Experiences with Alice DSL - Germany

Hi,

I am brand new here. I had posted this in another thread, but I hope it is OK that I post it here too, since it seems like a relevant thread

We are in Berlin and read an article about how much DSL with D-Telekom was compared to others, so we started looking into it. We found Arcor was much cheaper and that we could have a 3000 flat rate for less then our 1000 flat rate now. We sent in our contract on Friday and yesterday my wife read how horrible Arcor's service is and that they have MANY outages We have also googled for some other reviews of Arcor and there are many bad ones!

We are sending in a letter and a fax to cancel our contract that we signed with Arcor and are now considering what to do. As you, we are very interested in Alice-dsl, but since they are so new, we are a bit gun shy

It would be really great to hear from some people that have had any experience with Alice!

TIA,
IE

Except up in Hamburg (as Hansanet) I don't think Alice has an installed base yet. They only started selling the product 2 weeks ago so are unlikely to have many (any?) installations yet...

On paper they look good, and their prices are attractive - at least their opening offers. I've spoken to their customer service and found them helpful and informed. This might not mean much - I also had similar experiences with Arcor 3 years ago when they started out...

YL6

And execpt for Hansanet and a few isolated pockets of major cities
ALL DSL providers resell DT Lines/service, only with the hassle of cust. service service probs.,long wait times and a few other "Gotcha's"

We have Arcor and have not experienced any outages. The down side is their lack of service. It would take a month for them to install and configure our WLAN so we hired a third party who charged us a small fortune for the work. I feel as if I got screwed with out a kiss.

Well I have DT with T-Online (all paid for by the company) and have never had any problems. Maybe more expensive, but really is a good connection.

@ Texas - Should have asked around a bit before doing your WLAN. I installed mine at home, and it really is easy to do !

Thanks for your responses and thanks to Bob for moving this to it's own thread and sorry again about the double post.

It seems like they make it so hard for you to switch and I guess that makes sense from a business stand point. The idea of the customer is always right does not seem to work too well in a "Service Wüste"

I had called T-Online to ask them about the switch and the woman was actually pretty helpful. She also offered me 2 months free Flat Rate if we would stay with them, so I guess they are feeling the heat of people getting fed up with the german version of Ma Bell!

But, my wife and I are really freaked about making the move at this point, as now we have to deal with killing this contract! I understand that since alice-dsl has just come to town, there will not be an awful lot of personal experiences with them, but maybe some people that have used them in Hamburg might have some? Maybe I am wrong and they are just starting out in the whole of Germany?

We would dearly like to switch, but hate the idea of lack of service and service disruptions.

Thanks again,
IE

Got my connection with Alice DSL going...yahooo!!!

So here is my experiance with changing the connection from Telekom to Alice:

Background info:

I had a T-ISDN line with T-DSL (1000Mbps) line before and i was paying something like 75 euros a month for the internet alone without even lifting the phone. So time to look for a new cheap connection.

Possible options:

Just before Alice hit the scene, Arcor was the other cheap alternative and i had even applied online with them. Got the contract mailed to me in the next two days for my signature... but then Alice adverts started appearing all over the town. Arcor wanted me to have their connection for a minimum of 24 months. That was a bit worrying, so decided to wait for Alice's offer. When the offer was put up on the net, it was really a great deal for a 5000 Mbps line with only a 4 week notice period.

The story with Alice:

Applied online for their service on the 10th of Feb. I chose to transfer my connection from Telekom to Alice with the option of keeping my old numbers. They sent a confirmation two days later and then a few days later a form for me to sign to authorize them to take the line from Telekom. Signed it and sent it via the free post envelope. (I waited for a week to send this form back since i was not sure if i'll be staying at my present place) That means i wasted a week. In a week i got the confirmation about the line and the date of connection (8th march in my case). They sent me the free DSL modem/router.

Now i have a super fast 5000 Mbps line with Alice and working fine.

Concerns with Alice:

I chose the ISDN option since i had an isdn telephone already. The only problem right now is that they cant get my phone to work.. there is apparantly some problem at their end. (I need only the internet, so i'm not that concerned about it right now).
Also, it was a bit of a mess to use the software provided by them to connect to the internet. I was trying with that for a whole day and couldnt connect and after a long wait to talk with the support personnel, found out that there are some issues with it and instead used the network connections of windows XP to connect. (Now i'm using a router to connect so that i can share the connection on my LAN)

A note about the router sent by alice:

I got a Frtiz SL DSL modem/router from them for free. Though it can function as a router, you need a hub / switch to share the internet connection in your LAN. Since i already had a wireless router, i'm using the alice box just as a modem and my router for the LAN.

