Early termination fee with sonic now live - Other bad practi

[Guest]

Does the one year contract come with a performance guarantee? The primary reason for me not switching to Comcast Business is that they guarantee a term of payment but they will not guarantee any performance. If Sonic and Comcast will have similarly hostile contracts, I'd probably go with Comcast's faster service.

You will never get a performance guarantee for residential service from Sonic or "business" service from Comcast/AT&T. A proper service with SLAs will cost you several hundred dollars per month at a minimum, which Sonic actually offers.

[geogriffin]

My gut reaction is to wretch at the idea of a 12-month contract -- but if the alternative is to pay for the upgrade costs up front, it makes sense. You're actually doing us a favor. Residential internet customers are so used to the idea of a contract that this seems like a very smart business move.

[digitalbitstream]

I also note that Sonic's main web page now is confusing and murky as to the actual prices.
Perhaps as companies grow they just become less consumer oriented?

[thulsa_doom]

I also note that Sonic's main web page now is confusing and murky as to the actual prices.

How so? I'd love to see all of the various municipalities standardize the taxes so we could just have one price across the board, but I don't think that's terribly likely.

[ifund@sonic.net]

Dane,

We are a non-profit organization (www.impactfund.org) supporting litigation for social and equal justice. We are also a client of Sonic.net and feel like we are being ripped-off for paying $750+ a month for barely 3GB of service. I have complained to our customer service rep and his reply was to have us sign a new contract and pay more monthly to add fiber optic lines. That's absurd and insulting. We feel that this contract is not fair and that your salesman took advantage of our inexperience with this type of service especially when you advertise the same FlexLink service on your website 500MBPs starting at $499. We are paying over $750 and receiving 3MBPs. Can you fault us for feeling like we were deceived? Can you step in and do what is right?

[Guest]

Is the access forum really the best place for you to settle your grievance?

[rawcolors]

@ifund

I entered your address on the check availability tool and saw that you will only get up to 20 Mbps with Fusion FTTN x2. I would estimate your distance from the nearest node to be about 11,000+ feet, which explains why you're experiencing slow speeds. Unfortunately there is not much you can do about this situation without upgrading to fiber. You should talk to Sonic and explain your situation to avoid early termination fees (if applicable). You will probably be better served by cable at your distance.

[dane]

The primary issue here is location, as well as the services provided. ImpactFund is not located near the central office, so very-fast and inexpensive copper services are not available. As a result, the options are bonded T1s or faster fiber services. Both are more costly than services available elsewhere.

To provide an example, ifund has FlexLink Long-Range 2xT1 service today, which is a 3.0Mbps symmetric dedicated line. The cost is $449/mo, which is a typical or better than typical price for a 2xT1 service. But if they were located elsewhere (about two miles West of the current site), $499/mo would buy a 4x FlexLink DMT product which can deliver as much as 250Mbps/50Mbps, or $599/mo would buy a 8x FlexLink DMT which can achieve as much as 500Mbps/100Mbps. These max speeds are available to customers very close to the central office - the further away they are, the slower the service. So for example at a bit over a mile away, that $599/mo 8x FlexLink DMT product is less than 100Mbps/10Mbps. Same monthly fee, same technology, just a different location.

The remainder of ifund's roughly $750 total monthly cost covers their eight POTS analog voice lines, taxes and voice usage. A move to FlexLink Hosted PBX might be a strategy for reducing costs for voice services, depending upon how many seats (phones), age and costs of their current phone system, etc.

Our goal is to work with each business client to find the optimum price and performance for their particular location. There are sites that can get 10 seats of Hosted PBX plus Gigabit to every desktop for $400/mo, and there are sites where that doesn't even buy 3Mbps (as in this case). As a result, each situation is unique.

[Guest]

Do we have to lock into a new contract when fiber becomes available?

[dane]

Do we have to lock into a new contract when fiber becomes available?

Yes, I think that's likely. But we will see - right now in Brentwood for example we are selling fiber without a term commit. Things are always subject to change.