Problems with Flashcom, a national DSL service provider
This is a complaint sent to the President, CTO, and sales manager at Flashcom.
No reply was ever received.
From pinch@@-DESPAM-@@pinch.com Wed Dec 30 01:36:24 1998 -0800
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 01:36:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Ed Anderson
X-Sender: pinch@@-DESPAM-@@shell3.ba.best.com
To: Brad Sachs
cc: Michael Jones ,
Scott Campbell , Ed Anderson
Subject: Downgrading my bandwidth in half is unacceptable!
Message-ID:
X-Website: http://www.pinch.com/skin/
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Dear Brad,
I am writing this privately, but I am upset enough that I am tempted to
blast my outrage in the comp.dcom.xdsl and ba.internet groups. I have been
told today by Scott Campbell that within two days, I must accept having my
bandwidth cut in half, or drop the service. This is unacceptable.
I signed up with Flashcom in October for a 384k ADSL account in San
Francisco, user name "backward", and transferred my backward.com domain.
Due to Flashcom internal confusion, what was promised in days, took a
month to install. No point in getting into the details, it was all blamed
on an employee who is now gone.
I have no major complaints about the DSL service itself, but customer
support has been dismal. I have never received so much as a confirmation
of the account details. No list of pop servers, dns, etc. I have had to
call and hope for a response to get the information needed to setup my
domain. You have very capable people in engineering, but getting a
response is frustrating.
My line has gone down twice. Both times, it happened on a Friday night.
There was no response from Flashcom until Monday. Both times, I opened a
trouble ticket with PacBell, the line provider. This is something Flashcom
should have done, not me as a customer. The first time, AboveNet tech
support in San Jose was helpful in confirming bad traces to Flashcom's
colocated equipment. At that point, Abovenet tried to contact Flashcom and
ran into the same dead end that I did. Your public claims of a 24x7 manned
NOC are, shall we say, "inconsistent" with my experience. Grrr.
PacBell at least responded and cleared the line problems. Both times, they
also followed up with concern about user satisfaction, and asked how the
service could be improved. Flashcom simply said, "Sorry it happened, it
wasn't our equipment." Yes, but it is your job to resolve line problems.
Mid December, I got a friendly call from Flashcom, confirming my upcoming
installation. Huh? I explained that I already had an installed ADSL line,
and assumed that Flashcom had again confused me with another customer.
The employee seemed confused. No followup.
Several days later, a PacBell employee arrived to qualify the line for
installation. Huh? I explained that I had heard about an installation from
Flashcom, but that it must have been a mistake. Not long after that, I got
a call from Scott Campbell, apologizing for the confusion. He explained
that Flashcom was having legal problems with Pacbell, and that I needed to
switch over to Covad. He said I would get continued service at the same
rate, because of a special negotiation with Covad. This requires a
hardware change from Pacbell Alacatel ADSL to Covad SDSL. Fine. He tried
to contact the Pacbell installer, but it was too late. He asked to
reschedule for Dec 26, but I asked for a date in January because of the
holidays. No problem.
A few days ago, a Covad employee arrived unannounced to replace my modem.
Huh? After explaining what I knew about the situation, he said he needed
the line to be prepared by Pacbell. We discussed the logistics of changing
over, and the possible downtime. When he looked up my proposed service, he
noted that it was slated for 192k symmetrical. That is HALF of the current
384k downstream bandwidth that I signed up for. This was not even
mentioned as a side effect of the changeover, as if it were irrelevant.
I would prefer to take this up next week, but Scott Campbell called me
today and asked if I could schedule an installation for tomorrow. He told
me that my Pacbell service will be cut off on Thursday. I objected to the
loss of bandwidth, and am told that Flashcom cannot provide the 384k that
I signed up for, because that is somehow now a "different product". I
understand that my upstream rate will improve from 128k to 192k, but that
does not nearly compensate for cutting my downstream bandwidth in half.
