May 28, 2003
Over three years ago, we signed up for home DSL via Speakeasy, a Seattle-based ISP that remarkets Covad DSL and adds its own ISP services to the package. Our signup agreement included a free Flowpoint router and a waiver of installation charges in exchange for agreeing to continue the service for at least a year. For this, we got 768/384 mbps DSL connectivity for a bit over $80 a month. Over time, the charges have crept up to over $90 a month. We’ve had a bearable number of service glitches and interruptions, all of which have been resolved fairly quickly; the worst lasted a day or two.
This past April 23rd, at around 11 PM, our Speakeasy DSL service stopped working. I phoned their customer service number. After some remote testing, and some more discussion the following morning, they told me they were sending a repairman from Covad to look at the physical line. The earliest they could schedule a visit for was the following Monday, April 28. We said fine.
The repairman arrived on time as promised, fussed about with the wires that lead into our house, tested various things, went back to his van a couple of times, and ultimately announced that he’d fixed the problem. “That old router was dead,” he said. “They do wear out. I’ve just swapped in a new one; you should be good to go.” “Great!” we said.
A month later, we took a long look at our various broadband options, and regretfully concluded that although Speakeasy offered some things we like, such as a fixed IP address, the lower cost of Time Warner cable-modem connectivity ($44.95 a month) and the higher speed (over 2000 mbps) was too good to pass up. So this past Saturday, May 24th, we called Speakeasy to cancel our DSL service. “You’re paid up until June 2,” said the Speakeasy rep. “So your service will continue until then, and there should be no further charges.”
Now, in this morning’s email, I have an invoice from Speakeasy for $428.24: $199 for “technician dispatch,” $199 for “equipment,” plus sales tax.
I’ve just been on the phone to Speakeasy’s customer service, where a fellow who identifies himself only as “Dave” (“We don’t give last names,” he said) has assured me that these charges are legitimate and I should read my service agreement and there’s certainly nothing he can do about it. Hello?
Attentive readers will immediately find themselves asking the obvious questions.
Did Speakeasy’s phone representative, after performing his various remote tests on the line, say “We can send out a Covad rep, but it will cost you almost $200?” Why, no. He did not. Did he say “We’re sending out a Covad rep?” Why, yes. That’s what he said.
Did Covad’s repair guy, after puttering about with cables and testers, say “It’s the router, and it’ll cost about $200 to replace?” He did not. Did he, indeed, even say “It’s the router; would you like it replaced?” He did not. Did he say “I’ve swapped out the router; you’re all fine now?” Why yes. That’s what he said.
(Remember, the router was provided by Speakeasy in the first place. It didn’t seem surprising that they should accomplish the repair by swapping out their own hardware.)
Naturally, I asked to speak to “Dave’s” supervisor, and was transferred to an answering machine, where I left a message saying that I have a billing dispute and would appreciate being called back.
We’ll see what they say. But I have no intention of paying this. Hitting customers with unannounced charges like this is poor practice at any time. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that Speakeasy means to stick it to me now that they no longer have any interest in keeping me a happy customer.
They can have their $200 router back. I’ll even put the stamps on the box. But I’m not paying for goods and services I didn’t agree to buy. And, to any of you who currently use Speakeasy or are considering their services: caveat emptor. [11:13 AM]
Horror stories like this -- about DSL, Cable, and what-have-you, in every place I've lived -- have kept me on a dial-up connection.
I expect I'll still be connecting at 56k when everyone has symmyetrical direct-to-brain gigabps sub-ether connections.
FWIW, I use Speakeasy and have never had a problem with their service or billing. Wait, I take that back; their credit-card auto-pay service keeps forgetting about my Amex card. I blame Safari, though, since this doesn't happen when I use IE for Windows (heh).
My sympathies, Patrick--dealing with communcations service providers is not fun and most of the ISPs who still offer DSL service are pretty desperate. The company may be willing to deal; if they are not, try writing letters to the FCC and your congresspeople.
