Review of DSL EXTREMEAll reviews of |  about |
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When I moved here, my only cable option was San Bruno Town Cable, which had horrible reviews for Internet connection. I eventually picked DSLExtreme over PacBell based on reviews here and my feeling I would get better service from a smaller ISP than from the big phone company. I was right. My initial connection took a couple of weeks to complete and was without problems. In the years I've been a customer, I've had a handful of outages; once due to a failing LinkSys router, resolved by me buying a new router (i.e. it was my fault, which DSLExtreme helped me diagnose); once due to a failing modem, replaced quickly by DSLExtreme; and a few times by network maintenance. I've never been down more than a day or so; and at all other times my service has been rock solid at all times of the day or night. I used to play a lot of Tribes online and was always happy with ping and stability. The few times I've called in to DSLExtreme I've had to wait maybe 10-15 minutes on hold, which a) seems like a long time when you're on hold; but b) really isn't that long. I've always had a good experience talking with their techs. I've had followup phone calls and emails and am all-in-all very happy with their tech support. I've recommended DSLExtreme to friends and family and they all have had good experiences. I put my 80 year old mother on the DSLExtreme basic plan to upgrade her from dial up. I feel good because her service "just works" with no problems I have to help with. I called DSLExtreme sales a few years ago to inquire about 3Mb service in my area. At that time I didn't qualify, but the sales woman suggested I switch my current plan around a bit and she saved me a couple of bucks a month, which was appreciated. I was just able to upgrade from 1.5/384 to 3.0/512, made one call to get things configured correctly and was using the faster speed within an hour or so of placing the order, and a day later was getting 2.5/484. A few days later, on my official activation day, I had one glitch which was resolved in a 5-minute support call. I'm sitting here smiling at my new 285 kB/s download in progress. I am very happy with DSLExtreme. Followup comments:
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My email has not been stable since the move to gmail. People don't receive my attachments. For a while, I couldn't send email at all. And gmail's "never die" email is a breach in itself. IMHO, we customers were "sold out" and our privacy (such as it was) was the ante. I don't care how fast the service is, if it compromises my privacy via email...it is not what I signed up for. Followup comments:
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Then bills started coming. 3 months of service for $182 with their additional fees. No modem, just the contract. I called to inform them that I have not had internet access. They were unwavering because they feel that the contract that I accepted online is bulletproof. I even said I would cancel my other internet provider and use their service under contract if they show me how to get online and start my fees from that day. They were unwilling to make any adjustments and cancelled my service and indicated that I was in breach of contract and now owe the $182 plus $250 early termination fee (thought a big Italian guy was going to jump through the phone and start breaking stuff at my house with a tire iron until I paid). I think that the government confiscated $500 million dollars from Enzyte for the same exact business practices. I wonder how long dslextreme is going to conduct these types of practices until it bites them in the butt... I am disappointed that I signed up with dslextreme solely on Leo Laporte's (KFI AM640 tech guy) recommendation and this is the service they provide. I am more disappointed at myself for not checking into the reviews about this company because every online forum has at least 25% negative feedback for this company. Even if I was wrong (which I am not because they did not indicate that my service was working, I needed my own modem because I did not specifically request one from them and did not get installation or activation instructions) they should have started my fees from the day they gave me the information to activate and use my service. I think by doing this, they not only lose my business but they damage the respect & credibility that I had for Leo Laporte's product recommendations, as well. Followup comments:
