Earthlink Sucks

My more alert readers will have noticed that my profile photo was not displaying for a while there. Long story...but hey, that's what I'm here for.

Last week for some reason Earthlink just kind of arbitrarily deactivated our account. (They say it was a chargeback from the bank, but there's no reason why that would have happened, so the source of the problem is unclear.) I figured I'd log in to 'My Account' and fix it...but no. Deactivated. So I tried calling, got stuck in phone tree hell at a point where they wanted the number of the credit card on the account--but I couldn't remember which card I used--and it wouldn't let me back out. So I tried the 'Live Chat' option and spent 30 minutes with a 'person' who obviously hadn't studied for the Turing Test (but did, in fact, claim to be a 'person') before I was finally told I would have to resolve it over the phone. (I filled out an eval survey at the end of the process, and checked the box requesting a copy of the transcript. Never got it.) Called again and spent another half hour with a customer service rep who kept insisting I had disputed a charge, and that had triggered the deactivation. Eventually it was all straightened out ('technical glitch' is the current story).

Then, over the weekend, I noticed the missing profile photo, and got a bad feeling. Sure enough: everything I uploaded to my Earthlink webspace: gone. Called today, was on the phone another 30 minutes before the guy verified that, yup, in the 24 hours or so during which the account was inactive, the files had been deleted from the server.

So, to review: phantom chargeback; no notice to me before deactivating the account; no way to fix the billing info once deactivated; all my files deleted from the server quicker than you can say 'Earthlink sucks'; poorly designed phone tree; terrible online customer service; a total of 1.5 hours (or so) spent resolving all the issues. On the other side of the scale, I did cow the guy I talked to today into giving me a one-month credit. Still: not ecstatic about the whole experience. I only hope Earthlink has the wisdom to learn from it.

[That's all, folks]