Please pardon the off topic posting, not only am I upset, but Earthlink has clearly undergone some changes that make it not a service anyone would want at the moment - though until I think a short time ago they were a really excellent company with a great reputation! Also, I would really like any feedback from people, though it is possible that people who have plain old dial up service, have not recently made changes to their service, and never call customer or tech support have seen no reason to be dissatisfied. Other than I guess a steep price increase. It sure is higher than the $15 it used to be when everyone loved it! This is a copy of a response I wrote to an article at PCnet, by someone who is an assistant editor at PCWorld.com. The PCnet response form didn' twork so I had to track him down at PCWorld.com and e-mail him. Dan: I tried to use the response form to your article at cnet.com, but it appeared not to work. When I clicked send I kept getting a sorry can't fin this page notice, and eventually I discovered that cnet.com has its servers down for the weekend to switch to a new server. I am responding to your piece on problems with Earthlink service. I want to report my own horrible experiences with Earthlink, and also to ask for several specific small forms of help. I am having serious problems with Earthlink. We just signed up for home networking with cable (through our local cable provider) about two and a half months ago. Before that I had Earthlink phone service for one month. First of all, it almost invariably takes 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get through to tech support on the phone an dnear that long to reach customer service. Service via chat is often quick but sometimes you get someone who is competent and sometimes you don't. I had one last night repeatedly tell me to call Time Warner, our local cable provider, about a question about my home networking service ( billed each month by Earthlink) and my home networking router rebate! Another time my housemates couldn't figure out how to add their e-mail accounts, and neither could I. The places to click to do that are literally hidden on a page full of meaningless advertising and phrased in such a way that they don't look like what they are, such as "maintain your mailbox" for "add more mailboxes to your account". I used chat tech support. I wrote out my complete problem and what I had done. The guy kept asking me what page I was trying to get to and what i had put in. Finally I just copied and pasted my original question that explained everything all over again. He never did tell me how to get to where to add e-mail addresses! I was so angry after weeks of such experiences that I wrote Charles Betty, Lee Adran, Linda Beck, I think, Karen Gough, and Mike Lunsford, and I expressed my general dissatisfaction with our service. A couple of weeks later, by which time we've finally figured out how to add e-mail addresses, someone calls back form one of these offices to talk to me. I call him back, he only wants to know if we have our e-mail working yet. I tell him how dissatisfied we are in general, he didn't listen to one word, and kept explaining, for instance , "it isn't broke" and starting to explain just why the billing confusion is just fine. I finally said, well if it isn't broke I'm done talking and hung up on him. I wish I knew who I'd talked to but I didn't at that time see a reason to keep it. It was clearly who they asked to contact me, it was a young man, he was in one of the executive offices, and I called the toll free number for Earthlink headquarters in Florida and entered an extension to reach him. I spent literally days, usually three to five hours at a time, on the phone just getting set up for home networking. Every single thing we got told turned out at al later point not to be true. No central place for people with home networking to go with customer service and tech support issues exists yet and I typically get batted around for hours. When I wanted to know the status of my router order I got batted around all morning, even to Time Warner twice, before someone whose job it wasn't took pity and got her supervisor to look up the information. We got told different things about what equipment we needed, how things were to be set up, who was to do it. We consistently got charges tacked onto what we had agreed to that we hadn't been told about, such as the service charge when I finally placed the order for the router. I had already put the amount they first told me on my netspend card. We kept getting told different thigns about literally what equipment we needed and how things needed to be arranged at our house. We got told different things about whether my housemate's notebook computer could be used with it right through when they installed it. We got surprised at the last minute by Time Warner telling us we wree paying them up front for a first month's service when they came to install it and it must be in cash. After when I checked several times Earthllink repeatedly assured me that they would bill us after cable service was installed and my month's phone service bill that I was to have paid them five days before the cable installation was to take place was to be deducted from what they were to bill us. They finally waived that amount, after several hours on the phone. We got the router, got the cable service, but half of it won't work on my computer becasue the software