EarthLink

I have had a problem with Spam getting through the Highest level of my Earthlink provided Spamblocker for about 2 months now. After denying the problem for about a month. They now are "working on it" BUT have been unable to fix it AND have stopped returning my emails.

DO NOT consider Earthlink when looking for an ISP!!!!

Well, I am not gonna lie, when you first sign up and are on contract, everything is amazing. They do what they can to help. However, when you are off of contract, they treat you like shit. Why I stuck around, I do not know. I thought the speeds were fast (8Mbps/768Kbps) however I think I should have switched over to Verizon or Comcast before. They would make your lines drop, lower your speeds, and everything they could to make my life hell. I STRONGLY WARN you NOT to go with earthlink. I am indian, and all their Techs are indian and get so annoying sometimes. They barely ever keep good records. I am sorry, but I have had a terrible time with earthlink.

Absolute rubbish! I've tried to raise their attention to an id-theft issue on their whois records and depsite calling, emailing and chatting to a technician, they are utterly incapable of performing the most basic problem resolution. I'm not a customer, but all I can say is 'Thank God for that'.

Earthlink is by far the worst internet provider out there. If you have any choice do not go with earthlink. Their customer service tell you different things every time you contact them. And they have done very well as a company at seperating all their departments. So if you have an issue no one is responsible and it takes hours to get anything fixed. If they have made a mistake they make no amends to make it better. I am switching providers.

on 6-30-08 I get an email from Earthlink regarding my DSL account:
Our records indicate that you were provided a Static IP address
with your DSL account. Due to a system error, we have not billed
your account for this additional service.

Please reply to this email and indicate whether or not you
would like to keep your Static IP address. Canceling the Static
IP will not affect your DSL account or Internet service.

...more...

The thing is I never asked for a static IP. I also have logs of the IP addresses I've had due to using INADYN (linux program) to update my dynamic DNS. Those logs clearly show I've had hundreds of different IP addresses since Aug. 2006 when I signed up. In other words, they are lying when they say I've had a static IP address.

So basically, Earthlink manufactured a problem report, and sent it to me hoping I would purchase additional services. I replied saying I didn't want static IP address and that this sounded like a scam. The rep sent me back information about static IP addresses despite my message clearly said I WAS NOT INTERESTED in static IP addresses. So their support staff are either populated by morons, or more likely, it was an automatic response that caught "static ip" in the message text and replied pretending to be human.

The upshot is they utilize shady tactics, and could care less about their customers.

Earthlink is by far the WORST internet service out there. They should be shut down for their practices. Customer service said they were going to mail me a $30 amazon gift card for signing up with them. I never got it. I called to complain about their awful customer service and cancel my internet with them and they told me they were mailing me out my gift card and that they would mail me my last bill. Well a month later I got the bill and No gift card. I called today they said my account was closed so I do not get a gift card but that I owe $30 on the account. They said I could reactivate my account to get my gift card. I asked to speak with a manager and they said one was not available for closed account holders. To finally get me off the phone again they took my name and number and told me they would have a manager call me back. Yeah right!!!!!

Agree with many of the reviews below. Poor connectivity (continually dropping connection) and their support is absent. They have yet to remedy my issues. I regret switching to them to save some money. Now I have to go shopping for a new ISP again.

A free 6 months trial of Earthlink Dial-Up came with my new Dell, so even though I had DSL for $12.99/month at home, having free dial-up on my laptop when traveling sounded good. I contacted Earthlink and was advised that they did not honor the free trial shipped with Dell computers, but that I could get a 6-month trial for a one-time charge of $9.95. After verifying 3 times that there would only be a single charge of $9.95, I signed up.

During the second month my credit card was billed another $9.95, and when I called Earthlink I was told that my plan indeed was a $9.95 one-time charge for 6 months and that I'd be credited back the second $9.95 charge.