All the DSL ISPs that do not own their own transmission facilities--which is to say all the DSL firms that aren't local telcos or don't have agreements with them--are financially desperate and greedy, because the gummint is allowing the local telcos to eat their lunch. Panix left the residential DSL business for exactly that reason. On top of which the FCC has stopped regulating personal telecomm and awful "contracts" abound. It is entirely possible that, somewhere in the tens of pages of fine print Speakeasy asked you to sign you have "agreed" to such a thing--whether a court would enforce such an "agreement" is another question entirely; much consumer "contract" boilerplate is in fact not legal and therefore not enforceable.
Let me point out, however, that Time-Warner's large quoted bandwith assumes that no-one else is using the line or any other part of their network--if you review their "contract", I think you will find that they do not commit to providing any actual bandwidth (last time I looked, this was also true of some residential DSL "contracts.") The nature of internet traffic means that there are unpredictable large peaks in traffic, which means that sometimes it's going to be damn slow.
Give us back our FCC!
I'm just surprised that Covad is still in business. Back years ago, when Northpoint died, my DSL provider switched me over to Covad; but they looked so shaky then that I moved to RoadRunner as soon as possible to avoid another big outage.
It looks to me like Speakeasy is engaging in that creep to fraudulence that happens when businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Are there no small business DSL providers?
That's my usual tactic with DSL -- find the small to medium business provider who also does a bit of residential because why turn down money? -- but I am getting the awful feeling that this might not be possible in the States.
I say 'usual' because I'm with uniserve, and uniserve is a residential ISP at least as much as they're a small business provider, but I've been pleased with them so far.
There are forty five DSL providers for the Greater Toronto area listed at torontonian.com
There's something to be said for this regulation stuff.
Anybody out there with strong recommendations and good cause for internet service providers, web hosting services, cell phone services and especially e-mail services? Not good enough, but good?
Seems most people tell me how hopeful they are about their next provider not how happy they are about their current service.
Yikes. That does sound frightful. We're on cable-modem with attbi (now becoming comcast) and with the cost of the digital cable TV comes to about $90/month.
Their service has been needed only once, to replace the initial modem they gave me. It's been fine since then (knock wood).
Patrick, have you already decided to go with Time Warner? 'Cause we've been very happy with the DSL service (Covad) from Net Access Corp. They're an ISP based in Parsippany, and most of their clients are small businesses, but they do offer residential service. (Or did when we signed up in Oct. 2000.) For some reviews, check dslreports.com. Or hey, go right to the nac.net reviews here: http://www.dslreports.com/comments/43 . We pay $80/month, fixed IP, 1.54 down/384 up, but real-world speeds more like 1.36 down/360 up. (I don't work for them, really. I'm just glad they're still in business. And not Big Guys.)
My one experience with cable modems was when I lived in Iowa for a couple years. It was run by the local city utilities, and it was cheap, problem free, and ran lickity-split no matter what time of day or night or what I was doing with it. The whole state had fiberoptics running through it, in an attempt to lure the not yet crashed dotcom industry there.
Not that this would justify moving back there, of course, but it was pleasant enuf at the time.
Graydon, all ISPs in the USA are subject to the line-owner "tax." One can get good service with a small business DSL/Internet service, but they are much more expensive than residential services. One can, however, get an actual committment to timely repair of outages and a minimum committed bandwidth the provider's network.
Feh! I say again, feh! Sounds like it's efinately Tome For A Change.
Before you sign up with anybody, be sure to read the fine print. Yah, you'll probably have to cut 'n paste it into a word processor so you can read it. I'm in Maryland, so all those nasty little user agreements are legal and enforcable, including the clause that lets them change it at will without notice.
When I decided to get broadband, I read the agreements for both Verizon and Comcast. Both were unacceptable. Both basically say that if you do anything that they don't like, they'll cut off your service and send you a bill for the complete year's service.
I eventually signed up with a small local ISP who resells Verizon DSL. Costs $5/month extra, and in return I get a user agreement that translates as "don't be a jerk". Worth it for the peace of mind.
