I have been with Neighborhood ISP, based out of Orem, Utah, for almost a year. It has been hands down the worst experience I have ever had with a paid service of any kind. If you are looking at what they offer and think “wow high speed for such a low price?? it’s just too good to be true!” IT IS. It is absolutely too good to be true.
Never a great experience
Our connection was never stellar. I sent regular emails to them about connection speeds, both up and down. Sure, I’d have a week here or there where things were great. Nothing to complain about. But most the time it was far, far below their advertised speeds.
But the price was great, so I stuck with it. Whoops.
From bad to worse
Then the last few months (Aug-Oct 2013) it became abysmal. Regularly less than 1mb download speeds. I sent repeated emails with screenshots of our connection speeds (through their suggested site of speedtest.net, see below). All I got in return was regular excuses.
Excuses, excuses
“We are currently working on the issue effecting your speed and hope to resolve it soon” – Aug 25
“More work is being performed tomorrow on the wireless facility tomorrow.” – Sep 4
“We believe there are a handful of speed issues related to our switch to a new fiber line which has not occurred on your wireless facility yet. You should soon receive an e-mail from our infrastructure team about this upgrade process over the next few days.” – Sep 20
“we are trying everything we can to resolve the issues. Our field technicians are working solely on this issue as there are still a few customers remaining that this is happening to. … We take speed issues very seriously and I have escalated this e-mail chain to our Director of Broadband Services.” – Sep 24 (never heard from the Director)
[[While writing this post I couldn’t save a draft because of no connection. Lets see how often that happens]]
I made a call and they said that the “new tower would be done Oct 21” and there wasn’t much they could do until then. So basically being told “don’t call us until then”. Weeks of additional sucky internet ensued.
I called again around Oct 21 when I was trying to work from home (trying being the key word here) and couldn’t get web pages to load. I worked with the tech to determine it was not my router, but a UDP vs TCP issue on their end. An issue that “only 2-3 people on this tower are experiencing”.
Come to my house… please!!
I couldn’t even get them to come out to my house and check things. They did come out once to replace something on my roof, but they were doing that for everyone in the area already due to the upgrades that were supposed to make everything better. Oh, I made the appointment, waited around for all afternoon on Saturday, and they never showed up. I wrote to complain and they said we weren’t on the list, even though the email chain I responded to had their confirmation of the appointment. They came a few days later.
In my last email to them I pleaded “Come check my POE [their equipment], check the wiring, switch my equipment out, find out what makes me special to have such terrible connection issues. Point me to a different tower, it can’t get any worse”. Nope, no offer to come out to the house, other then to remove my equipment if I wanted to cancel my service.
[[no connection, no save again]]
Why am I still here?
I have no idea why I subjected myself to such pain and stayed with them for so long. My wife texted me several times to curse their name, even my children noticed enough to regularly complain.
One of the reasons I wanted to go with Neighborhood ISP (other than the too good to be price for the speed) was to support the local guy. I have given them chance after chance after chance to make things right. Only responding to emails with excuses is not a way to make things right.
Credit where credit is due
Now to give credit where credit is due, I was always treated very well. Their techs on both the email communication and phone calls were always very courteous. They gave me credit for the last month or two since my service was not what they promised. They have also promised to refund my installation cost because of their not being able to provide good service. Props for that.
Slow, slower, slowest
Here are some of the screenshots I sent to plead my case. All I got in response was excuses.
Sep 9
Sep 19
Oct 24
The above 3 images took about 5 minutes to upload (Oct 24 10pm). So I thought I’d check my speed again. At the moment I can’t even upload the screenshots of my current speeds.
Finally got them up (10:30pm)
First try, the upload speed didn’t even register
Second round, it wouldn’t even connect. Left it trying for more than 5 minutes
Just switched to connect through my phone because I couldn’t even get the page to save and I didn’t want to loose my work. (11pm)
Final Warning
This is a final warning. If you came to this page looking for a review of NeighborhoodISP take my advice and stay clear. Some day they may get their act together, but if there are problems the above should make it abundantly clear that you will not get anything but excuses from them.