I used the service 3 times in the past 5 months, and found the connection speed OK but got disconnected all three times. On my last credit card statement I noticed a charge from Earthlink for another $9.95 and started getting suspicious. Upon checking, I found that I had been billed $9.95 six times in the past 5 months, and month two was never credited as Earthlink promised!! When I called, the customer service clerk cut my explanation off in mid-sentence and told me that since I had obviously signed up for a $9.95/month plan there was nothing that could be done, but after my 6th month the monthly charge would increase to $21.95!!!! As if ANY dial-up is worth that!

When I protested she gave me another number to call, and when I did, I had to supply all of my Dell purchase info. Once they were apparently satisfied that I had indeed bought a Dell computer with the 6-month free Earthlink trial, they graciously offered to give me 4 free months, but said that there was nothing they could do about the charges already made (like I believed that!). I told them that what they could do was immediately cancel my account so there would be no additional billings, and that I'd be contacting Dell, Earthlink management, and Internet review sites. I then got offered a credit for two of the monthly charges already made, which just a few seconds before could not be done! I accepted but have not seen any evidence of a credit on my credit card account, so I suspect it will be another empty promise like the credit for the month two charge.

All in all, there were lessons to be learned. 1) Avoid Earthlink unless your life depends on Internet access and there are absolutely no other ISP's in existence anywhere, and 2) Check your credit card statements more thoroughly than I did to see if you're incurring unauthorized charges.

Good for average surfing only, but not reliable. I should have stopped when the site did not accept my initial order. Then I "chatted" to order which was painful. No communication sent to me except to my earthlink email, which I was not even using because my service did not start. (They should mail or email to your primary address contracts!) I was using the DSL service for VOIP, but the modem kept needing reset and I had to pry out of second level support that they changed settings on their end and assured no further issues. NOT!

The actual connectivity and the speed at which equipment ships are the only good things I have to say about Earthlink. Customer service is nightmarish! It wasn't always so in the beginning, but the last 2-3 years have been pure consumer hell. From the interface that is completely user undfriendly and don't even get me started about the phone service! Don't do it!

 I tried Earthlink for a couple of months, and all I had was trouble.  E-mail was totally hosed, and I couldn't get a decent explanation as to what was wrong from their support people.  I highly unrecommend it.

If I could give zero stars, I would. I would rather poke out my eyes with sharp sticks than ever use Earthlink again. It took me six weeks AFTER cancelling my service with them to get them to release my phone line so I could get another DSL service provider. Even after that, they are STILL CHARGING ME. Not only are they charging me for DSL, they are also charging me for dial-up service! I don't even have a dial-up modem in my computer! Unreal.

I got Earthlink Wi-fi in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia. The service was awful since I signed up for the service. Connecting via wi-fi I always got poor reception, but it was promised to improve once I purchased a $70 modem. The service didn't improve, and I even had to unplug the modem to get internet connection to find a number to cancel the service. Once I wanted to cancel the service, that was another battle. I tried to contact earthlink via IM, email and phone and there was always some problem keeping me from canceling. Upon calling at 7:00am to avoid high volume calling, I was told the wi-fi specific line would open in "1 or 2 hours" and to call back yet again. This service is a scam and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone!

Earthlink is the worst. Where I live, my entire street is "owned" by TimeWarner, so I don't even have the option to choose a different provider. The people at TimeWarner know this and could care less if I cancel my service. They've overcharged me on several occasions. I would cancel my service but have no choice! This company should be fined (again) for their unscrupulousness.

I have had the worst cs experiance of my life with Earthlink. I ordered DSL service from them about 30 days ago . It's not "always on" its almost always off in fact every three min. my connection dumps. I have spent 30+ hours on the phone with EL trying to get the solution to this problem , most of it on hold . My average hold time is 2+ HOURS . I keep getting cut off , transfered , and ignored. In fact I keep getting told to "live chat" How am I supposed to live chat with only three min. of conncetivity at a time? I have been promised three different times a technician to my home and one has never arrived. I spent 6hours and 7 min on the phone with EL yesterday , only to be promised once again a technician will be here next week . This is incredibally frustrating. The phone techs keep having me do the same tests over and over with no results. I have told many reps that I wanted to cancel the service only to be ignored , and any question I asked is met with a "what I need you to do now..."

