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Review 7/15/2008
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If it were possible to give a less than one star rating to this company I would do so. Their consumer/customer service is worse than below par. The owner is unresponsive to customers choosing instead to leave the only contact for a customer to be a contract technician who is not actually a company employee. The customer can attempt to reach the owner by email or by a letter to no avail. The only person a customer can speak to by telephone is the so called support which perhaps can be reached by telephone between the hours of 8 to 5 M-F. Often a customer will reach only a recording which then asks the customer to leave a message and after waiting for the beep a message says "I'm sorry that mailbox if full". Their recorded message also says the best way to reach support is by sending an email to support@ flashbyte.us Great, the internet service is completely down and customers are requested to send an email.
Anyone considering using this company needs to read the Terms of Service which can not be easily found on their web site and is not posted in a prominent way. To read it go to: http://www.flashbyte.us/tos/tos.pdf
They do not give customers any copies of their Terms Of Service at sign up nor is such discussed or mentioned when a customer signs up for service. The Terms of Service basically say that the consumer can not complain about lack of service or poor quality of service or they are in violation of the Terms of Service. This company's rating with the Better Business Bureau is F for good reason.
This is rural area and our options for internet service other than dial up are limited by both terrain and lack of available services. I have spoken to a number of people who signed up with Flashbyte in hopes of having faster internet service only to discover that this service often works poorly. When it works it gives one hope of having faster service but the service often degrades and becomes less than satisfactory with little recourse for the customer.
The company web site encourages customer's to pay for a full year of service up front because the cost is less monthly, however, doing so may well mean that problems with the service will leave the customer with little recourse (according to the company's Terms of Service) if there are problems. Pay by the year and complain about lack of service and they will pull their equipment leaving the customer with no service despite the fact that the months left have been pre-paid. Also, there is a $99 equipment deposit which one will have little hope of ever recovering.
One other thing worth mentioning, if you are not adept at doing your own set up for email, etc. Do not expect help from this company - they will give you a web site where you are supposed to go to do your own set up or obtain the information for set up. If you ask for help they will tell you configuring such is not their problem - if you need help you can hire one of their technicians at a rate of $45 an hour. Most of us who have signed up with internet servers have found that they are generally very responsive and helpful in assisting a new customer with the settings for email. Not so Flashbyte - they'll just refer the customer to their Terms of Service.
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