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Mon 30 Jun, 2003 08:08 pm
Well, I finally dumped Time Warner Southern California cable high speed as being a complete sham.
1. For several years I noticed most of the time the speed was just as slow and sometimes slower on some servers. Navigating had very little advantage unless there was some visual image with very high resolution.
2. The movies on the short film and preview sites often cut off, the sound was poor and the image no larger than a postage stamp.
3. The stream music had a lot of background noise which I'm told is caused by the analog signals still travelling through the same cable.
4. Downloading was about the only advantage except about 20% of downloads ended up being corrupted even with all other programs being shut down. I now order the CDRoms, so why bother with high speed at all.
5. RoadRunner had raised my rate when all the other services had lowered rates.
6. They have oversold space on their servers especially when the commercial use during the week is using up so much bandwidth. Cable is subject to conjestion despite how they lie about it.
7. I dumped RoadRunner about two months ago and was going to install Earthlink dial-up which at the business was virtually as fast navigating as my home cable connection. They had a special of $29.95 per month with no installation charge for the first six months but, of course, it turned out they were using Time Warner as the cable connection.
8. The installer came out from Time Warner and I had told them that this time was going to be zero tolerance for their partronizing and downright lying about their service. The installer went thoroughly over my cable connection and, gee isn't this a coincidence, discovered some stupid technician had clumsily splice the cable at the outside box! He complete rewired me, immediately improving my TV picture (I had also called and complained about that many times and they would do something to get rid of some of the picture noise but never found the splice at the box).
9. My zero tolerance was overloaded when I tried to log on this morning. Nothing, just a "Can't find server" error message and no E mail download.
I called Earthlink who told me to call Time Warner. I got some woman who apparantly had mistaked a Brillo pad for a tampoon that morning as she got very huffy and said many people had called in that morning and it was not their problem. It was my software problem and she specifically said it was my firewall. When I told her I tried to connect without the firewall, she tried to tell me it was still interferring. I told her it had never interferred and she as much as said, "That's what they all say."
10. Turns out after call Earthlink back that their network was down in almost the entire Southwest. I asked why if I had high speed why they didn't have highspeed and had figured out nobody was able to log on for over and hour. I cancelled the service, told them to pick up their modem and credit out the entire month of service and the installation charge (which they basically lied about in their ad as they don't charge for installation -- Time Warner does).
11. Needless to say, Time Warner got a very nasty phone call and I have written letter to both about their ignorant and surly technician and the pathetic excuse for high speed service.
12. Anybody else have ISP horror stories to tell (I mean, besides AOL as that's a given -- their acronym should be ACDOL -- America Constantly Disconnecting On Line)?
BTW, I sampled an MP3 download transferred to a CD and the original CD and the MP3 sound was inferior on my setup.
<snicker> Yeah, I've got some stories, LW, but you heard them at ravensrealm, if you recall. This was MSN using the Qwest phone system. I did run into one first rate tech support guy from MSN, but there was nothing he or I could do about the actual service - complicated by the business office.
I wonder how fast satellite connection is? My cable service has degraded in speed since I hooked up last year. however, Im still way faster than dialup.
Is roadrunner one of the Cox lines/ Ive heard that in Virginia and DC, the cox service is always suffering failures and hookup drops. All that for 50bucks a month.
I still use my phone line. Maybe I should be glad!
The hookup drop outs became really irritating about six months ago as they increased and RoadRunner would offer no explanation. You might be surprised if you were to use Earthlink dialup how navigation on average is just as fast as so-called high speed. They think they are fooling everyone and I have threatened them with switching my TV to satellite. Whether like DSL, satellite give one a share of bandwidth instead of sharing it with all the commercial hook-ups (we have a huge commercial are near us in Cypress and Cerritos). The ploy of telling me it was my software, specifically my firewall, that was causing my problem without checking to see if there were any network problems was the last straw. I've unhooked the cable and, voila, all the digital channels on my cable had less picture noise (a vague snow in the background). The only reason I am sticking with them is they came out with their own competition to TIVO for $9.95 a month and it can record two programs at once! I don't know yet about whether it will skip commercials or not but I'll soon find out. I'm on Earthlink dial-up now and on this site, it is actually faster than my high speed which would stutter and drop out many times.
Pacific Bell DSL service works pretty good for me. $49/month and I get 1000-1300 kbps downloads all day long.
A friend has DirectPC satellite service, also $49/month. The time delay going to the satellite is not really noticeable when surfing the web, but it ruins interactive games like Diablo or Doom. He usually get 300-400 kbps upload and download, with flaky service during heavy snowstorms.
I would actually prefer to have satellite, because it works out in the backcountry, anywhere there is a clear southern view. Phone calls can be placed through the internet, so when mountains block cell phone coverage, phone calls through the dish still work okay. Maybe when I get an RV ...
Don't know about that satellite hook up is. We have it at work and it is usually faster (well, almost always) than my dial up at home. This was an $800.00 setup and $75.00/month for four computers connected - but hey, you are not tying up a phone line. It seems very similar to a good isp in terms of reliablity.
Verizon DSL in Southern Cal is down to $34.95, $10.00 cheaper than RoadRunner and $5.00 cheaper than the eventual charge for Earthlink. RoadRunner raising their price from $39.94 to $43.95 pissed me off in the first place as the service had deteriorated. AOL/Time Warner is headed for disaster. Only New Line and "The Lord of the Rings" is profitable. AOL also offers high speed through their own Time Warner cable at a whopping $54.00 per month. They're just plain insane and anyone tolerating this pathetic excuse for a policy should be looking up shrinks on the Internet, no matter what speed!
Trouble here, is I would sign up for DSL but we aren't in the loop yet for a connection. I'm on the waiting list and I will have the same zero tolerance for poor service.
Local RoadRunner cable, CodeBurg, is lucky to get 500 to 700 kbps.
I spend $9.95/month + tax on my dial-up. (Everybody's Internet -
www.ev1.net ) It's nearly as fast as - and sometimes faster than! - the satellite connection at work. You guys are not selling me on upgrading to DSL anytime soon!
Well, I can't complain about AOL here: paid 18$/month until yesterday and now 27$/month (DSL, ~ 130kbps upload, average 780 download), no limit, all included.
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