Good-bye Earthlink

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I’ve been with Earthlink since August 1999. Yesterday I was notified they were no longer going to offer DSL service in my area after March 31. It appears the only thing they are going to offer in this area is anachronistic dial-up. They say the change is due to new technology advances. It’s sad for me to say good-bye to a company that I’ve been with for almost 18 years. But I’m not going back to dial-up for two reasons, one, it’s slow and two it ties up the phone line. Back when I first got dial-up I had friends who got angry at me because my phone line was always busy. I would be on line for awhile then get off for awhile. If they didn’t call while I was off-line then they were out of luck. I eventually had a second line installed. After about a year I decided that was too expensive and had the second line disconnected. Then I signed up for the telephone answering service. That worked quite well. Then about seven years ago I signed up for DSL and dropped the answering service since I had a phone with an answering machine. When I first signed up for internet service I went with AOL. I was happy with them for about four years. Then my credit card expired. I called and told them my new expiration date. When my bill came due my internet service was shut off. I called and found my information was not updated. I was told I’d have service within 24 hours. I did not. I called again and the guy I talked to said it wasn’t AOL’s fault and proceeded to chew me out for not updating the information earlier than I did. He, too, told me my service would be back on within 24 hours. It was not. So I called again. This guy apologized for it not being turned on and for the guy chewing me out. He said they would have it back on within 24 hours. But by then I had had enough. “Just forget it,” I told the guy. “You’ve been a customer for four years,” he said. “We hate to loose you.” “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m tired of this.” He said he understood, apologized again and asked me to reconsider. I told him I would not. So I searched for another company and settled on Earthlink. One thing that I think has happened since I joined is Earthlink has become a big company. So big I don’t think they care if they loose customers. Several years ago I was buying refilled ink cartridges online. I bought from this company for a good two years without any problems. Then I received an empty cartridge. I contacted the company and asked for a replacement. I was told the cartridges were sold as is. I said I had been a customer for two years and had never had any problems so I felt I deserved at least one replacement. Nope. So I told them I would never order from them again. They replied they had plenty of customers and did not need my business. About a year later I received an email from the company begging me to come back. They were offered me free cartridges, but I stuck to my guns. I eventually had their email address put into my known spam file so I wouldn’t have to delete their emails. I have no idea if they are still in business or not. Anyway, now the search is on again. But I think I’m going to go with Centurylink. That is who I have for my landline phone so it’ll all be on one bill. There is one thing I like about Centurylink. Every time I have communicated with them the first thing they say is, “Thank you for being a continuing customer. We appreciate your business.” Even if it’s just a line, it’s still nice to hear it.