I would have rather jumped off a bridge than get Earthlink. They are rude, over charged me, and still refuse to refund all their mistakes. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER GET EARTHLINK!

I've had Earthlink dial-up since 1993 when they first came to my area (I'm rural, and Centurytel (my phone company) doesn't even offer it out here). I have had a generally good experience (as good as one can get at a lousy 28.8 kps-and it is alot slower at times) with one exception: the idiots from India that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground-and they are all named Mike or Rick(Reek). They ought to be sued for false advertisement for the tv commercial showing American techs saying how they work hard to solve your problems. If I could try anybody else-I would!!

I had Earthlink DSL and home phone service for 2 months. It was the worst experience that I have ever had with any company. Service was unreliable and customer service was ineffective. The customer service agents waste your time by having you perform varying ineffective tests. The agents then tell you to hang up so they can perform some tests and call back in 4 hours. When you call back you are asked the same questions and to perform the same tests again, but still no results. After the phone and DSL service went out for the 6th time I canceled service. When the service was working the phone line was not clear but DSL seemed to work fine. Overall, I will never do business with this company again.

DSL service intermittently is unusably slow. Absolutely incompetent and useless technical support. Use another DSL service if you possibly can.

I feel like I'm part of a club of people who have been ripped off by Earthlink TrueVoice. Initially, to set up the account, they said I have to enter a credit card number but that it wouldn't be used. Sure enough, without my permission, there was a charge from Earthlink on my next bill.

The quality was horrible. There was a terrible echo on my end, and everyone I talked to told me they could barely hear me through the static. I called and complained and they just referred me to their web site for help, which didn't solve the problem.

I sent five letters to their corporate office making complaints about several issues, including unathorized charges on my bill, and I still have not received a response. In the meantime, they keep charging me an extra $2 a month to send me a paper bill that I dispute.

WARNING: Do not give Earthlink a credit card number. They will use it without authorization and will not respond when you make a complaint about it. Remove the number off of your account page so they cannot use it.

wow! I could easily duplicate what was written on earlier on the 3/15/07 post on earthlink. Let's see after getting off the phone with their customer service today, I will never ever do business with them again. After canceling my account with them last month because their update programs kept shutting down my computer, I called tech support and after 30 minutes discussing the problem with them nothing was resolved, and I was told someone else would call me withing the next hour and never heard from anyone period. Then I am billed on my credit card after I have canceled with them, which they refuse to credit my account. This of course after the fact that their system was down for 4/5 days where they could not cancel my account back in February and I would have to call back. So in short I have spent 2 hours of phone time and have been charged one months service for a service that has been canceled and not used. Is this the kind of company you would prefer to give your money to that does not provide for what they charge??

Earthlink is terrible. Slimey billing tactics, long hold times, reps that don't speak english. It's an absolute joke and a mockery of people's time and money. I will never, ever deal with them again and I will tell everybody I can that they are corner-cutting rip-off merchants.

These guys stink!!! Endless call centers Nobody knows what anybody else is doing. The sales people will promise you what they can't deliver.

I signed up at Frys and was promised a $25 gift certificate. After 6 months of effort I gave up.

THERE ARE MUCH BETTER ISP'S...Horrible dsl,customer service, tech support, and beware of the schemes. It is very apparent they do not care about their customers. I imagine most people use them for a year and then leave as soon as humanly possible. Don't go through the terrible ordeal I have dealt with the past year.

