I've been using Speakeasy for my DSL provider for about 3 years now. They've been really good. Recently, they got assimilated (along with Covad) into Megapath. I've had my first serious dealings with the new entity over the last couple of weeks, and it wasn't all good.
I got a 'special deal' email from Megapath, and we've been thinking our monthly charge was a little high, so I clicked on it. That wasn't a fruitful endeavour; I couldn't find any of their SLAs or other details on the site. So I clicked on the 'interactive chat' button and actually got a person.
The upshot of that first conversation was that the Megapath person (let's call him 'Mike') said he could get me 6.0/768 for essentially the same price, and get me some additional static IPAs as well. So we did protocol to make that happen. Friday of that week, my SBH called to tell me that someone claiming to be from AT&T had been knocking at the door — and she told him to go away because she didn't know anything about stuff happening on Friday. (AT&T was supposed to come the following Monday.)
After going round and round a bit on that with "Mike" (who indicated that I really should be going through the fulfillment team), it became clear that AT&T would be coming out the following Monday to set up the loop from the CO to the network interface in our kitchen. A Megapath technician would be coming out subsequently to install the actual DSL modem and such. (Which was another surprise; I was expecting it to be a self-install as it always had been before.)
Monday came and the AT&T tech came out. (Curiously enough, he was one of the original telephone cable guys who had wired the building, so he was able to explain some interesting factoids.) His loop test indicated that we were 11_500 feet from the CO, which over copper is a loooong way. And no way would it support 6.0 data speeds. So after a little dancing, I got a new contract for 3.0/768, and the Megapath tech would be coming out on Thursday to do the install.
Thursday rolled around and the Megapath technician (also an ex-telephone company guy) arrived at 09h00. He hooked up the DSL modem to the primary phone pair and saw bad bandwidth and high error rates. He re-tried the process at the network interface in the kitchen with the same results. Not good news for my high-speed contract, but it vindicated my cable-making skills — the noise and error rates I've seen in the past are not due to my own cabling. He found that the circuit would support my original 1.5/768 speed — just barely. So he apologised, left the new modem hooked up in my office, and departed.
I was fairly well pissed off at this point. Someone from Megapath called and I asked him to call back in ten minutes because I was busy. He didn't call back at all. After waiting a few hours I called "Mike" and brought him up to speed. He wanted to get me interested in SDSL or a T1 line, but those kinda defeated my original purpose (to get a lower price). So we ended up with my original contract terms for about US$30 less per month, plus some more IP addresses.
And today I get a number of ticket updates from Megapath saying the phone company will be coming out, and then a Megapath technician, to set up my service as a new customer.
All in all, not a stellar experience. I'm looking into alternatives; I'm not impressed with Megapath as the successor to Speakeasy.