Even if they get their act together with their speeds, their customer service is abysmal. Saying that you take speed very seriously in general, but taking no action for the individual customer suffering with minutes of load time per page is the big problem. I as an individual did not matter to them.
Again, this is hands down the worst customer service experience I have had with any company. As full disclosure, I did tell them that if they couldn’t get things taken care of I would make sure to post about my experience and ensure that any place that had reviews for them got a negative review. They didn’t seem to care. Responding with yet another set of excuses, no offer to come to my house to look into things, and the offer of a refund.
Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere. You have been warned.
10 replies on “Don’t use Neighborhood ISP – A review”
We had almost the exact same experience with them! Everyone I know that has been with Neighborhood ISP also had speed issues. When they installed our internet, we were getting speeds of 30+ Mbps, but that didn’t last more than an hour or two before the speed slowed down significantly,
until we were getting 1 Mbps if we were even lucky to connect at all. Terrible! How are they Gephardt approved?
“How are they Gephardt approved?”
Because they wrote a check to Mr. Gephardt. I don’t put much weight in the endorsement. It’s a business, and companies can’t be included if they don’t write a check, no matter how good their product or service is. My impression, is that unless your company is really flagrant with tons of bbb complaints and such, all you have to do is hand Gephardt a check in order to use their logo. Neighborhood ISP wrote a check and were suddenly Gephardt approved. It’s probably very easy if you’re willing to pay their price.
Mr. Barker,
We would like to apologize again for the speed issues you experienced while you were a customer with us. The issue was on our end the entire time and was caused because we grew much quicker in Springville than we anticipated for. We are a small business and our field crew had limited time to diagnose issues and sending a technician to your house would not have solved anything or told us anything we did not already know. We completely understand your valid frustrations and believe us – we were just as frustrated with the network at the time.
The good news is that the issue was resolved shortly after you left and we would like to prove to you that we are the best internet service option in the area.
If you would like, give us a call at 801-724-6641 and we will give you 3 months for free to prove that Neighborhood ISP is the best speed and price option in Utah county.
Regards,
Aaron
Customer Care Manger
Wa Wa Wa…all I heard was a bunch of whining about not being special enough for a house call. Sounds to me like they gave you great customer service. They tried very hard to resolve your issues. They gave you answers just not the ones YOU wanted.
This incredibly long post was to get revenge on a company that treated you fairly and kindly but was unable to provide you with the service you wanted. It happens, and it was your choice to stay. They were clear in their answers and reasons.
You have a big head thinking that you have that much pull in society here. Rather than accepting clear and honest reasons, moving on, and realizing that it was your problem. You changed it into a dramatic post of victimization, misconstruing information to validate yourself. Go cry in a corner, lick your wounds and go to another company.
I appreciate reviews on serious and truly bad experiences to warn the public about wrong doings, but this was not one of them. Just another child of “generation self entitlement” trying to get attention….
Andrea, I’m commenting because I am looking for Johnathan Penberthy / Neighborhood Networks to try to get our deposit back. He took a lot of peoples’ money and now he has disappeared. You defended him as if you knew him or are part of his company. Please respond with info on him or his company.
Wow, that is a very passionate response. Thanks for adding to the conversation. Let me respond to a few points.
“all I heard was a bunch of whining about not being special enough for a house call”
That was “all [you] heard”? That was one maybe two paragraphs and one response from them after MONTHS of issues.
“Sounds to me like they gave you great customer service.”
When the service that I need is functional internet, how is non-functional internet “great customer service”? I fully admitted they were very cordial when I communicated with them, but that does not equal great customer service.
“They tried very hard to resolve your issues.”
Where did you get this impression? What exactly did they do to resolve my issues?
“This incredibly long post was to get revenge on a company that treated you fairly and kindly but was unable to provide you with the service you wanted.”
I would be dishonest if I didn’t say there was truth to this. Why does anyone post a negative review of a company, product or service than to “get revenge” for being wronged. I said they treated me fairly and kindly, see the “credit where credit is due” section. No they were not able to “provide [me] with service [I] wanted”, or more specifically that I *needed*. My career is working on the internet, I NEED the internet at my home to work. That is what was promised, and for MONTHS I gave them chance after chance to make things right. That did not happen.
