I Hate You AT&T

March 28, 2008 11:16 AM

ISP Filter: AT&T sucks so hardcore that they deserve a medal. I quit. What ISP's have you had good experiences with?

I live in Houston, Texas (northwest side).

I'm mostly interested in customer service. As in, I want to be able to get a human being on the phone quickly who cares about my issue and can actually resolve it. I don't want to be passed around from department-to-department for three hours only to be hung up on.

I work from home so up-time is a major issue as well.

I'm willing to pay more for better service.

What companies would you suggest?

posted by JPowers to Computers & Internet (22 answers total)

I have had good luck with comcast in both Boston and silicon valley.

Then again, I almost never need customer service.
posted by MillMan at 11:18 AM on March 28, 2008

Here is what people in your area have to say about their ISPs.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 11:21 AM on March 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

I used www.sysmatrix.net for years. Outstanding tech support. But - dialup only.
posted by coffeefilter at 11:23 AM on March 28, 2008

I am doing fine with Comcast now, but I had some problems with my Internet connection being down at random accompanied by lousy television signal. I got better response when complaining about the television signal; probably because they can't blame customer-owned equipment. It took three visits by technicians and replacement of the wire in my house all the way out to the telephone pole to get to this point however.

Before Comcast, we had Speakeasy DSL, and I was EXTREMELY happy with them. Unfortunately, they are subject to Verizon's incompetence and/or malice and were impossible to set up without a landline once we moved to Massachusetts.
posted by mkb at 11:26 AM on March 28, 2008

Speakeasy is one of the most popular DSL ISPs, and I've used them repeatedly over the years and always gotten excellent customer service on the occasions when I needed it. If I were looking at DSL, I would use them again, no question.

As mkb points out, Speakeasy, and indeed any DSL provider, is subject to the incompetence of your local phone company. If you have any problems that don't get fixed quickly, it's probably an ILEC problem, not a Speakeasy problem.

Cable tends to be cheaper, and I've been lucky with the reliability of my Comcast connection, so I stick with them. I don't work from home so if it was offline it wouldn't kill me. I would expect their customer service to suck, as that seems to be everyone else's experience.
posted by autojack at 11:45 AM on March 28, 2008

I used to have Speakeasy too and have nothing but swell things to say about their customer service. We cancelled due to expense (they're a bit pricey..though it might well be worth it) and a move into a new house with very old phone wiring (or possibly malicious phone company as stated above).

I HATE comcast. I had cable with them for years. It was constantly up and down and talking to ANYONE there was a nightmare. From what I've heard here in Chicago it hasn't really changed.

We have RCN now, whom I would reservedly recommend. We've only had one outtage and I was able to get someone on the phone pretty quickly. It resolved itself within 6 hours or so without them needing to send anyone to my home (which is good because they said it would take several days if it was just an isolated 1 house thing, but at least they were polite and upfront about it.) I looked up RCN for Houston and it looks like you can get them if you want them.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 11:57 AM on March 28, 2008

My anecdotal experience with Speakeasy is so different from the love-fest it always seems to receive. I switched based on the near-universal raves (even though to that point I'd never had any real problems with Comcast). Between the month-plus it took them to set me up, the near-daily outages of upwards of an hour, the almost-month again it took me to cancel, the bajillion emails they send for everything, and all this for a higher monthly charge ... I didn't feel too bad going back to Comcast.

At least with Comcast, my connections have almost always been reliable, setup/cancellation has been reasonable (couple of days max), and the couple of times I've had extra charges on my bill, they've been decent about removing them when I call.

My only real beef is with the crappy speed overall in the US compared to what's available elsewhere.
posted by Mr. Palomar at 12:04 PM on March 28, 2008

I use Optimum Online. The worst issue I've had with them since moving into my apartment in June was the phone going (I have VoIP through them, as well as normal cable and cable internet), and they were able to fix it without even glitching my Internet connection or cable watching on a Saturday morning.
posted by mephron at 12:19 PM on March 28, 2008

Hal_C_On: You've been lucky. I tried the technique you describe with Comcast and got the telephonic equivalent of the middle finger for my trouble. They "don't do refunds or credits", apparently.

Speaking of Comcast, Avoid them unless you have absolutely no other alternative. I just spent a month trying to convince them that no, my cable modem or premise wiring wasn't the root cause of my intermittent 50% packet loss - because a traceroute showed that the packet loss was occurring in a router in their cloud five hops out from my cable modem. I'm convinced that Comcast makes it intentionally difficult to get someone with a brain on the phone so as to discourage customer calls. Unfortunately, I live just a little too far from a CO to have DSL as an alternative, so I'm stuck with them.
posted by deadmessenger at 12:21 PM on March 28, 2008

