We got severely screwed during the MCI->Verizon transition. They stopped billing us our overage on our DS-3 for about 6-8 months. We just assumed we hadn't gone over our base rate. All of a sudden, we get an invoice in the mail for something like $20k+. The very next day we get a call from collections asking why we haven't paid our bill and that it's past due. We explain that we just received it and explained how they put all the charges in for their original dates instead of for the invoice date.
Next day, our service goes down. We are on the phone calling everyone. Support says our circuit is up and everything is fine. Get a hold of billing and they say we were shut off for non-payment. We pay the bill over the phone and the circuit is still down for several hours. We call for days asking for answers and no one knows what happened or why we were down. Support says it was a problem with our equipment and that the circuit wasn't turned off due to non-payment. We had already setup another connection but didn't have a backhaul big enough to handle our traffic yet. Needless to say, we moved all traffic off that circuit the next day and called and cancelled the Verizon DS-3. Now, for the funny part. We cancelled the service as fast as we could per our contract. Something like 30 days notice or something. But even after that, they left the circuit up and running. We disconnected it from our router it was still connected to the CSU. About three months later, they actually pull the circuit. We get a call from support telling us that it appears our connection is down and to check our equipment! I explained that the reason it was down was due to the cancellation. They still tried to bill us for the time of cancellation until they removed the circuit. Lots of fighting later, even after showing them their letter confirming our cancellation after received our certified letter, I don't think it was ever resolved. The circuit was originally purchased from UUNET and there were great. MCI acquired them and support went downhill fast. Like Cogent, you could have someone at UUNET look at BGP problems 24/7. Once MCI took over, they only had an engineer available M-F,8-5. Once Verizon took over, it was absolutely terrible. On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Marco Coelho <coelh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Worldcom was the worst for billing issues. MCI was the bomb before > they were assimilated. > > > > On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Brad Belton <b...@belwave.com> wrote: >> AboveNET will layout the exact path your fiber feed will be for you. Just >> make sure you're secondary path is completely diverse from whatever you >> choose as your primary. >> >> My suggestion would be to go with AboveNET or Level3 as your primary and use >> Cogent as your secondary. We haven't had any billing issues with any of our >> upstream providers that wasn't easily straightened out. Maybe we've just >> been lucky or maybe we just review our agreements more closely and haven't >> allowed for any chance of discrepancies. As they say...YMMV! >> >> Best, >> >> >> Brad >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On >> Behalf Of Marco Coelho >> Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:01 AM >> To: WISPA General List >> Subject: Re: [WISPA] choice of upstreams >> >> Our situation is thus: We are leasing a 45 Mile1 Gig fiber link from >> Greenville TX to 2323 Bryan ST. in Dallas (carrier hotel). >> >> My primary need is quality bandwidth. This will become my preferred >> route to the world. >> Secondary requirement is a company I won't have to spend 1 year >> working to get the billing correct. >> >> I am installing a 1 Gig (800M/800M) licensed PTP link from my NOC to >> another lit building in Richardson TX for path diversity. >> The choice of carriers here will be more limited. With Abovenet being >> one of the primary choices. I do not want this connection to go to >> the same carrier as the other connection. >> >> It's really kind of funny.... I was just a few years ago (12) when >> bonded 6 T's together and thought I had all the bandwidth in the >> world! Now I'll have and additional 2G at my NOC for less than I was >> paying for the 6 Ts. >> >> Marco >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> ---- >> WISPA Wants You! Join today! >> http://signup.wispa.org/ >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> ---- >> >> WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org >> >> Subscribe/Unsubscribe: >> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >> >> Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ >> >> >> >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> WISPA Wants You! Join today! >> http://signup.wispa.org/ >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org >> >> Subscribe/Unsubscribe: >> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >> >> Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ >> > > > > -- > Marco C. Coelho > Argon Technologies Inc. > POB 875 > Greenville, TX 75403-0875 > 903-455-5036 > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! 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