I hate Earthlink. Sadly, they also are my webhost. Email sent to me through my domain name - is often lost because Earthlink web servers are overloaded and often crash, therefore email sent to your domain does not get forwarded to the underlying earthlink mailbox. "Customer Service" is all foreign based and if you want to speak to anyone connected to earthlink in America, you only get to do this if you want to buy an Earthlink service or product. Their service website is useless and if you get to chat - the call always ends up that "unfortunately, you will have to call in." It used to be a great ISP but now - the only thing that they remain good at is selling you more services. The biggest thing they sell you is a line of bull. They overload their servers and are not commmitted to serving their clients. Their goal is to get you off the phone and transfer you to someone else who says that they are not the ones to speak to either. Hate them

Earthlink is the worst company I've ever done business with on this planet. I've had an on going problem with them that goes back over 15 months. Today I was close to getting a refund for the entire amount I've spent with them. I was on the phone with them for almost 2 hours when the rep said all she had to do was contact TRON their technical division to declare and validate that my DSL service was unresovable. Instead she transfers me to a guy in India who answers the phone and says. Can I help you? This is after I was on the line with her for almost 2 hours. I had made so many phone calls and emails to Earthlink that I couldn't even begin to count. Often they never even acknowledged the emails. The most who get is robots reading and apologizing from a script and in the end they resolve nothing! Don't do business with them if you haven't had a problem yet you will, as they can't provide service and rely on third parties to handle customer issues and it simply doesn't work.

Varies a lot. Occasionally it's not horrible; usually it's so slow as to be almost unusable. It takes 10 minutes to check my gmail account. Any long page will fail to load and take you to earthlink's error page, which simply says the page doesn't exist, even though it does. This is the only "customer service" page they have when their software screws up. Total Access is the buggiest software ever; locks up all the time. Shuts down randomly. Worst ISP ever.

Horrible Service from Earthlink. Ten months of pure hell. Repetitive technical support - no better than troubleshooting on Earthlink's web site. Hours of wasted time. Ask technical support why IP doesn't ping or lost of packets and they totally ignore you. Looking for new DSL company, South Florida.

Earthlink is a pathetic joke. Every time I try to sign on there is some problem- such as their network is down, their server is broken, or their entire internet service just kind of bleeped out of existence. Parental controls are a pain in the you-know-what to configure and change, internet is as slow as frozen molasses, and they just got rid of Reuters (a very good news reporting company) on their home page. Stay away from this company! Even their tech support is a talking advertisment!!!

Earthlink is a pathetic joke. Every time I try to sign on there is some problem- such as their network is down, their server is broken, or their entire internet service just kind of bleeped out of existence. Parental controls are a pain in the you-know-what to configure and change, internet is as slow as frozen molasses, and they just got rid of Reuters (a very good news reporting company) on their home page. Stay away from this company! Even their tech support is a talking advertisment!!!

Earthlink is a pathetic joke. Every time I try to sign on there is some problem- such as their network is down, their server is broken, or their entire internet service just kind of bleeped out of existence. Parental controls are a pain in the you-know-what to configure and change, internet is as slow as frozen molasses, and they just got rid of Reuters (a very good news reporting company) on their home page. Stay away from this company! Even their tech support is a talking advertisment!!!

EarthSTINK! They opened an account "for me" after I purchased a Dell laptop. I was unaware of this until my bank account was tapped for a monthly fee. I called customer service and was told it would be fixed that day...apologies, etc. It was not. I called again and was told that it had already been fixed and I had my money back, which I did not. Then I was told by a line supervisor that I would have it in 7-10 days, which for some reason I just did not feel I should rely upon at that point. I called Atlanta to complain and was told yet another tale; it will take up to a month for a "refund" on an account that I did not sign up for. They tried to convince me that somehow I did sign up but forgot about it, however knowing what an unscrupulous and oppressive company EarthSTINK is, there is no way I would do that...but what the heck, like everyone else, I love when people insult my intelligence and blab gibberish at me hoping that I will be lost in the ambiguities of their speech. I am calling the Attorney General in my state and complaining. I would suggest to other that you do the same. This type of practice is "old hat" for EarthSTINK...they are well rehearsed.

