Crappy support offsets high speed
Written: Mar 24 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free DSL modem, fast connection
Cons: Hideous installation, crappy tech support
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| scramcat's Full Review: Infospeed BA |
If I weren't a geek, I never would have been able to get Bell Atlantic Infospeed DSL installed, configured, and running. I'm still not sure what happened that actually made it work in the end. Bell Atlantic clearly rushed the technology to market and botched the "consumerization".
Here's the short list (yes, SHORT relative to all the problems I had) of what went wrong:
Documentation had conflicting info on what Windows NT service pack was required. Some places said 3, others 4. My installation didn't work until I installed service pack 5.
The new printed documentation, which replaced the wildly erroneous original documentation (both in the same box!), still instructed me to fill in settings fields that didn't exist, and click buttons that weren't on the dialog boxes indicated.
Even though I specified a unique new directory for installing the modified Bell Atlantic flavor of Netscape, the installer stomped my old installation and the resulting mish-mash of versions didn't run.
The Dial-Up networking installation for DSL trashed the configuration for my old ISP. Good thing I had all the old settings on paper.
The password I had been mailed for creating my DSL account didn't work.
The phone support staff didn't know Windows NT well and kept telling me Windows 95 commands and dialog box settings which don't exist on NT.
3 different support engineers gave me 3 different DNS names and DHCP settings, but each insisted that they all give exactly the same information.
Different support engineers insisted my DSL wasn't working because it was misconfigured, others insisted it was a wiring problem at the switching center.
The "Problem Escalation Team" has a 72 hour window for responding. 3 days waiting counts as escalation?!?
The regular phone support staff can't access the Escalation Team databases to see what progress, if any, has been made.
The Escalation Team never did return my calls in which I asked for a description of the problem that was hindering my DSL service, how it was fixed, and what I needed to know to deal with it in the future.
It took 6 1/2 days from starting installation to actually being able to see a web page through Infospeed DSL. I still don't know what happened that got my service working. Did the Escalation Team actually do something that needed doing? Was it my installing service pack 5? Beats me.
The DSL service runs now, and it's fast. Faster than the LAN at work. But if I had known what a mess Bell Atlantic made of the setup process, I would have chosen another provider.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
scramcat
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Location: Albuquerque, NM
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I hate everything. But I always have very good reasons for it.
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