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This is good information. I had read only a little about Fairpoint's service in other threads. I'm not wild about DSL. It's typically poor compared with cable, and cable is typically poor compared with fiber. Also, DSL may require the land line. I won't need a land line. With Fairpoint's poor service, who are their competitors?
This is good information. I had read only a little about Fairpoint's service in other threads. I'm not wild about DSL. It's typically poor compared with cable, and cable is typically poor compared with fiber. Also, DSL may require the land line. I won't need a land line. With Fairpoint's poor service, who are their competitors?
Fairpoint's competitors would-for the most part- be your local cable company-which could be better or worse. In my case, as horrible as Fairpoint is, my cable company-Metorcast- was much worse. I would go without internet or phone before I gave them another penny. For TV, we have DirectTv but for phone and internet we had Metrocast- the phone never worked and we were promised a speed of 7.0 for broadband and were lucky to get a 1.5 or 2.0-our neighbor up the hill consistently got less than a 1. We had so many internet and phone problems that it was not worth paying them and I basically got large credits from them every month because they were not providing much of a service. When you call tech support, you know more than they do and they lie as well. We had the Metrocast guys out so many times that we knew them all by name and our and our phone issues were blamed on our wiring, on our phone, on everything but them. On another chatroom, I found other people who had the same issues. At least with Fairpoint, we are promised 7.0 for DSL and get around 6.5-6.8 and our phone works. Yes the billing is messed up and the customer service absolutely stinks-as bad as it is I will take them over Metrocast any day. Thankfully the land that we own to build our next home on in a few years is not in a Metrocast area. I know some people who have never had a problem with Metrocast but I know many who have had problems like we did.
I would research the area you are moving to and do some googling-there are plenty of chatboards where people talk about how the cable company and Fairpoint operate in your specific area.
ugh Fairpoint.
they try to sneak in fees - last one I caught was three way calling. I said that I never tried it and my phone is so old it probably could not do it anyways. The CS rep, said "oh, you probably hung up and didn't wait 2 seconds and dialed another number, and it thought you did 3 way calling!"
Then billing - 1 month my DSL and phone are bundled and on 1 statement. Next month they are separate and my check applied to 1 bill but of course the other is overdue. Then 2 months later they are linked again.
This month they are seperate again!
Keep your eye on the bill to make sure that they apply the funds correctly. They didn't on mine, and 6-MONTHS LATER , I STILL have a $10 CREDIT and a $10 charge to collections!!! GGGRRRRRRRR!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by leggo
ugh Fairpoint.
Then billing - 1 month my DSL and phone are bundled and on 1 statement. Next month they are separate and my check applied to 1 bill but of course the other is overdue. Then 2 months later they are linked again.
This month they are seperate again!
Fairpoint's competitors would-for the most part- be your local cable company-which could be better or worse. In my case, as horrible as Fairpoint is, my cable company-Metorcast- was much worse. I would go without internet or phone before I gave them another penny. For TV, we have DirectTv but for phone and internet we had Metrocast-
DirecTv has been better in my experience than a couple others, and I have it now, but they're like that saying: when it's good it's very good and when it's bad it's horrible. They drop signal, they're too easily interfered with and interrupted, and their customer service is iffy until you march up their ladder to their real tech team.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicolem
the phone never worked and we were promised a speed of 7.0 for broadband and were lucky to get a 1.5 or 2.0-our neighbor up the hill consistently got less than a 1. We had so many internet and phone problems that it was not worth paying them and I basically got large credits from them every month because they were not providing much of a service.
That must have been annoying. You take the credits, but that doesn't compensate for the awful service. There was no alternative broadband service in your area at that time?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicolem
When you call tech support, you know more than they do and they lie as well. We had the Metrocast guys out so many times that we knew them all by name and our and our phone issues were blamed on our wiring, on our phone, on everything but them.
That drives me nuts. I do know more than they do more often than not (I do video encoding), but what gets me is not their lack of knowledge so much as their unapologetic insistence on being right in the face of having been proven wrong. I don't typically get that after going up their tech ladder a couple or three levels, but the rank & file service people just have their scripts and their preconceptions and won't let them go.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicolem
On another chatroom, I found other people who had the same issues. At least with Fairpoint, we are promised 7.0 for DSL and get around 6.5-6.8 and our phone works.
