Complaint Review: Cascade Netowrks - Longview Washington

Cascadenetworks.net

Well lets start in the begining.

I own a large building in the down town area and have extra space on the top floor that needed to be rented out. I also need internet service. So to kill two birds with one stone I invited an upstart wireless provider (old employees of old wireless provider in town that was poorly run and went under, however the employees really wanted to make it work so I was all for them to do so) into my building with a very nice deal on rent for internet in exchange. Currently they are paying $300 a month for three seperate rooms that are interconnected and have hallway access each. Normally these rooms would go for at least $200 a piece, but we both had something each other needed. So we struck up this deal.

They get all moved in. A few weeks later I ask when I'll be getting my lan connection so I can get my connection lit up. A few more weeks go by. Months... Months of them not paying their rent for two months in a row. I quit bugging them figuring they weren't going to last much longer in the ISP business. They finally get everything rolling and start paying the rent more regularly. This is when I once again question when I'm going to get my cable. Within that week I pestered quite a bit and finally got it. All wired up and ready to use the net. I was happy and ready to test it out.

First thing I do is come to the speed test here and check it out. At that time they had a T1 for all their wireless customers in the local area. I get a nice 1500/1500 range test and am satisfied. As I'm doing this test I get an icq message asking me what I'm doing cause my light on the switch is blinking an aweful lot. I explain I was doing a speed test and they accept that and tell me well don't use up all the bandwidth. I can understand this no problem. This is were the first major problem came in. Not only did they not want me to suck up large amounts of bandwidth, but they didn't really even want me to use over 10k/s. Every time I would I'd lose my link for a few seconds and it'd suddenly come back of course losing the download I was working on.

Well I later found out from my sources within and around the company was that they were unpluging me everytime they saw the light blinking on the switch. Thus I really had no usuable internet. I whined about this fact a few weeks later and was told well you use all the bandwidth and no one else gets any. Last time I checked a properly setup network should share the bandwidth to all customers and apparently they do not know how to setup a proper network as I really could suck up all the bandwidth at will. So we came to an agreement. I'd only download during dark hours. Ok no problem I'm a night owl anyways. So that was settled.

Months go by and I have a new tenant move in who also wants to get in on the internet and is willing to pay them cash money for it. After some dickering and refusals to pay more then the rest of the customers just, because instead of being wireless he was directly connected. (Which in the end costs them less, they don't seem to grasp these simple business concepts) He ended up getting his connection. And shared the same cable that ran down to the downstairs area where my firewall was. Now we were sharing the same light.

And once again I went back to the no connection problems I had before. I attempted to explain that they now have two users sharing that same link and disconnecting one for using it too much disconnects them both. The new tenant was now going to have to go to the same agreement as I. No downloads during day light. Now I'm paying $300 a month in rent exchange for night broadband service and modem by day basically was about all the speed I was allowed. While he's paying the normal rate of $70 a month for all regular users of wireless and getting the same service level I was. A joke, a bad one at that. What's the point of paying for the internet if you aren't allowed to use it.

A few months go by we suffer using the internet at night only. A new fiber loop is located on the out skirts of our town via noa.net a nonprofit using BPA's dark fiber and attempting to bring broadband to the back waters of Washington. Cascade Networks gets linked into this and suddenly we are no longer T1 speed, but fractional T3 speeds of 400+k/s. Wow now that was nice! Too bad I wasn't allowed to use it. The tenant on my same cable used it lots however and I got to hear all the rumors about how much bandwidth I suck up when I could show anyone my Du Meter logs showing that I had moved a total of 30 gigs in six months (most of which is internal network traffic, printers, email, pos random broadcasts that are a constant 1-3k/s incoming all the time). Now it's time to get broadband at home. I just can't handle the modem anymore. I ask them to get me signed up for wireless. I ask again and again and again. Months go by and I still have nothing. No wonder they have trouble paying rent. They can't get customers online to collect money from.

I was last told they were up to 150 customers now. Out of a town of 60k people in and around the surrounding areas. Seems a little small to me, but that's their business. Anyways back to my wireles at home. So I finally have to make serveral trips up stairs and in person bug them and also call quite a few times and finally get some action.