I've had one problem that took several days to fix, but I'm outside of the official range of DSL -- Verizon spent some serious time making it work, because it would let them expand their coverage area.
Anyway, you might also investigate low-end "business DSL". My understanding is that the ISPs are a lot more laid back with business customers. 2 - 3 times the price, though.
Again, best of luck!
Thanks, Randolph.
The CRTC -- 'Canadain Radio and Telecommunications Commission' -- requires the guys who own the lines to charge the same rates to themselves as they do to people leasing lines for resale; that's why there's Bell Nexxia and Bell Sympatico (bandwidth provider and ISP, respectively) as distinct corporate entities.
I'm paying $62 CDN/month (that's with tax) for 3.0 Mbps ADSL; in practice, 350 kB/s down, 80 kB/s up. No setup fees, five email addresses, up to five distinct network visible IP's if I can think of a use for them, 15 MB of web hosting, all pretty typical. Static IPs can be had, but I don't have the extra cost to hand -- somewhere between $5 and $10.
The commercial version with many more mailboxes and two static IPs costs a bit over twice that, $130 CDN/month.
I'm in favour of the CRTC, oddly enough.
I need someone who knows more consumer law than I do. Speakeasy said they'd fix the problem. They came and replaced some equipment. At no point did they ever mention additional charges. Can they do this?
Getting socked for $400 isn't precisely catastrophic for us, but it hurts.
You need to find out exactly what Speakeasy is claiming. Their TOS says that they will charge you the $199 fees for repairs to "user modified" or non-Speakeasy provided equipment.
There is also a catch-all bit in the TOS along the lines of "Other charges may apply at vendor discretion". But if they are claiming this is vendor discretion, they would almost certainly needed to have mentioned these charges in advance. Otherwise what is to stop them from (for example) coming out to make minor repairs and then billing you for $2,000? Hey, it's "vendor discretion", right?
So find out if they're claiming you modified their equipment or that the router isn't "Speakeasy provided". If they charged you $199 for it, did you get to keep it? If not, what was the $199 for?
In the alternative case, I can't imagine they can tack on charges at "vendor discretion" without getting your approval before-hand!
Once you know what provision of the TOS they are charging you under, threaten to contact the BBB. Do so. Threaten to sue if that doesn't accomplish anything. If you aren't willing to sue, you may have to pay up to avoid having your credit bashed.
Would contacting Covad rather than Speakeasy be useful?
-David
I've had speakeasy service for several years now, and that does not sound like the company that I have dealt with.
Speakeasy had been the only consumer broadband provider I've ever dealt with that had a clue. They have been able to answer questions, troubleshoot my errors, and generally been reachable.
Their CEO has even included his email (not apparently an alias) in messages, from last October:
We are working continually to improve your service experience with us. We absolutely value your business, and hope that you will take the time to provide some feedback on how we're doing.Thank you!
Michael Apgar
President/CEO
Speakeasy
mda@speakeasy.net
I'd be interested to see what he has to say about this.
eric
Several points to respond to here.
Randolph, I know that quoted bandwidth is often much higher than bandwidth in practice, but I've now tested our cable-modem connection with a couple of the public "speed tester" utilities, and by golly, we're getting better than 2000 mbps down. At peak times, too.
And it feels like that. Big downloads are quick. Streaming multimedia streams smoothly. I know, it could all go south in an instant. After all, Nielsen Hayden's Law is "Computers Don't Work."
Clark Myers: For web hosting, I've been happy with Blogomania. As for stable, reliable, cluefully-maintained email, well, I will give up my Panix account when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. I've been pnh@panix.com for over ten years. If you don't need dialup, a full-featured Panix account is $10/month or $100/year.
David Bilek, for what it's worth, no, we didn't "modify" any of their "equipment."
Eric, yeah, that was my impression of Speakeasy for a long time.
I signed up with Speakeasy in 2001, after my previous DSL provider declared bankruptcy.