won't work on Windows 95. They say that is on their web site. We only talked with their people. Their people, including home networking sales and home networking tech support, talked with each of the three people at our house twice and asked us in detail what we have, told us what we would need. They asked me what operating system I had and learned Windows 95 several times. Never said anything about the whole thing not workign on Windows 95. Basically, we have continually run into what looks like Earthlink has grown into a larger organization than they are prepared and willing to support, ie, by providing enough customer service and tech support lines and employees. Further, they are clearly very disorganized. Home networking doesn't even have its own home department with a clear cut way to get to it with any kind of issue, whether tech support or customer service, though reaching their sales department took only a small amount of getting transferred around form the available options, which are cable, DSL, and modem access, and customer service or tech support. Now the router has stopped working, after being used for less than two months. Tech support worked on it with me, determined that it is kapoot. An electrical storm or power failure may have contributed, we aren't sure. Surely covered by warranty. Not that the paperwork I have contains a warranty. When that went, we decided we are through with Earthlink, we just want to return the router that has stopped working, get our money back. After half an hour I got customer support someplace, never did learn where. Guy said no way that isn't how it is going to work. They refuse to refund the router, though they will replace it with another one that is going ot konk out and more poor service. That is dishonest, but there is more. We signed up under a special offer that included a rebate of $99 for the $99 home networking router, sent to us by Earthlink, but if we stopped service before 12 months we have to pay a $99 fee. That is how the literature on the deal put it. We have had such questions about continuing Earthlink service that I never put through the rebate, thus I never took advantage of the special offer that the way it was presented I took to mean if you stop service within 12 months you pay for the router, which is the only interpretation that makes any sense. He said we don't get our rebate, since it just expired, and I have to pay the $99 if we end service. I said, we're ending our service, I'll sue you for my refund and you can come after me in court for your disconnection fee, and he said, no, that isn't how it is going to work, and I hung up on him, and that is where it sits at this time. I tried to talk back to talk to someone else, but I never knew exactly where I got sent except one of the customer support numbers, and I tried both numbers on the papers that came with my router, and both times after punching in several numbers for several choices I got a message saying that I was being transferred to customer service and then nothing at all on the line, no message, no music, no nothing. Then I tried Earthlink Chat. The woman there kept telling me to call Time Warner and then disappeared. She also said, before disappearing, that she didn't have access to my account - though it was customer service chat and I've gotten account problems resolved via customer service chat before. Earthlink has always had a very good reputation. It isn't only your organization giving them high marks, I've known alot of people who have used Earthlink and enjoyed it. They liked the fee, too, whihc used to be a reasonable $15. Now it's $24 a month just for modem access, and I can for some reason only get 26 baud with a 56 baud modem. The experience that I am having with them right now is flat out dishonesty, and I'm picking up signs on the web that perhaps Earthlink has met a similar fate to Worldcom in that some dishonest people have gained control of that company. My housemate wants to just go back to AOL! She previously had an AOL account. That is something, when people would rather deal with AOL. She says she never had any problems with them. I formerly lived at a house where our ISP was Time Warner. There are things I seriously don't like about Time Warner, but we never had a single problem with service, tech support or billing. I would really very much appreciate it if not only can you get the word out about the sorts of problems I gather you are hearing that people are running into with Earthlink, but give me some specific help. Do you happen to know the specific names and phone numbers of anyone in Earthlink's executive offices that I can contact about my billing and rebate problem? Clearly no low level customer service agent is going to be able to clear this up for me. I would be willing to pay the $99 disconnect fee if they would agree to give me my rebate and write off the cost of the router itself. Second, can you possibly tell me where I can file formal complaints about this incident? I know the local Better Business Bureau, but with a national company I need a federal place to make a complaint for it to have clout. I do fully intend to file such complaints once I find out how and where. Third, do you know of anyone else who is actively tracking the problems customers are having with Earthlink? I would really like to get in touch with them. Thanks very much! Yours, Dora __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com