I'm now signed up through their sign up guy who has no clue about how the service even works. Nice guy however, but they should have taught him at least how a little of the stuff he was selling worked. Weeks go by and I continue to call and ask when will they be coming out? Finally! They come out to hook me up. Now I spoke of a out of business wireless provider earlier. Well I still had the equipment from them when they went under and had paid over $1000 for all of it. And it was all still hooked up and ready to go. At the time of signing up I mentioned this and was told just pay the full equipment install fees and we'll take care of it later. Well the installer came out and realigned my antenna and reset my wireless card so it'd work with their network. Poof I was online. I asked well aren't I going to get new equipment? Oh, don't worry about it we'll get it later I was told. I didn't need it right now. I agreed and just wanted the net to work for once. I started jokeing with the installer and listened to his storys of these bad users who "USED" the internet! Heaven forbid. They would even disconnect them at times for uploading too much, because they must be running warez servers. Hmm what had I gotten myself into. They won't even let the people who paid to get on the wireless network use the bandwidth. Well I had it now and hopefully I could use it more often then at work. Time passes I use the broadband that peaks around 180k/s at home and my 400k/s at work during dark hours only. I awake one day to find myself with no internet. I think to myself my wireless radio must have crapped out. Well I guess I'll get that equipment I paid for now. So I get a hold of them and say ok I need my equipment I paid for now. We're sorry it'll be an extra $250 again on top of the $250 you already paid to get that. WHAT! No way was I going to pay more for something i already had paid for once, twice and maybe even three times over. A few months passed and I complained about this to the local computer groups about how not to do business with this company. Well it turns on some of the people in these groups actually think this company does great service and business to everyone around and told them everything I was saying about them. So now I have to get rumors back from my sources about how much I'm bitching about them.

I finally make the trek upstairs to find out what the... is going on. I knock on the door and say one word, "Internet?". I was asked to come in a sit down. I did and listened. Tracy the owner of the company complained about me not coming to him with my issues and how he wasn't making enough money and had to charge me more now to make up for it. Um, I signed a contract for "service". I kept going back to this I "paid" already bit and that I had agreed to use his service and pay for it a while back and that included the equipment to get online with. Which at that time I did not accept or need. We went back and forth and I stayed pretty hardline that I wasn't going to pay more for service that sucked as it was and that I had already paid once for. We talked a bit about how hard business was and he mentioned things about his rent (how good of a deal it was) and how he felt I abused my connection (that cost me $300 a month in lost rent, he of course didn't think about this).

With out reaching any sort of agreement on getting me hooked back up I was going to leave and start some proceeding with my lawyer. As I was exiting the office I struck up a deal for him for my connection at home I'd pay him $100 a month $40 more then the going rate and I'd like 6 usuable ips with that. He said ok I can do that, but can I get $75 a month for the install? Ok, I can handle that and it was done we shook and I left. A week or so later they came out and go me the right equipment (which it turned out it was the $500 amp that I had purchased back when the last company was around and had a tower too far from my house to get a good signal). Now I was left with a $500 grey box that didn't do anything and a new cisco wireless link that got me back up and running.

A month passes and I'm using the net with no issues the issues at work have pretty much gone away and life is good. I get my bill. For $400. So that's $100 for service and $300 for install. WHAT?! Ok my math must be really bad, cause it should have been $175 total. NOT, $400. Hmmm what to do about this... I decide the net chance I get I was going to go "speak" with Tracy. It just happens two days later I spot him downstairs. Here's my chance. I walk up to him and ask him to put out his hand. He does I grab it and shake it and ask if he remembers this from the other day. Um, yeah I guess is his reply. I said well when we did this we agreed to $100 a month for service and you asked for $75 for the install which I agreed to. Remember? Well, umm, you must have misunderstood me. Hmmm, funny I have a photographic and audiographic memory and can play the entire conversation back in my head. So I ask well were did $300 come from you are only charging everyone else $250. Oh, I must have overcharged you I'll refund that on your next bill. Feeling as if I just received the shaft from a guy who his word and handshakes are his bond I accept this at the time. I am stuck with him as I have no other choice for my net at home. I'm just too far away for anything of quality. Satilite is starting to look better even with the 400ms pings.