At the time, they *were* a small business and residential DSL provider and considerably better at it than large competitors such as PacBell, Earthlink, and Qwest. Their service has always been pricey compared to conglommerate DSL providers, but having Covad as the line supplier actually made them one up on companies who were using PacBell on the West Coast. In 2001, they processed my order and got my DSL line up and running on two weeks notice. Most ISPs other than PacBell, but dependent upon PacBell, were taking six weeks to two months.
In the past few months, I've been noticing symptoms of enterprise expansion and decline in service at Speakeasy that mirror the experience I had with Slipnet. Slipnet was one of the first commercial ISPs in the country. It started up as a SLIP/PPP provider in 1990 and was staffed by young techno-geeks for about 10 years. In 1999 Slipnet was sold to first one, then another, large conglommerate. The local tech geeks in the company lost control of the hardware and the business policies. The company went bankrupt in 2001, selling its remaining assets to Earthlink.
Speakeasy has been in a cycle of corporate expansion, recently, that looks to me like the drive that turned Slipnet into FirstWorld and eventually drove it out of business.
If they didn't tell you about the charges and you've cancelled the service, anyway, you certainly shouldn't have to pay for the Covad technician and new router. If there are still humans left in the accounting department, you should be able to get one of them to acknowledge this and cancel the bill. (I'd try calling again and repeating the story to another account rep. They may be in the process of replacing the humans with corporate drones, but some of the original tech geek core may still be around.)
"After all, Nielsen Hayden's Law is 'Computers Don't Work.'" As long as you keep that in mind, you'll be fine.
My background is telecomm, and I remember when old Western Union would put six first-generation processors--germanium transistors--together, surround them with a ring of microprocessors, and the system--not the old clunkers it was built from--have a few hours of outage a *year*.
Reliability in computer systems is possible.
Teresa, cell phone companies do it all the time; my guess is the replacement extended your service agrement. I have doubts about the legality of doing that without notifying the customer, though. The FCC and your state PUC are the agencies to start with, but they may not have authority; internet services aren't much regulated. If they don't want to act, go to the general consumer protection agencies. If you make enough noise Speakeasy/Covad is likely to back off.
No useful suggestions but I am curious.(thanks too for the trade references)
I gather the Flowpoint Router was your property
(NB not free in the technical and legal sense but rather included at no extra cost - when somebody offers you something free take 2, free means no obligation)
and was installed outside the building but on your side of the phone lines? Just guessing then that as a router it functioned to distribute service across several internal extensions of the same phone line?
I suspect the charges are reasonable in the sense of cost of a man and a truck in NYNY and likely reasonable for the router depending on what was installed where to do what - on the other hand any obligation to pay smacks of an adhesion contract with quite clearly no meeting of the minds no explanation and no agreement - no sign off on the installation? No advance explanation of any distinction between their owned equipment for which they were fully responsible, and your owned equipment for which you might have been held responsible by agreement but not by imposition? That is you couldn't have been expected to know whether the problem was their equipment or yours when you called? Speakeasy sent Covad to fix your personally owned equipment did they? And Covad went ahead and swapped out your equipment not Speakeasy's? Then Covad billed Speakeasy and Speakeasy likely marked it up and passed it on? Does sound excessive. Just asking?
Personally I am just now fuming at Comcast on the cable modem issue. As a practical matter I couldn't get their full subscriber agreement without subscribing and then discovering their literature is dated. I use a laptop with 1 built in NIC and a second NIC in the docking station - turns out I can either pay extra for service to a second computer based on the second NIC or reconfigure the account every time I switch mode - or maybe go USB instead of NIC conceivably Firewire to avoid the ID or hide an intranet behind my own proxy to show Comcast one machine only, one NIC at all times? -
It is the money, not the principle, but I do wish I could find out these things in advance.
2000 mbps -- two thousand mega bits per second?
Two gigabit ethernet DSL?
If that's really what you've got, I'm envious. :)
FWIW, we've been on cable modem from the first day it was available in our location in the boonies. DSL was never an option, and still isn't available wherre we live, and a T1 line could have been hooked into a source line a quarter mile from our house, but would have cost about a hundred grand to establish, followed by huge monthly fees.