I have the opposite experience. AT&T is good in my area and Comcast is a nightmare. I dont think there's really a solution here other than learning to play the game. Like hal_c_on mentions. Sometimes you need to be pushy. If you ask a forum you'll just get confirmation bias because everyone who's pissed at AT&T is going to chime in. That said, you might get something slightly closer to objective reality on dslreports.com but dont be too surprised when the new boss is the same as the old boss.

deadmessenger, here in Chicago I used to call comcast, threaten to cancel, and they would knock me back to the 29.99 introductory pricing. I did this every 4 or 5 months for a couple of years before leaving for cheaper AT&T service.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:27 PM on March 28, 2008

I've had Speakeasy for six or seven years now and have been very happy with them. I can't remember having outages with them, and I've never had to call customer service except for moving. It is a bit pricey, but I think it's worth it.
posted by pombe at 12:28 PM on March 28, 2008

In the DFW area, I had horrible problems with Comcast. At least 3 times a month, if not more often, the modem would be unable to connect to the internet for hours at a time, and calling never helped. I switched to Verizon FiOS when we moved, as it was a convenient time to switch, and, although Verizon is pretty universally panned, I haven't had a single problem in the past 6 months.
posted by owtytrof at 12:53 PM on March 28, 2008

Hi. I'm in Houston too (far West side), and like you I work from a home office. I use Comcast. A few months ago, it was TimeWarner/RoadRunner, and service was bad (down during the day at least one day per month) and customer service was horrific -- probably the worst I've seen from any company. They were purchased by Comcast, and everyone was switched over. My service has improved substantially -- I have not been down since the switch. Customer service is exactly the same, though: You dial the same telephone number, go through the miserable maze to direct your call (1 for this, 2 for that; now 1 for this, 2 for the other - rinse and repeat at least 10 times), and you get the same people, who are generally no more knowledgeable than they were when a different company signed their paychecks. However, since the service never goes down now, I no longer have any reason to call them. On the whole, I would say I'm satisfied.
posted by Houstonian at 1:24 PM on March 28, 2008

(Maybe we know each other - we do the same type of work.)
posted by Houstonian at 1:26 PM on March 28, 2008

Comcast is working for me in NW Houston. Honestly, though, all of these companies suck for technical support. You want good support, you have to buy a premium. Get business-class service or a leased line. Beyond that, you're going to have to go slog through the mud like the rest of us.
posted by tcv at 1:52 PM on March 28, 2008

Comcast is fine if you get their business-class Workplace service. At least that has been my experience. It costs about the same as Speakeasy's top-tier service (a little less expensive, actually) and is faster. I've been quite happy with it.
posted by kindall at 3:11 PM on March 28, 2008

I would avoid Comcast if you care about good customer support. You can read countless horror stories at The Consumerist. I can personally recommend Time Warner Cable, we've had nothing but great service from them here in DFW. You can check out DLS Reports for reviews for providers your area.
posted by Sufi at 4:20 PM on March 28, 2008

I live in Pearland (Beltway 8 and 288) and I also have Comcast. I haven't had a lot of problems with the Internet connection, except that there outages a couple of times a month. When this happens, it's everything: TV, phone, and Internet. The Comcast customer service people are o.k. to talk to, but if they can't solve the problem, well, they simply can't. You have to wait until their systems come back. I'm given to understand that this is partly due to the massive growth in this part of the Houston suburbs, there's nothing anyone can do, yada, yada, so I grin and bear it.

Before moving here last year we lived in Galveston and had AT&T. In five years I only had two occasions to call customer service. The one time I especially remember, I was connected to a really nice guy who was located in Minot, ND.

FWIW, we had cable in Galveston from Time-Warner and Internet/Phone from AT&T. We consolidated it all with Time-Warner when we moved here, then Time-Warner's local operations became Comcast a few months later. Regardless of whether it was Time-Warner or Comcast, I thought we got better customer service in G-Town (they would send people to our house) than we did here in the H-town 'burbs. The lesson from this, I think, is that it's not just the company, it's also where you live.
posted by Robert Angelo at 4:32 PM on March 28, 2008

Speakeasy. I hear Sonic.net is like Speakeasy but without the marketing budget (which translates into about Sonic being about $10/mo cheaper).

Note that Speakeasy and any other DSL provider are dependent on whoever provides copper to your house. Speakeasy's skill (and presumably Sonics as well) is to own any outage and coordinate the troops to fix it.
posted by zippy at 8:45 PM on March 28, 2008

Erm... Doesn't Best Buy own Speakeasy these days? Seriously, I like Speakeasy but I do not trust Best Buy at all.
posted by tcv at 9:40 PM on March 28, 2008

halcon's tip is worth chocolate with gold sprinkles.

but isp's all suck. they're like all other basic utilities.
sorry but it's true.
posted by krautland at 3:34 AM on March 29, 2008

tcv, yes Best Buy owns Speakeasy. And yes, that announcement filled me with dread. However, I haven't seen a change in service level over pre-Best Buy.
posted by zippy at 5:38 AM on March 29, 2008