The Family Sideways: Friendly service providers?

Friendly service providers? 6/10/2005 07:33:00 AM (See what I'm talking about)

OK, I've worked in IT for longer than I care to admit at this point, and my first proper job (not talking summer/winter break gigs here) was at a dinky little ISP out in Northbrook close to oh, 8 years ago now. If you recall, in the dark ages (aka 90's), it was extraordinarily difficult to get broadband, as it was the "hot new thing" at the time. DSL was brand new and spottily available, cable was just coming into its own, and nobody except 20-something geeks like me actually had high-speed internet, let alone knew what it was.

At this old ISP, we were a DSL re-seller. I can't tell you the number of problems we encountered in trying to prequalify and actually get lines installed - it was a complete nightmare. Add to that the fact that my boss was pretty much a scam artist (bouncing paychecks, anyone?), and you can see why I only stayed there for about 8 months.

Fast-forward to now. I, as the astute reader knows, am moving to Houston in three weeks (scary!). In doing so, I've had to deal with all the standard moving crap: cancelling and signing up for new utilities, forwarding mail, the works. Since I'm going to be working from home, and still employed because of my geek-worthyness (say what you will about VB, it pays the bills), broadband isn't just a no-brainer - it's a necessity.

So I searched for broadband providers in the Houston area. In Chicago, we dropped cable TV in favor of DirecTV (needed to see le Tour, yo, and no OLN on Cocmast), but retained the cable modem because we didn't want to spring for a phone line. In Houston I'm going the other route, because again, since I'll be working from home, I'll need that phone.

And I came across Oplink (see logo at top of this post). I can't recommend them enough (so far - I don't actually have the service yet, natch). They were the highest-rated DSL provider on broadbandreports/dslreports.com, so I decided to check them out. I emailed support with my situation, and got an email back the same day from a PERSON who, it seemed, ACTUALLY READ MY EMAIL and, hold your breath now: ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS.

Unbelievable.

They not only reassured me that as long as my phone line was live (and address was prequalified) they should be able to turn on my service in a few business days. Boo-ya. They also recommended I go with VOIP for long-distance (I'll be giving it a try alongside our standard Long Distance, boys), and told me how to get the lowest-cost possible, unadvertised bare-bones "Measured Rate" service from the phone company, SBC. This is a line that costs about $12 a month. Just a phone line, 25 included local calls, nothing else. But we need that phone line for DSL, you know? So I did that. They probably saved me about $30/month with that tip.

The only thing I was worried about, they handled not only well, but in a manner that FAR exceeded my expectations. I was concerned that since I was ordering service before I actually LIVED in Houston, they would send the DSL equipment to my house when I wasn't living there, and it would either bake in the sun and be no more than a bubbling mass of plastic and silicon upon our arrival, OR would be "borrowed" by a neighborhood kid and burned as a sacrifice to the pyro gods in a forest preserve somewhere. Or just sold on eBay, you know? Kids these days are different than Scott and I were, I guess.

So what do they do? They ship it out YESTERDAY, the day of my order, to me here in Chicago. The thing is, they haven't even put my order in the system yet, since my phone line doesn't go live until the 15th (if SBC is to be trusted, which, as mega-corporation service provider, we all know they are not).

If their DSL service is half as good as their CUSTOMER SERVICE, I'm in for a treat. AND, I won't have any problems with VOIP to boot.

Thank you, Oplink. Thank you for giving me hope in the era of "skimp wherever so we can save a buck".

But please still get my DSL working by the time I get to Houston. :)

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1 Comments:

Dana said...

I heart my geek.

posted at 7:58 PM