I am told that this is is for my own benefit, because other customers have
not been getting their full bandwidth over Pacbell lines. All my large
file downloads happen at about 40kb/sec, so I am skeptical. I am told that
Pacbell has been "slamming" your other customers, urging them to switch
over to Pacbell Internet Services. I am no fan of PBI. That is one of the
reasons I chose Flashcom. But, I have had nothing but courteous, if slow,
service from them. The sales and support problems have all been at
Flashcom's end.
Scott said that if Covad offers something cost effective in the future, he
would be happy to upgrade my service. He also told me that I won't be held
to my one year contract if I want to change providers. Such generosity. I
called him up to let him know that I do not accept this reduction in
service, and that I am changing equipment tomorrow UNDER DURESS. His
response is the equivalent of "take it or leave it."
If you folks are going to boycott Pacbell, you need to do it at your own
expense, not mine. I signed a one year contract for a 384+128k ADSL line,
and purchased the hardware from you. I don't mind switching equipment, but
Covad certainly offers higher rates than 192+192k. It just isn't cost
effective for you to offer that rate with another provider, any more than
it was for me when I made the choice to go with PacBell/Flashcom, rather
than a slower Covad line with another local provider. In any other
business, this would be called a "bait and switch."
I can understand that you won't be offering 384k speeds to new customers
at the $89/mo rate that I've been paying, but we have a contract for that
rate, and your new partner Covad has the ability to provide it. I expect
you to keep your end of the bargain.
I have no personal issues with anyone at Flashcom. I would like to
continue the service, but I don't like being yanked around. Please get
your policies and your priorities in order. I'm willing to put up with
some inevitable growing pains, but cutting my bandwidth in half is just
unacceptable.
I was aware of the "low profile" customer service when I signed up. I
don't need handholding. I've offered some constructive suggestions for the
web site, and I see that you are trying to improve it. I suggested that
you create a newsgroup for Flashcom customers to share experiences, in
lieu of handholding. It forms the community you will need if you want to
grow through referrals. I hear that something along those lines is in the
works.
I was miffed at the botched account setup, to the point where I would not
refer a friend to your service, unless they were willing to tolerate a
high level of frustration. This latest stunt shows your complete disregard
for your existing customers. As I said, I'm on the verge of taking it
public. I'm sure I have several avenues to pursue if you still intend to
downgrade my service.
Not that it matters, but I have been tuning a FreeBSD box for my
www.backward.com and I am close to putting it in service to handle a CPU
intensive task that has been running on a virtual server. The line has
been stable enough, but now I have little confidence that Flashcom can
provide a stable platform for my web presence.
Please, reassure me. Give me a some good reasons why I shouldn't publicly
warn my fellow netizens about the hidden dark side of Flashcom.
-- Ed Anderson
(From my reliable backup account. My server may be offline tomorrow!?)
_____________________________________________________________________
From pinch@@-DESPAM-@@pinch.com Fri Jan 8 17:18:53 1999 -0800
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 17:18:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Ed Anderson
X-Sender: pinch@@-DESPAM-@@shell3.ba.best.com
To: Brad Sachs
cc: Michael Jones ,
Scott Campbell , Ken Watts
Subject: Re: Downgrading my bandwidth in half is unacceptable!
In-Reply-To:
Message-ID:
X-Website: http://www.pinch.com/skin/
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I'm still hanging in limbo. It has been over a week now, and I expected
some sort of reply to my email and phone request.
The Pacbell DSL link is still functional. Covad said they would try to
expedite a Pacbell line qualification before the end of the year, but I've
heard nothing. If the Pacbell line goes down, I'm going to be hopping mad.
Have you come to a decision on whether Flashcom intends to breach our one
year contract for 384k service, as you have stated?
Getting Anxious,
Ed Anderson
[Flashcom never responded to either message]
Displayed using a script by Ed Anderson
Problems with Flashcom, a national DSL service provider