That's good. Where I'm at now I've got a promised 10.0 and I get about 9.8. I'm going to a new service where I've been promised 16.0. It'll be interesting to see how close they get to that because the company's rep has not been as good for me on their non-broadband service.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicolem
Yes the billing is messed up and the customer service absolutely stinks-as bad as it is I will take them over Metrocast any day. Thankfully the land that we own to build our next home on in a few years is not in a Metrocast area. I know some people who have never had a problem with Metrocast but I know many who have had problems like we did.
So, are these companies given exclusive areas or is it truly wide-open competition?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nicolem
I would research the area you are moving to and do some googling-there are plenty of chatboards where people talk about how the cable company and Fairpoint operate in your specific area.
I intend to. I've already seen some snippets of conversation about this in some of the other threads. Those brought the name Fairpoint to my attention, hence my interest in this thread.
Right now, most companies are upgrading or installing better infrastructure because they want to share bandwidth with HDTV content delivery. HD 1080 is currently limited to ~19 mbps, so lots of infrastructure is supporting 20 and putting Internet, phone, & HDTV on it. Phone doesn't take much. Internet takes more but packetizing reduces the impact unless you do heavy up/downloading. It's HDTV that sucks up all the bandwidth (except for what I do -- heh heh).
Fitch Ratings has lowered FairPoint Communications’ credit rating and has placed the company on its negative credit watch on concerns about its financial situation.
the company is considering restructuring and possibly filing for bankruptcy.
Well, you can all rest easy that their business service is no better than the residential service. One of my clients had an outage, the doofus from fairpoint just started changing anything he could think of, including the static IP address of their domain controller/exchange server, thus bringing down their entire network. It was then that the moron realized that they were getting multiple calls and there was a service outage in the area. Last I heard my client was trying to recover the $110 it cost for me to go out and fix their server.
Fitch Ratings has lowered FairPoint Communications’ credit rating and has placed the company on its negative credit watch on concerns about its financial situation.
the company is considering restructuring and possibly filing for bankruptcy.
Value Line downgraded FRP back at the end of March. Looking it up, its market cap as of today is ~$108 million, yet NH just gave it a $50 million credit line a few days ago. Oh, good grief!
OMG, I could write a book about my bad experiences with FP. They supposedly kept most of the former Verizon employees, but none of them seem to know anything lately!. I first called FP in Feb right at the hand over only to be told they weren't taking any type of orders because Verizon had pulled all the hardware & software so they were sitting in limbo!!!!! I had to call back a week later to have our business lines remote call forwarded into our home phone and sat on hold for more than 1 hr They gave me a date, but nothing happened. When I called back to get the status I find out they never placed the order & had absolutely no idea when it would happen as their remote call forwarding wasn't working (WTH??) They could go ahead and give me a date to switch it over, but uh oh, it might not work, so I'd be out of business at that point. What kind of idiot did they think I was? Why would I take a chance and go forward with something like that? They still haven't called me back to do the remote forwarding on the lines into my home.
Most of NH was in an uproar because the Verizon customers didn't get the email telling them about the handover and changing their email addresses and setting up the POP3 and SMTP server info in their email programs. Even though I'm in NH, our phone lines are switched out of VT so I got the email and didn't have any problems changing all that. Now we have new tenants moving into our rentals here and they're being told by FP that they can only get dial-up, not DSL! Really?? I told the tenant not to sit still for that stupidity because I have it, and I know at least 3 of our neighbors have it. Not sure if they ended up getting DSL or not. Right now, my DSL is blazing along, but other days, it bogs down. Oh well, that's technology for you. Unfortunately, we don't have any other options on this road, no cable and no way am I paying for satellite internet through DirecTV.
I called FP last week to disconnect our business dsl line in VT, but I wanted to keep our business email. Luckily I got someone knowledgable in tech support and got a clear concise answer and was able to rescue & keep my business email address and add it under my personal dsl account. Instant success on that one, whew!
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They gave me a date, but nothing happened. When I called back to get the status I find out they never placed the order & had absolutely no idea when it would happen as their remote call forwarding wasn't working (WTH??
) They could go ahead and give me a date to switch it over, but uh oh, it might not work, so I'd be out of business at that point. What kind of idiot did they think I was? 
Why would I take a chance and go forward with something like that? They still haven't called me back to do the remote forwarding on the lines into my home. 