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One caveat is you might lost the ability to have port 25 unblocked and also lose the DSLX firewall service. I can live with those issues though the firewall would certainly be very nice to have back. See my Line Monitor here: »/testhistory?v···rt=z&p=7 (the results are usually on pg. 7) ==================================================== Just upgraded my service from 3000/768 to a new tier offered in my service area and am thrilled with the 7100/768 PPPoE. Decided to go ahead because it's about $8/mo cheaper and , well almost 3x faster downstream. The swap went super smoothly and was an easy switch with my router for PPPoE vs. a Static IP. Testing around 6400-6500/730bps so that is great as far as we are concerned out here where the sewer meets the sea... Also they maintain an ACTIVE presence on the DSLExtreme forum here on Broadband/DSL Reports. Even George the GM is there offering help along side DSLX_Zak and others...heck, they folks are so thoughtful they even announce when they are going to be away for a few days... I can only add that there have been a few issues that have arisen over the years and each time the tech support was beyond helpful. Always friendly and professional, but not overly officious (as in snotty like you might get with Earthlink/Verizon/Comcrap/etc...) I seriously have no reservations with recommending DSLExtreme to folks in SoCal or anywhere else. Thanks for the years of solid reliable service!! Followup comments:
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I placed an order to move from Speakeasy on 9:30 am on a Monday. The telco moved the loop over on Thursday morning at about 8:30, with service provided by my old ISP until that point. On Friday morning at 7:45, the DSLX service was up. Total time elapsed between order and traffic: less than four days, with only one day of outage. Self-install was no big deal, since I had already wired up the house. Instead of taking the DSL modem from DSLX, I started using a secondhand 2wire. It's a 1000SW, which works fine, although it is not on the DSLX supported modem list. After turn-up, I noticed that my DSL modem (a 2wire device) was reporting a sync of 2496 kbps, which is about 500 kbps short of the target line. I wrote an e-mail to DSLX support, and a tech called me in an hour. He worked with AT&T to get the cap lifted, and 10 minutes later (!) I reset the DSL modem and it synced at 3008 kbps. Tech support even called back to make sure the cap was lifted. They clearly understood the issue, were easy to get a hold of, and resolved the issue promptly. With the cap gone, I've been getting ~2550 kbps / 450 kbps net throughput as measured by a variety of speed testers. Service for the initial few days has been solid, with the DSL modem reporting only a few seconds of downtime. My only service complaint is that DSLX does not run an NTP server, so I needed to configure the NTP pool (see www.pool.ntp.org) rather than use a low-latency NTP server in the ISP's POP. I've read a bit about the renewal dance, and it's frustrating, but I guess that's part of the price you pay for value. Followup comments:
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first off I had a verizon DSL line since the late 80's till 2007 when i decided to make the switch because DSLExtreme was offering 2x-3x the speeds. I made sure that online i qualified but took it one step farther and called their support to run a check on my line to verify as much as i can with their techs that i can get the 6000 speed that it shows i qualify for, well they said i could and it would be no problem. This is where all the problems start 6-13-2007... after getting my service switched over i got an install date and my service is switched over. now after the new service activation date i call DSLExtreme to find out why my service does not work and they pretty much tell me there is no way i can get 6000 so i will have to be downgraded, they said that my only option is to go to the 3000 plan so since that is my only option i agreed. now after another week i finally got service but not at 3000 and they said that it was because of my westell 2200 modem so i opted to order their recommended dlink modem from them. i got the modem a few days later and it really did not increase the speeds much so i just lived with the 2000-2600 speeds i was getting at the time. a few months later (october 2007) i started getting quite a bit of frame errors so i call for support, the tier 2 tech pretty much tells me that my SNR is too low (which i remember at something like 6.5) and that there is nothing really that he can do so he opted to rebuild the circuit. that did help and was able to get the SNR over 7. now here we are today my modem does not stay in sync and my frame errors are pretty much 1/3 to 1/2 of the transmitted frames. so i called DSLExtreme and opened a ticket, they pretty much said that i am now beyond the 3000 range and will have to be downgraded again to the 1500. this is now unacceptable, and back where i started and if they have "Really" tested the line then it would have shown that i could have not gotten the 6000 or even the 3000 and i would have never switched in the first place. also being that i could not get any reasonable service from DSLExtreme they will not let you out of the contract without paying fees and they just blame it on the line vendor which is COVAD, they say they don't guarantee speeds but when you talk with the techs they don't tell you anything to that effect. also if you are in a verizon area they will not tell you but they will switch you over to COVAD which is a joke in its self. the last COVAD tech that came to my site to trouble shoot the problems came in a personal mini van then brought 2 of his personal DSL routers and plugged them into the line and verified the problems that i had. does this really seem like a professonal company or one that knows what they are doing? anyone who reads this really needs to Think Twice before switching to DSLExtreme, i sure will spread the word to all my freinds and family and anyone else out there who cares about customer service.. Thanks James Followup comments:
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I have been with DSL Extreme for two months. The sales process was very easy. I called them just to get answers to a few questions and ended up doing the order in 5 minutes. Kit arrives in the mail the next week and I was live 7 business days after ordering. Never had any outages while I was online. Speeds are quite good... advertised as down- 384-1500 up- 128-384 I get... 1211 down/212 up. PPPoE service. $26.95/month on a 1yr contract.. with taxes, it works out to $29/month. Free modem, filters, cables....only a $13 s/h fee. The free self install was a piece of cake. Only had to contact Customer Service once. 9 minute hold time with a support person in SOCAL, not INDIA! They resolved my issed in just a few minutes.... I game A LOT, and I always get great ping time with this DSL service. The fact that they have their own game servers is a nice touch, especially with 8ms pings! Here is a list of what they are currently hosting: Game IP Port Players Map Game IP Port Players Map Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat 66.159.234.202 23000 0/40 Enemy Territory 66.159.203.114 27965 0/32 Hosted Counter Strike 1.6 66.159.234.195 27015 Medal of Honor: Spear Head 66.159.203.114 12205 Quake 3 66.159.203.114 27960 My speeds are quite adequate, but they have several faster tempting packages that you can always upgrade to with no penalty. You can opt for auto credit card billing, recieve an online montly statement, or get a paper bill in the mail each month at no extra charge. Overall, I am a very happy customer. UPDATE (6/3/08): Four years latter and I am still with them, on the same line. Problems have happened from time to time but their tech support is AWESOME! These folks are local, right here in SoCal and you can actually have an technical conversation with them. I am happy with my speeds and the latency is very low. I can ping game server located in Downtown LA as fast as 8ms! The only complaint I have with them is with their Billing and Accounting department. The few times I have had to of contacted them about an issue, they seemed to screw it up. I am on month-month plan now as I may be moving in the near future, but I only pay $4 more per month as compared to the contract price. UPDATE (1/5/09): Back in July I moved my DSL Extreme service. The downtime while switching connection was exactly what they said it was going to be (5-7 days). After that I plugged in the exact same modem and router from my old place and bam, I was online! I was kinda shocked that nothing went wrong or that there were no problems with the internal phone wiring in the new place. But it all worked like clockwork and was a very good experience. 4.5 years with DSL Extreme and very happy! Followup comments:
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My package is the $59.95 3000-6000/512-768, with Static IPs. I test around 5100 down, 640 up on average, and I'm happy with those results. I run a small dedicated game server, and this is plenty adequate for that purpose. I've recommended this ISP to my friends, and the ones who've switched have shared in my good experience with them. Followup comments:
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3/6/06 - Signed up for DSLx on 3/6, did not receive any email or communication for 10 days. Called DSLx on 3/16, customer service said there was a hiccup with AT&T (SBC), they did not recognize my line? They ran a quick test, verified the line and I got my install date 4 days later. I think they could have contacted me by email or voice, to let me know of the issue, but it was resolved quickly and my service was up 4 days later. Sp far so good, on my 6000/768 plan, I am getting about 5100/640 and am about 2000' from the CO. I have 8 Static IP's with this service, I got one IP initially, additional IP's were easy to setup, 7 of the 8 IP's on contiguous. Will continue to monitor. Followup comments:
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DSL EXTREME
(31)
(43)
Yucaipa,San Bernardino,CA
$41 per month (12 month contract)
"none"
"customer service/techs suffer from anal-cranium insertion"
"DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME (AND MONEY) WITH THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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about 1 days
AT&T
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