What Happened With RoadRunner?

As many of you all know, the SOSDG used to have a 1.5mbit line from RoadRunner, then suddenly we switched over to SpeakEasy (who we really should have gone with in the first place, but thats a whole different issue).

Wondering why we did this?

Back in Feb/Mar of this year, we began to have connectivity issues - we didn't notice them until we got the much more expensive switches and started doing VoIP. Quality on the VoIP service was horrible - dropped calls, lag, etc. Finally we began having line dropouts once every 6-12 hours.

We contacted RoadRunner who insisted that the problem was on our end - so being the diligent people we are, we swapped out all of our equipment and cables - brand new Cisco 2900xl 24 to replace our almost brand new Cisco 2900xl 12, new ethernet cards, new cat6 wires, etc. Still the exact same problem after we changed it all. RR still insisted it was us, but sent out one of their techs to 'diagnose' the problem.

The tech, who seemed very smart while chatting with her, apparently didn't know the basics of how 10BaseT Half duplex works, and attributed the collisions on that interface to our equipment. Once again, claiming it was our fault and refusing to swap out the equipment. She had stood us up for an appointment one time before this as well.

Frustrated, we tried to get somewhere with RR, but at that point, we couldn't get anyone to talk to us or call us back, not even supervisors. Finally, we called in some favors and had a CCIE and CCNA from Cisco take a look at our equipment and setup - they right away alerted us to a known flaw in the Cisco router RR provided us that would be causing the failures we were seeing.

I managed to get in touch with a RR supervisor who promised to look into it and come out for an appointment to test our theory with the collisions and the flaw in the router. Needless to say, we got stood up again.

We finally said 'fuck it' and called SpeakEasy, who had our new DSL line installed in under 24 hours and activated shortly after. I filed a complaint with the Indiana BBB about Brighthouse, and we refused to pay any of our back bills until someone decided to actually call us about our service problems and issue the appropriate credit.

A few months after, someone from Brighthouse did finally call us back about our $2000 in unpaid bills. Well, after being given a hard time about service credit, we finally got them to knock off more then $400 in the bill (for outages, service cancelation, being stood up by not only a tech but supervisor, which cost Andrew hundreds of dollars in lost revenue for the time he had to take off).

But, the fun doesn't end there! Apparently the person who got us the credit left Brighthouse, and didn't properly document the credit. We get a notice from a collections agency about owing Brighthouse 700 or so. Back to the BBB we went and filed yet another complaint.

Finally, Brighthouse decided to honor their agreement with us and make sure the 700 in credit was given.

If I could have been there to shove the Cisco router down the tech and supervisor's throat, I would have. Their lazy asses forced us to shell out money to buy new equipment that we didn't need, as well as bring in experts to diagnose the problem.

So, to recap - Brighthouse/RR blows monkey chunks - SpeakEasy is awesome (and cheaper).