DSL Extreme - Customer Service Is Not In Your Contract (but a $250 cancellation fee is)

Who knows DSL Extreme better than me? Probably not very many people. I’ve been with DSLE with various accounts since 2000. I’m also a 10-year IT vet that happens to know a lot about networking — not that I expect you to believe “Mr. Random Internets Guy” about his geek cred, but there it is.

DSLE has had their boneheaded technical issues in the past, certainly. But I hate big telco, so I’ve tried to be a faithful customer. Incidentally, I just started as a sysadmin in the silicon valley area of Northern California, USA. There’s obviously a lot of tech here, which means a lot of ISP’s. Even so, I tried to keep DSLE in the spirit of supporting the little guy, and because your don’t have to be a lawyer to understand their fair access policy. As history will show, that turned out to be a mistake…

The numbers speak for themselves.

Things actually started off well this time, DSLE even kept their original turn on date for once — maybe the first time ever in my history with them. Only a few days later, AT&T broke something on their end, which took down my lines. When it came back up, no sync. After waiting on hold twice at an hour apiece (something I’ve come to expect from them), I was told that yep, as I suspected AT&T had messed something up. So they’d have to cancel and reorder my DSL through AT&T - 2 weeks wait time. Well, I telecommute about 50% of the time (including 3:00am maintenance windows), so unfortunately it wasn’t even an option for me to wait. I spoke with DSL Extreme’s billing department, politely explained my situation and asked to be let out of my contract. Keep in mind, I’m an 8-year faithful customer with at least a dozen referrals. The woman on the other end of the line basically told me to get f***ed.

I understand that working for an ISP is high-stress… hell, the whole industry is high stress. But I’ve never spoken to a customer service rep who was that rude in my entire life. So much for working with the customer. Even if I wasn’t already canceling DSLE out of necessity, I would have after that conversation. Not only that, I will warn all of my friends and colleagues with existing accounts and inform them to jump ship. DSL Extreme is not the little guy anymore; they’ve grown too big for their britches, and their customer support is awful. You’d be better off just going with the big guys for all the bullsh*t they put you through. If you’re getting ass for service anyway, might as well be tier-1 ass.

As for me, I went with Comcast, who gave me a turn on date of today, and even threw in a discount because they thought my DSL Extreme story about the rude b*tch in billing was hilarious. Is Comcast a big evil company? Certainly. Are they better to work with than DSL Extreme? In my experience, definitely. According to others on RateItAll.com, I’m not alone in this experience.