install and having everything setup and running I notice a very large problem with the service. For some reason or another I was getting horrible latency or like, almost that of being connected to a large network when ever I tried to watch or listen to streaming video/audio. Yet work of all were multi-play Internet games. Anyhow to make a long 9 month story short, I was paying $49 a month for a server that received the lag and latency twice that of an ISDN line, and just about that of a modem. The problem was with modulation setting at the Central Office on the DSLAM. They were using a setting, called Interleving which added over 60ms of lag/latency, because they could fit more customers on per DSLAM at the expense of the custom. This not only effected all of Chicago but also Michigan and Detroit. I fought with the helpdesk, customer service, and network engineers with several other customers for over 4 months before they fixed my service.

And fix my service I ask you? All I wanted was the service that was advertised, the service that I ordered and the service I was
paying $49 a month $588 a year for. I would have never found out about the problem till a friend of mine whom has the same service complain and emailed everyone in the company for 2 months to get his service fixed. But what happened was that after I tried to get my service fixed as well. Ameritech.net unfixed my friend’s service and said he should have kept his mouth shut. Any way after fighting for another 4 months and having people in the company whom thought it was a problem as well did my friend and myself get this resolved.

Which leads me to Telocity now. After hearing great things about the service I decided and experiencing what I did with Ameritech.net now part of SBC’s global network. 9 months of going through getting ripped off and going through more of Ameritech.net not managing their network which led to their DSL service running twice as lagged as a 56k modem for over a month straight I switched to Telocity.

When I got Telocity finally installed and setup I noticed a slight problem, I did not receive the 784k DSL package that I ordered and was paying for instead my service was set at 412k. The very first day I called and ask what was going on. For $49 a month and I don’t know about you, but that’s a nice hunk of change. I call up customer care and had a trouble ticket opened that same day, they explained that some people have been experiencing network problems so that’s why they setup the lowered the speed. I said ok, it’s running good, please raise my speed to what I ordered and am paying for I am not having any problems and don’t see any reason why my speed would be cutoff at almost half of what I was suppose to receive. The very next day my speed was set reset, and I was running at 784k DSL like I ordered. The service was running superb and I experienced no problems, and was getting the same download speeds I was receiving with my pervious Ameritech.net DSL when it was working. For the past 4 weeks I have not had any problems, speed and any other. For that matter, I thought it was the best service.

I then lost service for a total of 6 days. I came home from work and noticed that my service light on my DSL modem was off and called Telocity customer care, on the third day of service being dead. A technician finally called me back after about 5 call later, and we ran though some checks for about 5-10 minutes and he then scheduled for a Rhythms field service technician to come to my house. I left work early to meet him at my house and after spending about 45 minutes or so testing my outside phone box he said he found the problem. It was not my equipment, wiring, or setup.

The problem was one the two wires that deliver the DSL service to my house didn’t have a tone and wasn’t sending a signal and that was why my DSL was not working. The Rhythms technician then told me someone from the Phone Company would come out tomorrow and I didn’t need to be home because everything at the house was good. I get home from work the next day any everything is working. I’m all happy saying yippee I don’t have to use this modem and crummy free internet access software with banner to do my college homework, go figure. I then proceed to check my connection status to make sure everything is running like it was 6 days ago. But what I found was my speed was dropped back down to 416k. So I proceeded to call up customer care again opening another ticket just like I did the first day I was able to use my service. I said they must have turn it down while testing the line for trouble, can I please have it raised back to 784k because this is the service I ordered, and the service I had with no problems for the past month. He then proceeded to take all my information and said that a ticket was opened and that it would probably be a day or so. So for the next 4 days after coming home from work and checking my speed I still see 416k. Each day I called back asking nicely about getting my speed raised back to where it was just last week and that I was running great with it before with no problems.

After calling this last time one of the help desk operators said it shows here that you were never set at 784k DSL. I disagreed and said what are you talking about I’ve been at 784k DSL for the past month, and it was just lowered on me after the Phone Company fixed the problem. After asking him if there was anyone else I could speak with he then told me that oh it shows here that your line can’t handle 784 and that’s why you were dropped to 416k.

