Earthlink Customer Service...rant
 

I have been a big fan of Earthlink as a company in the past but all their boasting about great customer service is garbage. I have been a DSL customer and internet customer for over 10 years with not many problems. I am furious with them now. Their customer service has gone to hell. I also have webpages with them and from now on they have pretty much lost my business.

My DSL went down sometime last week and they tell me its my problem. Their system shows no outtages. I get upset telling them that I have gone through all the equipment and tried everything possible and nothing and ask to speak to a senior tech. I spent an hour with the first guy and then an additional 2 1/2 hours to reach a senior tech for them to tell me they'll open a ticket and look into it. I knew it was their issue but they refused to address it first off and didn't bother listening to what I was telling them and every person I talked to said, go here and call here and these people will help you and end of the night, no one really helped me. Middle of the next day they find out it was a problem between them and my local phone company and decide to tell me its fixed.

Now to compound the issue, I am setting up a new webpage and decided to use them for webhosting as I had a good experience in the past and I cannot access the site via FTP and go through the chat support first for 20 minutes and they tell me to call for help. I am actually still on the phone now with them. The site is password protected and I didn't set this up, someone at their location did and they tell me they can't help because they do not support ASP and while I know what ASP means, I don't know anything about it. Now they are telling me that the webhosting address is incorrect that they gave me that the site belongs to someone else and I am finally getting somewhere but 2 hours on the phone as of now and telling them I need someone who knows what they are doing.

This has been a really bad experience with multiple customer service departments. I am a big fan of excellent customer service. In my line of work, I listen to my customer's problems and find a way to address each problem and if I can't I get them to the people who can. I will gladly pay more for great customer service and the past couple times they have defeated any expectations I had of them from the past and if they continue to treat customers in this manner, they are going to lose more business. Thanks for listening.

I had their DSL for about 3 yrs. DSL was pretty good, but when there was a problem, getting a hold of a live person was next to impossible. They don't offer service where I moved to, so I have cable, but kept my Earthlink email only.

Rick,

Can you tell me what you pay to keep your email only? In my area, SBC/Yahoo offers much better monthly rates and email is one of the only reasons I have kept them around especially lately.

My dad has has the same problem. He can get BellSouth's DSL at a faster speed for a much lower rate but isn't willing to loose his e-mail address that he's had for 8 years.

I think I pay $10 per month for two email addresses, but I forget how much space they include.

If anyone wants a Gmail (Google email) account (it's free), just PM me and I'll send you an 'invite'.... I've been using Gmail for some time now, and I like it...plus it's my favorite price :)