I'd been trying to connect to earthlink for the last hour, and then i decided to use totalaccess, usually it would be a mistake, but well nothing would come up, and then i used my defalt dial-up connection and so far it's working but i'm not holding my breath.

Earthlink DSL is extremeny slow, and earthlink e- mail is so slow as to be almost unusable. I can't contact them, and one of their help sites Support, has a non usable site. Like I say, I can't even get in touch with this company thru any of their sites. It is too bad, I've had this company for a long time, but this year has certainly been problems...maybe it is bugs, but I got enough bug killer on this. Can't even contact them.

Of the available Dial-up ISP's, this one is the best I've ever used. Always connected on first try. Hardly ever dropped. Great features, add-on's, etc... If I were to ever do dial up again for whatever reason, this is who I'd use.

Worst service ever, disconnects and busy signals a normal occurence. Cancelled after 1 month.

I've been an Earthlink dial-up subscriber since 1999. For the first few years, I did not care for it. Initial Dial-up access was a coin flip each time and the software corrupted once (had to reload it to get it back to work). I am happy to say that the reliability in the past year has been outstanding. I get on everytime these days, never get knocked off, and Downloads are going at a true 56k. One of these days, I'll get broadband. However, Earthlink is infinitely better than those fiends at AOL.

Fairly stable as dialup ISPs go, but still no broadband service. Good price for dialup compared with AO-hell and MSN.

SLOW. no busy signals on dialup. disconnects do happen a lot. Not a very good service provider.

I have been a customer of mindspring and then they merged with earthlink for well over 6 years now. I have had nothing but good experience with them. My online connection is stable - out of the 6 years i have been with them - i probably lost connection due to their server maintenance no more than 3 or 4 times. I think they have professional support and I have always received proper assistance from them.

I had earthlink for about 2 weeks, extremely slow speeds when I used it. It doesn't load 15 pages in the time it takes AOL to load 1, that's bullcrap. It's not as bad as AOL, but it's still bad.

EARTHLINK HAS THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!! Sales reps that don't know ANYTHING, THEY LOVE TO TRANSFER YOU!! TRANSFER- TRANSFER!!! I got transfered to another company-- THE WORST EVER! DON"T do Business with this company, you will be happier with anyone else other than this horrible company.

I have been a customer of Earthlink ever since they bought out Springmail many years ago. Over 2 years ago I switched from dial-up to DSL. It took forever. Had to call back for them to get it set-up and installed several times. I estimated that I wasted 4 hours of my time trying to make sure that my order was actually placed in the system (some how it kept getting lost). Once I finally got the DSL up and running and never had to deal with them, I had no problems. A year later I moved to a new apt and moved my DSL as well. Once again, major headaches with Earthlink. They managed to lose more order AGAIN. The day after the DSL was supposed to start, I called and they said they had no indication that I had put an order in. Meanwhile, I was living off of dial-up through them, but they were charging me for the DSL connection instead of the dial-up connection. Since I was being charged for DSL rates and using dial-up, I went over their 20 hour maximum per month dial-up use and ended up being charged per hour. All while I was being charge for the DSL I didn't have. Several hours later on the phone, I finally got it all worked out and managed to get my DSL 7 weeks after I moved into my new location. The straw that broke the camels back - I moved and had to cancel my DSL connection. When I called they said I was paid in full and that there would be no more charges on my account. Yesterday I got a charge for $149.95 by Earthlink. I called them and they claimed that I canceled my DSL service before the 12-month contract. I explained the situation and all the guy did was say "Well your DSL didn't start working until Oct and you canceled in Sept. That's less than a year." I explained that I had been a customer of theirs for the past 8 years (roughly), that I had DSL through them for the last 2 years, and that they had messed up - they didn't install it when they were supposed to the first time. "You still have to pay the $150 early termination fee." Is $150 worth losing a graduate student in computer science (that will make sure he goes out of his way to bad mouth the company) worth it? What a waste. Such horrible customer service that I recommend that everyone look into other options before considering Earthlink.