So till now it looks great.. (I enjoy the 5 fold jump is speed and downloads look great ..!!) hope it stays that way.

There you go peeps.. thats was my experiance with Alice and i should say not a bad one considering that telekom made me run for my internet connection login and password for two months after they installed the line at my place. I guess nobody can beat that!!!

(Things to do: i guess i have to cancel the T-dsl subscription by myself. Got to figure that thing out now)

That will teach me to read these boards without my glasse on. I thought the post said Acid, expierences with LCD. Imagine how disapointed I was to read about dowload bandwidths...

Thank you for sharing that.

Do you live in Munich city? Presumably, taking into account your 1 week delay at returning the paperwork, the turnaround from application to working service was 3 weeks. Thats VERY good. Simply wrenching the numbers from Telekom can often take alternative providers more than a month.

Does your new line really seem 5 times faster than the old one?

I'd be curious to know if/when they sort out your problems (which for some people are critical).

How easy are customer service folks to reach? - do they speak English?

Thanks again,

YL6

I also thank you for sharing your info. And am also interested in the phone situation. That is one of the things we were most worried about, is Telkom not allowing another provider such an easy time of getting your phone line transfered. They, Telekom that is, I guess would want to make us feel like..."Oh god what have we done!" This could make others think twice about changing, even though we are paying nearly twice as much

Looking forward to hear if you need a seatbelt while DL'ing along with any other experiences you have with it.

Telekom are obliged to permit you a free choice of provider. That doesn't mean they have to make the transfer process easy. If you do move you won't become a third world customer - they'll welcome you back at any later time with open arms - they need the customers! - their reduction in rates at the beginning of March was partly to compete with the competition and attract (or retain) customers...

YL6

@YL6

yeah, i live in munich city. (Großhadern)

And the line is definitely faster. i clocked 546K max till now and that is consistent.

About my current "problem" of my ISDN line not working.. they said they will get back to me latest monday evening.

About customer service:

They have two numbers for the customers. The free number is for general queries and rporting problems. There is another 15cts/min number for getting help on the issues cornerning your internet connectivity problem. The typical waiting times for both the lines are 10-15mins now. (I guess they are being deluded with calls from disgruntled Telekom customers)

I couldnt find anyone who speaks english there. Both the times, when i had to sort out something with them, my german collegues at work helped me out. BUT, the people at the other end are very courteous AND they seem to know what they are talking about. This is in direct contrast to the experiance i had with telekom service, who mostly didnt have any clue about the technical stuff.

Could you clarify this statement?. Do you mean Telekom people to whom you turned to for technical advice concerning your connection, or T-Online people to whom you turned to for problems with your Internet connection. These are different people working for different organisations. Telekom technical support have recently gone through very intensive training and have a large number of new "tools" available to check connections and problems, before escalating to a local engineer. T-Online, by the nature of their software support experience and the wide range of customer types and problems that might exist can be different (but nonetheless are well trained, and have defined escalation routes).

Don't forget, compared to the (awful) T-Online software (now into the 5th version, and many of the earlier versions are still out there), Alice don't use portal software, just simpler access software...

YL6

I think it was with the T-online people i guess.. I'm not sure since it was one and a half years ago. I was trying to setup my router to connect to the internet and i guess i typed in the logon details wrong. After a few attempts, the account was blocked and i had a tough time resetting that. (I'm not sure if the dsl account gets blocked after a certain number of failed attempts with t-online.. but thats what the support desk told me).

Anyways, to cut the long story short, i had to wait for a day to sort that out with the t-online/telekom people and had to call almost 5-10 times on a costly number i believe.

But apart from that one episode, got no complaints with telekom and t-online for the three years that i had the connection except for the price they charged for the connection.

(May be they gave me all the trouble in the begining making me run around for my password and log-in mail for almost two months).

One thing common to both telekom and alice is the lack of english support . That pisses me off like anything. (I know its germany and i'm supposed to know the language... but still... atleast one per organisation.. u can have that i guess..)

Three failed access attempts and you are locked out until after midnight. A royal pain, especially since the login-account details are so complicated and easy to enter incorrectly. T-Online support can't reset them either, so you have to simply wait. If your forget or lose your details, then it can take 7-10 days to receive new ones by snail mail (only). Not the most customer-friendly of systems, but damned secure I suppose...

YL6