Earthlink: A Very Slow Connection to the Web

Since 1993, I have been very active on the Internet. I was a sub-sysop on Knobody's Business, a Bulletin Board System (BBS), from 1992 - 1994. I have had experiences with Yahoo, America Online, Juno, BlueLight, MSN, and many others.

Over the past two years, I have been dealing with Earthlink DSL. I have not been happy with this service, but couldn't end it because I was TRAPPED in a contract. Once I did try to stop, they still billed my credit card-regardless of the fact that the telephone line I used for the connection was turned off for nearly 2 months. Morons.

Yes, this review is going to be hotheaded and biased. I will do my best to present all of the elements of my experience with Earthlink objectively, but I'm not promising anything.

Since the beginning of my experience with Earthlink, the customer service has been nothing short of horrendous. I wasn't the member of the household that decided to sign up with Earthlink. If I had been on the initial call, I probably wouldn't have signed up to begin with. The idea was to get DSL, which Earthlink offered for $29.95 for the first 6 months, but then you had to sign up for a year AFTER the 6 months was up for $50.61 per month, which would be automatically charged to your credit card or bank account. That's 18 months that you're locked into a contract, or you have to pay an exorbitant amount for an early termination fee. NO exceptions.

Whenever I tried to call Earthlink customer service (1-888-EARTHLINK), I was placed on hold for AT LEAST 5 minutes every call. On many occasions, when I was finally put through to a customer service representative, they weren't able to help me, due to problems with Earthlink. Wouldn't it be effective to have some sort of message while on hold saying that there are outages in my area? Why am I typing in my account number when before I'm placed on hold, anyway? Absolutely ridiculous. On a variety of other occasions, the line was simply cut off.