Comments on: EarthLink rocks, J.D. Power says

Broadband provider ranks No. 1 in marketing research firm's 2007 customer satisfaction study published Wednesday.

[Jimmy the Scuffer]

Why I dumped Earthlink

I live in a rural area, so for many years dial-up was my only choice. My local ISP was eventually swallowed by a bigger fish, and Earthlink swallowed them. This was fine with me because they lowered the price and the service was more stable.

Then, Qwest added DSL to my area, and notified me of what their service would cost. Knowing I could choose another vendor, I contacted Earthlink. Their employee was incapable of answering very basic technical questions, and just stuck with her script, no matter what. It seemed impossible to get a more knowledgeable person on the phone. I would have preferred to stay with Earthlink, even though the cost was slightly more, because I would have been able to keep my existing e-mail addresses, but they couldn't give me the information I wanted to make a decision, and Qwest would.

The funny thing is that six months later I started getting calls from very slick Earthlink telemarketers who wanted to get my business back. I told them they were too late.

Qwest is far from perfect, but they were competitive. Earthlink just wanted to sit on their butts.

[gefitz]

Too bad they block my library's mail to patrons the most...

Earthlink is our library's number one culprit as far as having our notices (we notify patrons when books are overdue, or when they have holds available) blocked as spam.

The patron thinks our messages aren't being sent out, but without fail the patron doesn't know that Earthlink not only blocks email it THINKS are unwanted, it DELETES such messages without telling their user.

We routinely tell our patrons to use an alternative email address if they are Earthlink customers.

[ejevo]

Why I love Earthlink

I get Earthlink over TWC (same as RoadRunner) cable modem service. I've been an Earthlink user for years now.

- Earthlink is several dollars cheaper per month than RoadRunner is.
- Earthlink provides 80MB of storage for my personal web site. I haven't found another broadband provider in my area that offers that amount of storage w/o an increase in cost.
- Customer service is reasonably responsive.
- Outages have been rare.

[darkridedp]

Surely J.D. Powers is joking

I was an Earthlink customer since they were 10 people in
Pasadena back in the 90s. I stuck with them through their
growing pains, and recommended them to dozens of friends and
associates. Then they hosed the relationship during a simple
move. Their VoIP service never worked, and when I cancelled it,
my 6.0MBS line dropped to 384K. No matter what, they couldn't
get the line reprovisioned to a decent speed, and when they
gave up after 3 months of half-hearted trying, and more than 60
hours on the phone with tech support, they couldn't figure out
how to release the line so that I could get someone else to put
DSL on it. That went on for another 2 months until I finally had
Verizon pull another line to my house with a new number.

Fully 50% of my calls to tech support were transferred to a dead
extension, or cut off during the transfer. Their call-center
software routinely routes calls to the wrong CONTINENT, no
matter which choice you make on the menu.

Absolute morons who deserve to be out of business. Useless
customer support staff who don't understand English, and have
never heard of a Macintosh. "Aaaaaaple. That's the model, but
who makes it? (Actual quote!)

So sad how far they have fallen.

Their product used to be exemplary, but I'm so disgusted with
their lousy service and customer support I made sure that all 50
people I've referred over the years switchedt to someone else.

[joeldm]

That Was Almost Exactly My Experience With VOIP

I too referred dozens of people to Earthlink over the years. I
started with Mindspring here in Atlanta until it was bought or
merged with Earthlink.

Sounds like you were even more patient than I was. I agree, I am
so angry at how they allowed this once-great company to drop
into the toilet.

They deserve to go out of business.

JoeL

[joeldm]

My Experience With Mindspring/Earthlink

I was once one of Mindspring and then Earthlink's biggest
supporters. I was probably one of the first Mindspring 1,000
customers in Atlanta back when they were just down the street
in Midtown. They had awesome customer service. You always
got someone who cared about solving your problem ASAP.

Then when Mindspring became Earthlink, the service was still
very, very good. I remember when Bellsouth rolled out DSL in
the Atlanta market, Earthlink didn't have it as yet. So I switched
my connection, but kept my Mindspring.com email address
because Earthlink promised they'd be rolling it out soon.