Months pass and I have yet to get my refund of $50. I am now getting billed for "enhanced services". Ha. About a month before this change over in my service name I also received something new. A bandwidth cap. 256k sync to be exact. Both at work and home. Also a approx 2.8k/s cap on my server machine. Now I'm pissed. Unfortunately for them their network can't be capped internally and they can only cap on a per ip bases. So I now have 256 for all six of my ips. Which I of course download on all of them as much as I can. This is also what finally pissed me off enough at work to go a different route. I found a dsl provider. 1000k sdsl. For only $169 a month! I'll actually save money and be able to use it when I want now. Cascade Networks will be receiving a notice soon of our discontinuation of internet services in the building and another note with a new contract attached informing them that their rent will be increased to the normal going rate due to the previous note. From $300 to $600. They just paid for that new dsl router I had to buy ;-). This will be happening later this week and we'll see how it goes. They are kinda stuck with us as all their equipment appears to be routed via my building. It's really nice being able to download at 125k/s in broad daylight. I almost feel like I'm being bad or something.

Well it's the first of the next month and for some reason Cascade Networks has stopped auto billing my card for my "dehanced services" here at home and now I'm on a dialup that is my backup for work (since the network used to constantly get unplugged I had to have some sort of way of getting back online). My wireless is down and I don't think I'm going to pay for it anymore. I hear there is a wireless provider out of a neighboring town across the river. Maybe I can hit them... maybe not. Either way about the same time I ordered DSL I contacted noa.net (same provider that cascade uses) and found out some prices to get on the fiber loop. Not too bad and on the fly bandwidth usuage billed on a 95% usuage rating. Then I started looking into wireless fiber connections. Via first Terabeam which never responded to me and apparently does not wish to make any money, but just spend their investors money paying their employees way to much to not sell their products. I love how that works. I wish we could run our businesses that way. I have so many friends who whine about how they lost their jobs, because the company didn't plan right or just didn't have enough to pay them, yet they never once tried to sell their companies products to anyone. Their company didn't even encourage them to do so. That's another story we can talk about that one another time. Back to wireless. I then contacted Airfiber and Nortel which appears to be selling their products repackaged under the Nortel name. I have an actual service rep from Nortel who is working along with me to get things rolling. They seem reluctant to give me some hard numbers, but I will get it out of them eventually. The concept is I control Cascade's rent and livelyhood and will not use that to hurt them. I just want them to understand it.

I am however going to go into direct competion with them providing broadband via wireless fiber and wireless radio to their existing customer who wish to get the speed back they are still paying for. Our family has a history of always succeeding and taking 75% of the market in any business venture we pursue. Hopefully they'll be enough room for both of us. Either way. I want people to get good service and with him in my building he is making us look bad. We hate that. We have worked for 20 years to establish an image of being tuff on fair in all our business dealings. We never go back on a deal and always honor what we say. This will extend into the broadband service also when that gets going. It will be quite a shock for the local residents who are used to being so screwed over time and time again by Cascade Networks. Hopefully they haven't lost all hope in the isp business.

Thanks for reading my rants

I'd like this to be published some how as a warning to others who wish to deal with this company.

btw here's their current rate schedule

$450.00 install

256k $49

384 95

512 120

640 145

768 165

This is a shared wireless network like cable that you can't even come close to guaranteeing those speeds. And at those prices I continue to laugh and laugh. DSL here and about half that much usually and you actually get that speed and a lot of times the equipment is free and never $450. Take my business sdsl for example that's $169 for 1000k. They are charging $165 for 768 that you might be able to get on off peak hours. I hope they quickly learn about business and survive, but the way they are going it's burning at both ends and it's just a matter of time. Maybe I can pick me a wireless company up cheap ;-)

Something I find kind of amusing. They are unable to cap the internal network traffic from radio to radio so we are still able to transfer full speed of the towers (around just under 200k/s). Which also happens to bog then entire network down to nothing no matter if it's internet or just internal wan traffic. Poorly deployed network that's very poorly managed. One worm put on a few systems in this network and no one will have any bandwidth what so ever.

Once again thanks for reading my letter I hope to see some sort of posting regarding this company were others like me can submit their feelings and ward others away from this service.