Execulink Internet Service Provider

original article way below Jan. 17/99

UPDATE February 1/2002: I thought things were going well & problems had settled down at Execulink, but last Friday my sister sent me 52 separate emails each with 1 MP3 song attached (average 2-3 MB each) from her Sympatico ISP. Until recently Execulink had always told me there was no file size attachment limitation & no mailbox size limitation, so I've maintain my account with Execulink for those rare occasions when I need to receive large attachments. Only 46 of the 52 emails arrived & as expected when I talked to Execulink tech support they tried to redirect the blame elsewhere (like email program, sending ISP, are you sure you really sent it, etc.). So I conducted a test by sending the same 52 emails to myself at Execulink, only this time I sent them from my computer using my Rogers @home account & watched carefully to make sure they all went out correctly & got no bounce backs. This time 49 of the 52 emails showed up when downloading from the Execulink server, so I was pretty sure that the Execulink servers were the problem because they were the only common denominator, but Execulink was still in denial. Six days later, all of the 9 missing emails finally showed up. When I examined the hidden header info it clearly revealed that the Execulink server had received them within 5 minutes of being sent, but somehow these emails got STUCK in the Execulink server for 6 days. Here's what Execulink admitted happened "One of the servers that was supposed to be delivering mail was queuing it on our end rather then sending it out. So an enormous amount of email had que'd itself before we realized that. It was then all sent out, it had been doing that for about a month or so." Can you believe this was going on for about a month before they noticed it? Execulink now claims that they have changed their policy to a 20 MB limitation per email but no size limitation on the mailbox, so those limitations would have nothing to do with this problem. These 2 recent occurrences are not the first time I've received email several days or weeks after sending, but it is the first time I was able to definitively determine that the Execulink servers were at fault. The timing was good because I was trying to decide whether I should replace my Rogers @home high speed cable modem ISP with Execulink DSL or Sympatico DSL. Clearly if you want to receive ALL your email in a timely manner, you do not want to have Execulink as your ISP.

UPDATE September 24/2001: Things at Execulink seem to have significantly improved in recent months. I seldom have the kind of troubles I formerly had, so maybe they got most of the kinks straightened out. The incoming email server seems to be much more reliable than Rogers @Home, so I give out my Execulink email address to people & download it using my cable modem connection. Execulink was even good enough to redirect when people typed in my web address without the tilde (~) symbol.

Original article.
In the fall of 1995 I signed myself up with Execulink Internet Service Providers (a large local mom & pops Southwestern Ontario Internet Service Provider). I wish I had a running document so you could see just how many times I've had to call them about legitimate problems, but it should be sufficient to warn you that I have found them to be the worst ISP of the three I've had to date & I cannot recommend Execulink. Most Internet Service Providers aren't very good to begin with, but I'd say this was one of the worst. Most of my business associates in town are well aware of Execulink's worse than average customer satisfaction, especially within the business community. Execulink is very oriented to serving household consumers who often don't know or don't care much if the mail server is down for several hours. Often these types of clients think the problem is at their end & Execulink customer support does plenty to help them keep thinking that (Execulink assumes the problem is at your end). If it weren't for the fact that I have my Execulink email account all over my business cards, letterhead & advertising, I would have dropped this ISP a long time ago (a good reason to own a domain name). Here is a highlight list of some of the problems I've experienced over the last 3 plus years.

*RING NO ANSWER: I'm speculating that Execulink often does not have enough modems, but they have their lines set up so you never experience a busy signal. Instead it just rings & rings & rings but doesn't pick up unless there is an available modem. My modem rings 10 times before it hangs up & tries again. The other day I experienced 4 cycles of ring no answer (40 rings) so I finally gave up & went to bed. Sometimes you can almost set your watch by the time of day when Execulink lines start getting tied up (often when the kids get home from school & get on the internet).

*MAIL SERVER DOWN: It's not unusual for the incoming mail server to be down, sometimes intentionally in the middle of a business day for a few hours to do upgrades. You'd think they'd do plan maintenance in the wee hours of the morning, but not at Execulink. Of course when the mail server is down, my email bounces back to the sender & I never find out about it unless the sender contacts me again & asks why their email to me bounced. This is not good for business.

*SPEED: On numerous occasions I have tested the speed on my telephone modem connection & seldom ever achieved better than 2/3rds the speed that the modem was capable of (that was not always the case on Compuserve using the same modem & computer). When I have had tech support at Execulink check, they usually verified that they were only getting 2/3rds speed too (apparently they think that's normal). I suspect that Execulink multiplexes there modems so that each connected client gets put on hold occasionally for 10 - 50 seconds while it shares a connection with another modem.

*SYSTEM STATUS RECORDED MESSAGE: When I phone Execulink for a recorded status report, I almost never get a recording acknowledging that there is a problem even after the system has been down for several hours.

*TECHNICAL SUPPORT: I've almost always found Execulink to have terrible customer service support. They just aren't usually very competent at diagnosing problems & are very reluctant to admit when they've screwed up. I often had to diagnose & tell them what the problem was. They were usually in denial or unaware of a problem on their system until I proved it to them. Execulink almost always assumes the problem is at the clients end, even when you tell them that all the other Execulink customers you know of are experiencing the same problem. They make changes in their system that screw up some customers (especially NT customers), but don't bother to notify you that they are going to make changes.

*NOT MUCH HELP FOR BUSINESSES USING WINDOWS NT: Because Execulink is so oriented to consumers rather than businesses, I have found that it is very difficult to find anyone there with knowledge of Windows NT so I was kind of on my own sometimes. They claim that of the thousands of accounts they have, only about half a dozen are using Windows NT (most of the rest are using Windows 95/98). If you're a business, pick some other ISP that caters to businesses.

*NO REPLY: On many occasions whether I left a detailed email or a detailed phone call for Execulink regarding a problem, I would get no response. Often if I did get a response it wouldn't answer all the questions or wouldn't adequately address the problem. Whenever I asked for a credit to my account for the lack of properly working service, I hardly ever got a response to that either. Their attitude at Execulink seems to be "just ignore the questions & maybe the problem will clear itself up, or the customer will forget".

*ANSWERING MACHINE: Lots of times Execulink would have their answering machine turned off during non business hours so you couldn't leave a message to tell them their server was down again. Dozens of times I've experienced a downed server in the middle of the night & Execulink didn't know about it until the next business day because there was no way for customers to contact & leave a message for them.

*ABORTED EMAIL DOWNLOADS: If you abort a download of an email with a large attachment, you loose the ability to reconnect & try again for 10 minutes. When asked why, an Execulink employee said "that's just the way it is".

By Doug Hembruff.
Last updated Sept. 24, 2001