I have been a coustomer for about a year, They are always happy to help solve any problems that come up. Waiting on hold for a while is a pain...but all in all EarthLink has been great.

All I can say is 26.4K.....Earthlink stinks!

Every question or problem is answered by saying it is the fault of - something other than their problem - such as - unable to use the dial-up connection - tech said it was because I have ZoneAlarm. Uninstalled ZoneAlarm, still did not work, said my IE version was too old. Said their system does not work with Netscape. Said I needed to uninstall windows and reinstall because must have a bad modem line in code. Well, I have AOL (which is insidious and I don't like it) and was able to use dial-up and complete needed tasks. Could site at least a dozen examples where Earthlink failed but they excuse their service by blaming something else. Wonder if anyone else has had this experience. I intend to fire them when I return home.

Earthlink has absolutely **THE WORST** customer service. I have moved my web site to Doteasy.com, and changed my DSL service to SBC -- both of which save me money for the exact same services. Avoid the nightmare I went through, and do not do business with Earthlink.

My god what an awful ISP. I went with them because they were indorsed by Apple. BIG MISTAKE! I've had nothing but problems since signing up. People I email report that what they receive from me is filled with letters, numbers, and codes that make my emails barely readible. Emails I receive end abruptly before completion. My work around was to get my complete email messages from web mail, but then I got locked out and couldn't access web mail. I latter figured out on my own a backdoor way in but discovered that my web mail was now totally empty. I contacted technical support repeatedly by email and live chat. It seem like they were clueless regarding the problems I was experiencing. None of their fixes worked. I finally figured out that all my problems were on their end and not on mine. It appears that their engineering department is systematically making changes to Earthlink but is not telling technical support what they are doing. Tonight, emails I were expecting did not download and I tried web mail, amazingly my messages have now magically reappeared in web mail. Lastly, regarding their installation software. The old version may still be available in some retail stores. Earthlink 5.0 came with a unique browser and sidebar but also gave you the option to use other browsers installed on your computer. On my wife's Windows XP computer there has been numerous compatibility problems. The more you use it the more bulky it gets. There are repeated script errors and eventually there will be a major error that results in the need to shutdown and reboot. A newer enterface called Total Access has come out with Windows Explorer as the default browser. I tried it but actually preferred the older interface. If you wanted your old Earthlink browser or wanted to switch to another competing browser, as far as I could tell, this was not possible. After long discussions with Earthlink chat they finally acknowledged this. Funny I thought it was illegal to lock you in to a microsoft product. For my son I installed Earthlink's Surf Monkey, needless to say it was very buggy and resulted in system crashes. Eventually it appeared that the best thing to do was simply give up trying to get Earthlink to work right and to switch ISPs. Once my trial period is over I'll be leaving Earthlink and returning to my previous ISP. Lesson learned, don't believe the hype. Earthlink is by far the worst ISP I have ever used. By comparison, AOL and CompuServe look pretty good.

Earthlink used to be good when I first signed up two years ago. My only gripe was when I installed the firewall programme ZoneAlarm, I found out that a number of the programmes that come with the software were accessing other computers. When I called technical support to find out what these were, they had no idea. Naturally I blocked the programmes from passing the firewall. However, over the past three months, although I can connect everytime, I get kicked off one or twice a day. Worse than that about half the time I am on the internet I cannot get to webpages; they just timeout. What is the point in paying $20 when you can only surf the web half the time? When I called tech support, and got through after 20 minutes, they blamed Internet Explorer, ZoneAlarm and my TCP/IP settings, i.e. everything except the possibility that their service might be bad. I think it is time to switch ISP...