After five or six years we've been suffering from acquisition creep, and it's now a Comcast-owned service, but it's worked almost all the time. Our largest cause of outages has been loss of the local power grid (which is why we're getting a real generator, as insurance that will keep the power on for our area nonstop for the next ten years). There was one time when a construction crew cut the cable by mistake, a couple of miles "upstream" from us. Overall, we're very happy with the service.
I hope your experience will continue ang"tive on your cable. And fie on Speakeasy!
Lenny, via the discussion boards at dslrports.com, I've identified a Speakeasy staffer whose job description evidently includes monitoring those boards for Speakeasy horror stories and trying to resolve them. This gives me some hope. I've emailed her my story and I hope to hear back from her.
Randolph: "Reliability in computer systems is possible." Take it up with Bruce Schneier. Your statement's truth depends entirely on what value you assign to the word "reliability", which brings us directly back to Nielsen Hayden's Law. The point of which is that your experience of using computers is highly dependent on how sensibly you manage your expectations of them.
Clark Myers raises a bunch of points:
"I gather the Flowpoint Router was your property"
Well, it was provided by Speakeasy as part of setting up our connection in the first place.
"and was installed outside the building but on your side of the phone lines? Just guessing then that as a router it functioned to distribute service across several internal extensions of the same phone line?"
No, it's a modem-like beige box that sat at a corner of my desk. It's the phone company's switch box that's outside; a DSL-connection-specific line runs from that switch box to a small beige termination point in our bedroom window's frame, from which emerged Ethernet cable leading to the Flowpoint router. We then ran another Ethernet cable from the Flowpoint to our wireless router, which in turn connected to the various computers inside the house.
"I suspect the charges are reasonable in the sense of cost of a man and a truck in NYNY and likely reasonable for the router depending on what was installed where to do what - on the other hand any obligation to pay smacks of an adhesion contract with quite clearly no meeting of the minds no explanation and no agreement - no sign off on the installation? No advance explanation of any distinction between their owned equipment for which they were fully responsible, and your owned equipment for which you might have been held responsible by agreement but not by imposition? That is you couldn't have been expected to know whether the problem was their equipment or yours when you called? Speakeasy sent Covad to fix your personally owned equipment did they? And Covad went ahead and swapped out your equipment not Speakeasy's? Then Covad billed Speakeasy and Speakeasy likely marked it up and passed it on?"
Yeah, that's all pretty much the case.
"Personally I am just now fuming at Comcast on the cable modem issue. As a practical matter I couldn't get their full subscriber agreement without subscribing and then discovering their literature is dated. I use a laptop with 1 built in NIC and a second NIC in the docking station - turns out I can either pay extra for service to a second computer based on the second NIC or reconfigure the account every time I switch mode - or maybe go USB instead of NIC conceivably Firewire to avoid the ID or hide an intranet behind my own proxy to show Comcast one machine only, one NIC at all times?"
All this fussing over how many cards or computers are "hooked up" to a cable modem seems pretty silly. Time Warner no doubt has many flaws and odious policies, but I'll credit them with this: their attitude toward users who want to plug the cable modem into a router and stick a pile of computers behind that router is "fine, just don't ask us for support making it work." Seems reasonable to me.
Graydon: kbps, I'm afraid. That would be nice, though.
You probably remember that it was a combination of Speakeasy and Covad that put me through months of frustration when I was trying to get DSL installed a couple years ago. Both companies were far more interested in having someone else in the horrible tangled loop solve my problems; at no point did it seem like anyone at Speakeasy was paying the least attention to the specifics of the problem, and eventually it was a Verizon engineer who determined what I should have been told at the start: that it was impossible to install DSL with my phone line. I heard nothing further from Speakeasy except one last cheeky billing attempt.
Anyway. This isn't an "I told you so"; I'm just posting this because a few other folks have said they've had no problem with Speakeasy. My experience was so negative I'd never consider using them, and have steered people away from them. I'm beginning to wonder whether Speakeasy is a good provider so long as there's no serious trouble.
For performance, I found cable far superior to DSL. I recently had to call a Comcast tech out when I changed out computers; no charge. Cool.