I continued to disagree explaining to him that I had 768K DSL for over 10 Months total now at about 784k and have had no problems what so ever in that sense. Line stability was never an issue, not with all new house wiring, going directly from my outside phone box, 10 feet to my DSL inside line jack. And the entire brand new wiring that was put up all over town the past year so they we could receive Broadband internet service. It was outrageous Digital lines just don’t go bad, either they work or they don’t! Speed was never the cause of the downtime that I had and nor was it an expectable excuse for why I was not getting the service I signed up for. After that I asked to speed with someone else that could help him. I was then turned over to a gentleman named Chris, never got a last name, I assumed he was the supervisor on the current shift. I asked him what the problem was an he explained to me that Rhythms owns the DSLAMS at the Central Office and that Telocity goes through them with Tickets to get the speed raise. He took a look at my records and said I see you had your requested to have your speed raised when you first received service. I said yes sir, and I would like to get my speed raised back, Rhythms must have lowered it when they were testing the line and forgot to raise it back now that it’s been fixed. He then said that Rhythms wasn’t doing any more tickets on raising customers speeds. I said what is going on here. I ordered 784k DSL, I had 784K DSL for about a month now, no problems and now I’ve been lowered to 416K. This is crazy can you help me get my speed raised. And he responded telling me that Rhythms doesn’t want to be bothered with anymore speed requests. This is not a speed request this is the service I signed up for, and what I’m paying $49 a month for. He then
told me theirs nothing he can do and that he’s sorry, and several other customers are experience the same problem, their speed was decreased and there’s a lot of unhappy customers as well. I asked if I’m only getting half the speed I ordered am I only going to get charge half of what I am paying monthly? He said unfortunately not. I then asked if I could talk with someone at rhythms and was told that they are not allowed to give out the number, and that I would be directed back to them. Instead I received some kind of email address which I will be sending some emailed to in response to this unpleasant service.

After all this is decided to email Telocity and here is the responce i received:

Hello Micheal,

We are writing to inform you on the status of your Telocity DSL order. We have been
informed by our digital circuit provider that an Ameritech field service technician will
be dispatched to check a possible bridge tap on your line which may be adding footage to
your circuit. According to the initial loop acceptance your line was accepted at 16,600
feet.

Considering that the current condition (16,600 feet from the CO) on your line you are
properly configured at 416kbps. Increasing your bandwidth to 784kpbs may jeopardize the
integrity of your DSL connection. We presently have a service ticket open to review the
possible bridge tap on you line. If it is determined that their is bridge tap then it
will need to be removed and the possibility to increase your speed to 784kbps may be a
solution.

If you would like further information please contact us at 1-888-773-3349 to speak with
one of our Service Delivery provisioning representatives.

Thank you,

Telocity Technical Support

What is a bridge tap?, and what could casue my line distance to jump over 4,600 feet from 12,000 to over 16,600 this is down right crazy man i don't know what to do, but i'm about to call the better Business Bureau and the Illionis Commerce Commission - Comsumers Division and the Cook County Stats
Attorney about this. Is this possiable, or even legal what are are pulling here?

I would be greatful for any insight on this matter, as i have yet to get another reply from these crooks.

[dannjr]

Ok you want an answer that your not going to like but I'll try to be nice about it.
Rhythms unlike Covad depends heavely on what Ameritech can provide them.
When you had Ameritech who has even more problems sinse you left..(like having all there customers down for several day's here in chicago).
Rhythms is your backbone you are basically stuck with Ameritech there is no way for Rhythms to redirct your connection like there is with a Covad connection.
(Ihope your following this)
When thers a problem on the Ameritech cicuit everyone that depends on them suffers.
Yes I'm on the Ameritech Circuit but I have one thing going for me its called Covad & Mindspring. Last month My ping to the ISP went to 1000ms Covad noticed the problem and switched circuits to keep everyone on line which meant I was being redirected to another router and just Authenticated by Mindspring My pings everywhere else stayed at 50 to 60ms
Here in this area you have to be careful if you go with Cable you get about 300 to 600 for a connection and a upload that looks like a 56k modem, lets face it there still building the cable system.
Then you have Ameritech/Rhythms that are basically joined at the hip. Heck I wouldn't put it past Ameritech to use Rhythms to help out.
Then you have Ameritech/Covad Ameritech in our area supply's our lines but Covad dose all of there own work including leaseing the lines from other providers so that when one goes bad your back up.
In addition Ameritech still has a Bunch of old ISDN pouters that they still have laying around so theres where your problem is.
Covad is on all Cisco routers.
When I ping thats all I see unles one is down the word chi-cisco then chat-cisco and so on. When you do a tracert what do you see I bet there aint to many cisco routers there if any.

Its really a problem with the way Ameritech & Rhythms is handling things & it shouldn't be taken litely..
They will without batting an eye disconnect you.
I have an office that I go to that we are just waiting for his contract to run out with Ameritech/Rhythms that is a business bundle that they pay 150 a month for that is never been reliable.
Once his contract is up we are changing him over to a Covad supported line.
He knows about the other four business that I support and has been to one of the offices to see first hand the difference and wished he had gone that way instead of the other more popular idea.
Now Covad dose not give static IP's in our area but as long as you don't disconnect you keep the same IP until then. the average connection is 1200.0kbps down one of the offices is past the 180000 ft mark by 30ft and is getting 1000.0kbps down and 300 up with tweaks.
and thats with the weird router that we are on right now because one blew up this week and they had to put in a temp till they can get Cisco out I personlly get about 2000.0kbps down and have it published at http://microsyspro.com on speeding up your connection.
If you have any questions about this feal free to email me off the site listed above
Good luck
Dan
Man this got wordy please excuse the Grammatik's

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