My family and I signed up for Internet Essentials a few months ago, and so far we are quite happy with it.
The signup process was a bit ridiculous; I had to call and speak to
someone for a screening to determine I was eligible, then they said they
would mail me a contract to send back. First they sent me a Comcast
bill for $0.00 and a bunch of pages of fine print, which I thought was
the contract but wasn’t sure how to fill it out or send it back. I
called and talked to someone and they said that wasn’t the contract, and
the contract takes 7-10 business days to arrive, which 1) is kind of
ridiculous 2) had already elapsed. They said they could resend it by
mail or e-mail, and that e-mail would take 3-5 business days (WTF?), and
that doing either would invalidate the first one because it would be a
new copy with new numbers on it. Wow, and they’re not even a government
agency. So I waited a couple more days for the mailed contract to
arrive, which it did. I had the option of mailing or faxing it back, and
fortunately, I’m one of the approximately six individuals in the United States who faxes things.
After faxing it back, I had to wait 3-5 business days and then call
them. To see if they got the fax. Right. I did, they did, and they UPSed
me the Comcast setup kit with the modem and everything in a couple of
days.
I discovered I didn’t have cable coming into my unit, so I called and
arranged to have it installed. The installation scheduling was done
through the general Comcast office rather than part of Internet
Essentials specifically, so the customer service was standard-issue
crappy customer service instead of holy-ridiculous-poor-people customer
service, and they sent someone out the next morning. They quoted me $50
for the install, which was fine with me since I would be saving
immensely on internet. They ended up refunding the $50 charge, noting it
was “charged in error,” which I assume means Internet Essentials
customers aren’t meant to pay it. Once it was installed, I set it up
with no problem using the pamphlet that shipped with the modem.
The service is slower than many of the Comcast packages (5 Mbps), but
it’s certainly sufficient for our purposes and is fast enough for
watching Hulu, streaming Pandora, downloading things, and so forth
without any issues. Eligibility requires proof that your child is
enrolled in school or is homeschooled and is eligible for free lunch. I
don’t know how they determine this if the local school provides
universal free lunch as ours does. They did say that proof of Food
Stamps eligibility works for homeschool or private school students. They
also have computers available for $149.99, though they don’t say what
kind and I couldn’t readily find anything doing a cursory google search.
Naturally, they’ve done some serious SEO, so everything that comes up
is press releases and official information, not, say, bloggers saying
what kind of computer they got.