But have you heard of MyZones?
It's a broadband add-on for $16/mo, they give ya 30 days free and, whether you're both surfing together at home, or splitting costs/access with a neighbor, sounds like a good deal.
Hope you get your complaint resolved; it sure sounds fishy that he'd supply parts at a cost without giving you the option to refuse, no matter if the service call charge is legit. It's a sloppy way to do business, imo.
And, hey, let us know the outcome, wouldja?
"The point of which is that your experience of using computers is highly dependent on how sensibly you manage your expectations of them."
But isn't that true of everything in life?
The common expectation of computers, though, seems to be of frequent major failures, weekly at least. And lots of time spent feeling stoopid. But compare it with the experience of the US voice telephone network. In the USA, people get upset if their wireline telephone fails once a year. And this is a reasonable expectation. But the telephone network has, over the years, become a computer network; there's very little that makes the computer hardware in the telephone network superior to what's on your desktop--it's a bit more reliable, that's all. But in the design of the network and software, it's another world.
And that is why I hate Microsoft, or at least one of the big reasons.
sorry, have not read all the comments but felt impelled to mention my experience with T-W Cable/DSL. for 2 1/2 years,intermittantly, we attempted to get DSL through them. we lived in williamsburg and were assured that our neighborhood was viable and that "the software was in the mail", etc. we finally gave up, and they finally set up. although the initial price quoted was $34.95, we started recieving charges for $79.95 a month for a service we never recieved. when questioned, the "service representatives" explained that by asking for this service, we had agreed to pay for it. when asked to explain how we could be held responsible for a service agreement we never saw or were informed of, they said it was in the contract. needless to say, this was a horrible ordeal that had my phone bill unpaid, because, yes, even though they are separate companies, they happen to bill on the same piece of paper...it took eight months to sort out, and yes folks, i never had the service. i recommend sandbenders...
file a complaint with the Washington Attorney General Cyber Consumer Resource Center. You can do it online and they have an excellent reputation for getting results. Here's the address:
http://www.wa.gov/ago/consumer/forms/
rhc
Contact Mike Apgar directly, that's what I say.
It's not that big a company. Call him up. If you can't get through the gatekeepers, well, he lives in Seattle, he's probably even in the book.
Covad lives?
My employer's previous ISP cited the death of Covad as their excuse for abruptly discontinuing service a couple of months ago.
Your complaint is small potatoes. You are 100% right. I do not care what your contract says.
Do not deal with underlings. Always ask for the manager then tell him that you are very very very unhappy with how you have been treated. Then ask this question: "Do you have the authority to completely resolve this problem?" If he/she does not have the authority, go to his/her boss and do the same thing. Do not be sweet and nice and compliant, but don't be NY rude either.
95% of the time I have been unsuccessful with this technique. I was lied to by a loan officer with Wells Fargo. They had gotten an application fee and appraisal fee out of me and 2 levels of managers told me that I would not get the appraisal fee back. The 3rd level manager called his secretary and while I was on hold told her to cut me a check. He was in his car on the way to the airport when I had this conversation. I got the check 3 days later.
I worked in Home Depot part time after I retired. I have seen people complain enough to get some outrageous compensation ($5,000+)for problems that Home Depot caused. The manager would always low ball the payment/repayment then work on up from there depending on how much the customer complained. Lord help him if the customer went to the district manager. He would do anything to keep that from happening.
I sued, in small claims court (very easy to do), a local tire and battery place here for close to $2,000 for work they did on my car that I had to have another place fix. The president of the company cut me a big check because he didn't want to have to face a judge (and I was going to call the TV news stations as well) and explain the fraudulent way his company operated in my case. It took 5 months.
I would rather have the Sopranos available to help me with things like these, but they are just fictional characters. I don't live in Kansas City anymore so contacting people I know there would be difficult for me now.
Just stick to your guns and be persistent. Never threaten anyone with anything you are not prepared to do.
LOL, I meant 95% of the time I was SUCCESSFUL with this technique.
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
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