The Best (and Worst) ISPs

Tech Support Stumbles

While broadband customers are generally satisfied with their service, they are not terribly happy with the quality of the customer and technical support they get, regardless of who their provider is. Subscribers to Road Runner and Cablevision gave those service providers the highest technical-support scores, followed by the local and regional ISPs that fell into the "Other" category (see "The Little ISP Around the Corner" in this article for more about local services). Even for the top-scoring Road Runner, tech-support satisfaction was a modest 65 percent.

Road Runner and Cox were close to the top in customer-support satisfaction, while Comcast received middling grades; AOL, NetZero, and MSN (for dial-up service) brought up the rear.

Karl Bode, editor of the ISP ratings Web site BroadbandReports.com (formerly known as DSLreports.com), says that even with improvements in equipment and technology, broadband installation remains problematic. "Many of the complaints we see on our message boards have to do with shoddy installation," Bode reports. "Someone has broadband service installed, but then realizes there's a problem. Usually they notice that their download speeds are slower than they expect. Often the customer has to make a series of calls to get the line levels corrected to get a good signal," he says.

Gail Cafferty has first-hand experience with the problem. She's a second-grade teacher who lives in Cranston, Rhode Island, and who has been a Cox subscriber since 2003. Cafferty gives the company generally good grades (and won't hesitate to recommend the service to others). Still, when she installed her cable connection, Cafferty struggled to get the level of service she had contracted for. "One week after Cox sent a technician to install our service, everything died," she says. "I was sure the installation wasn't the problem. I called the tech support line and had to deal with someone who didn't understand what I was talking about, and who made me walk through everything I'd already done before getting to the next level of support," Cafferty says.

Cafferty persisted until Cox agreed to send a technician to her home, who ultimately diagnosed and corrected the problem, which turned out to be Cox's fault. A month later, Cafferty noted an $80 service charge for the house call on her bill. "They hadn't told me they would charge me for the service call," she says. "I wouldn't have noticed had I not paid attention to my bill. It took me over an hour on the phone with them--talking to lots of people up the chain--to get them to reverse the charges, but they finally agreed. I've had no problem since then and am now happy with my service." Unfortunately, such service charges are common among broadband providers, so keep an eye on your monthly fees.

Catherine Genna had initially ordered high-speed service from EarthLink to be installed on the business line in her home office. Six weeks later, frustrated that EarthLink hadn't provided service, she switched to Covad. The company immediately told her that it was impossible for it or any other provider to offer DSL on her business line, and promptly installed the service on her home line instead. According to Genna, completing the cancellation order from EarthLink and receiving a refund took another six weeks. "I have friends who have had good experiences with EarthLink, so it was disappointing to me that I didn't," she says.

Hit-and-Miss Extras

Of course, many providers offer more than just an Internet connection. For example, antivirus, antispam, and anti-spyware services are now de rigueur with many ISPs--and the list is ever expanding. Unlike with service and reliability, no ISP was a consistent winner on our survey when it came to some of these extra features (see "Surveying ISP Satisfaction: Additional Features").

For example, Road Runner ranked highly for its e-mail service, but its users were dissatisfied with the company's spam blocking and parental controls. EarthLink users were among the happiest with their ISP's e-mail service, but they were far less enthusiastic about EarthLink's parental controls and free storage. AOL, which did not perform well in service or reliability, turned out to have more satisfied users when it came to e-mail and antivirus services, parental controls, and personalization features.