“You have a big head thinking that you have that much pull in society here. ”
What “pull in society” do you think that I think I have? I posted this out here for people to find… if that was 0, 2, 200 or 2000 it didn’t mean anything to me. If it made the company up their game, great. If it helped someone else not have the same issues, great. If I didn’t get a single view, oh well… I wasted some time writing a worthless post.
That being said, you got here, so I did something.
“Rather than accepting clear and honest reasons, moving on, and realizing that it was your problem.”
It was my problem? Not sure how you came to the conclusion that unusable internet service is MY problem, but please enlighten me.
“You changed it into a dramatic post of victimization, misconstruing information to validate yourself.”
I posted exact quotes and screenshots. Give me specifics of what i misconstrued?
“I appreciate reviews on serious and truly bad experiences to warn the public about wrong doings, but this was not one of them.”
“Truly bad experiences” fits the bill for me. I require functional internet, I didn’t get it. As I said, I gave “the local guy” every chance. Not sure how that qualifies as “self entitlement” but to each their own.
Not sure if this was a “feed the trolls” reply I shouldn’t have written, but oh well. Happy to have the chance to give more insights.
Now, all this being said, I’m in an area with not many internet choices. The company I had to go to isn’t stellar either. They have never approached the terrible connections I show above, but they have never been as good as Neighborhood ISP (or Neighborhood Networks as they are now known) was when they were actually good.
I have seriously pondered signing up with Neighborhood Networks again. I just haven’t been able to justify it with the information given above. When they were good they were good. But… yeah… don’t know.
I came across your post today while searching for Neighborhood Networks reviews. The HOA I live in just contracted with them and they added $50 onto our HOA fees to offset the cost of the installation and service. I figured, “ooh goody! I finally get fiber! I’ll cancel Comcast right away” – and so that’s what I did once they installed it in my house.
For the last 2 weeks I’ve had AMAZING speeds… 50+ down, 250+ up, it’s been great. Until this morning, I’ve had about the exact same results you showed in your post. Under 1mb down, less than 5mb up — if it will even stay connected long enough to finish the test. The whole connection keeps dropping altogether every 2 minutes or so, and being someone who also works at home, this is incredibly aggravating.
Granted, this has only been happening for a few hours now, but after reading about your experience, I’m wondering if this is not just a temporary issue but something I’ll have to deal with regularly from now on. I sure hope not, because if I have to pay extra on my HOA fee for a terrible fiber connection, and eventually have to add Comcast back on top of that, I’m gonna really be pissed.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Aaron. Glad I found your post in my search this morning!
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience Aaron. I have been looking into signing up with them over the past week, but just can across your review and have decided to stay away. You saved me a potential headache. They may have fixed all their issues since you left, but I’m not willing to go through the potential frustration to find out. Thanks again!!!
Yeah, I fell for them too… they got me all excited and I paid a couple hundred dollars for a deposit with great promises like they were coming to my area next month and I’d have a set low price forever… a few months later I asked for my money back and they added more promises if I’d wait a little longer, six months later I asked again and they added more if I’d keep waiting… a year later again, added more. You’d think I’d learn? haha.
A couple years later I insist on a refund and they promise a check is in the mail and them they completely stop answering emails, phone calls and facebook messages. Yep, the money never came. Every few months I send another email just “for fun.” But they ran off with who knows how many people’s $200. Never came to my area.
Andrea is Andrea Penberthy and related to Jonathan Penberthy (the owner). That is why she is defending them. Neighborhood works was suppose to be a partnership between Penberthy and another man, but Penberthy screwed the other man out of his share before they even launched. These guys were fined $110,000 by the state for not completing expansions in Springville. This company is done for. Everyone who deposited money got screwed.
Read the comments in the link below:
https://www.freeutopia.org/2015/02/11/back-from-the-dead-new-utopia-provider-may-revive-ftth-in-springvile/