The Bellsouth experience was terrible. The connection was
unreliable, fast when it was connected, but constantly
disconnecting and the techs, while trying to be helpful, just
didn't seem to know what they were doing. Finally, Earthlink
offered DSL and I switched back. The problems still existed, but
within a few days Earthlink sent a PERSON to my house who
checked the wiring and found that the DSL line had been
miswired by Bellsouth and he repaired it and for years after that
I was solid and generally happy. A few hiccups here and there,
but continued good customer service.

As time went on this changed. More and more I got people who
seemed to be working from a script. Yes, eventually I would get
to someone who would say, "Oh, it's THIS!" and the problem
would get solved, but when Earthlink moved its tech services
overseas it all went into the toilet. It has always seemed to me
that the overseas support staff has been afraid to "color outside
the lines" and be creative or take initiative in solving problems.
Perhaps they were poorly trained, perhaps they're strictly
controlled and fear losing their jobs if they go outside the script.
I don't know. As time has gone on they've gotten better, more
competent and easier to understand, but there is still a missing
element of initiative and creativity that has been the hallmark of
good US support.

If your problem was related to something YOU did wrong, full
cache, loose wire, miswired on your end, they seemed to be able
to follow the script and track it down. But more difficult
problems seem to get put into a loop of confusion. Eventually I
would get "elevated" to a US-based tech and often as not he'd
say something like, "well I'm not supposed to do this, but . . . ."
and the problem would get solved either by a service call or he'd
call someone over at Bellsouth directly (that he wasn't supposed
to maybe to "throw a switch")and the issue would get resolved.

But even alternative that is out the window now. Several months
ago I signed on for their Voice service and after literally more
than a dozen HOURS on the phone over three weeks, they
admitted defeat and told me they couldn't get it to work. Even
the disconnection was a nightmare. They just wouldn't let go of
the wire and we went through nearly a month of NO long
distance and days of NO phone service and numerous
interruptions in my DSL service.

Recently I had another issue and it was simple enough. I don't
call about loose wires or user issues, I know how to service
computers and networks, but they don't know that of course, so
I patiently endured the walk down the Valley of Tech Support
Hell. I suspected it was either the modem or external wiring, but
a second and then third tech had me resetting the modem & etc,
ignoring the previous tech's efforts. Finally they "elevated" the
issue and promised a US-based tech would call within "24-48
hours". That never happened. I finally got a call from another
overseas tech nearly a week later after I had called in again twice
and tried numerous times to access support to ask for a call via
their chat. It never worked, they'd take forever to get on then I'd
get cut off midsentence.

And it wasn't the slow connection at fault. At the same time I
had long, detailed conversations with Bellsouth chat reps about
switching that didn't get disconnected over the same
connection.

Finally I had had enough, after over a decade of service with
Mindspring/Earthlink, I cancelled my service with them. I was
sorry to go, but Earthlink is simply not the company it once was.
And it's not just me saying this. Every Earthlink customer I know
says the same thing, "I HATE to call tech support because they're
not helpful/knowledgeable!"

If your best customers hate the people charged with helping
them when they're having problems with your service, you're in
trouble no matter what JD Powers says. I can't imagine how they
came to this conclusion, no one asked me, that's for sure!

That layoff is like the canary in the mineshaft. I know a vendor to
Earthlink who says the management there is in disarray and he
predicts they'll close their doors eventually because they just
can't get their act together.

A great company brought down by what, poor management? Was
it the Congress that ruled in favors of the Telecoms against the
2nd parties like Earthlink? Was it related court rulings? I don't
know, but what I do know is that for whatever reason, money,
stock price, whatever, Earthlink stopped caring about the only
people that matter: their customers.

BTW, thus far Bellsouth tech support has been good. It's US-
based, easy to work with and found the solution to the original
problem quickly and sent a tech out to fix it. Isn't that ironic?

And a word about overseas support. I don't like that US jobs are
being sent overseas with tax breaks to line the pockets of the
owners without regard to how good the service is, but really, as
a customer, if the service was good I really wouldn't care. God
bless 'em, people in Bangalore need jobs too, but if they can't
do it as well as the US techs can, then give it back to Americans,
even Asian Americans! I don't care, just give me good tech
support.

Goodbye Earthink!
Joel Markwell
Atlanta, GA