Everyone Hates Their Internet Service Providers

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Do you hate your internet service provider? Don't feel bad, according to this poll, pretty much everyone does.

The survey reached over 80,000 participants, and a huge percentage of those respondents had something unpleasant to say about their providers. The highest-ranking providers only manage to look good in comparison to the competition, Consumer Reports found: “Even WOW and Verizon FiOS, which got high marks for service satisfaction, rated middling or lower for value, and out of 14 providers, nine got the lowest possible value rating.”
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Clearly this is why we need all of the companies to merge into a super-monopoly instead of merely colluding together with municipalities as an oligopoly. I mean, surely prices will go down and service will improve along with speeds and infrastructure, and caps will become a thing of the past.

Oh, wait, no. That's exactly the opposite of what is actually happening. Cable companies are some of the most reviled companies yet we're stuck with them for a service that they inherently dislike providing because it offers competition to their other services that they would be much happier having you pay out the nose for. So, instead competing directly with the cheap alternatives that are legal, have fewer (if any) commercials, and which are orders of magnitude more convenient, they just make them inconvenient by making service miserable that gives you access to them.
 
While I hate everything else about them, Comcast's Internet speed/stability has been trouble free and better than advertised for me.
Wish I could say the same for their cable service, pricing, etc.
 
Not me, I love Videotron!
Great service, stable connection and if you have an issue you'll talk to a real person in less than a minute usually.
 
Thank our elected officials who listen to lobbyists and keep letting mergers go through that benefit no one but the companies involved.

It's never going to change at this point either. Government is far too corrupt and on the take from major corporations to ever do whats best for you and me. They'll line their own pockets while in office while we suffer for it.

And yet, we keep re-electing these people.... :confused:

Comcast isnt cheap here, but at least its reliable, and thats the only nice thing I can say.
 
I have had 2 ISP's in the last 14 years.... since I've been in my house. When I moved in all I could get was cable modem (comcast?) and we lost internet every time it rained hard. Was not eligible for DSL at the time, it was either cablemodem or dialup (I did both, I used a modem to dial into work RAS if VPN was unavailable). That was in 2000. I made sure I was on the list to be contacted the instant FIOS became available in our neighborhood, which happened around 2006 or 7 I think. I had non-stop problems the first year, they had serious teething problems. But they eventually worked them out. Now it's rock solid, unless you're trying to watch Netflix anywhere near peak time (thanks, Verizon!) despite my 75mb downpipe. All that being said, Verizon's customer service is really spotty and their website is HORRIBLE.

But... even 14 years later, what are my other options? Yeah, back to cable modem, except now it has a TWC sticker slapped on the box in the alley that leaks when it rains. I still have some 56k modems but since Verizon took away my copper, I would effectively be using their VOIP to dial into an ISP... something tells me that isn't going to work well.

I guess one of those 4G hotspots if I got super desperate,
 
I have COX and I love them.

No issues at all for the last 17 years!
 
Verizon FIOS. These guys have been great for me. No complaints.
 
I love my ISP, if I had a complaint, it's that it's still based on the antiquated ADSL technology, and while they are starting to roll out fiber at google prices they're only doing so in neighborhoods where they think they can get enough customers to justify running fiber (the dicks! I totally would pay for a few houses if I got fiber)
 
It's just kinda lame, because most who "hate" their ISP do so because they've jumped on the bandwagon, not because they even begin to understand half of the issues involved - or even want to.
 
Article said:
. 71% of customers said they would try to switch providers if theirs “were to try to block, slow down, or charge more for bandwith-heavy services.”
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"Try"

I'm rather happy with my ISP atm. I get 100Mbps down / 10Mbps up @ 105/month. Sure it doesn't compare to Google Fiber but I'll only experience that in the next 15 years if I move to it.
 
I pay $66 for 25/5 but it's mostly 28/8 or so.
I can DL at 3+ megabytes a second so not bad.
I only use Comcast for internet though.
 
i hate my current my ISP but honestly, I never had problems with Verizon either with DSL or FIOS.
 
I love my ISP (Wave broadband). They have this constant pledge to upgrade their service speeds and lower $/Mb prices. There's also no "new customer" requirement to get promotional rates. I change my plan every year, so every year I get the discounted rate, haven't paid full price yet! Despite having a bandwidth cap, I've never been charged for exceeding it, and only got warned that I might once, in a month that I didn't.

Considering they are the monopoly in my area, I can't believe they're so nice, it boggles my mind.
 
We have what I think is a small company called New Wave. They are kinda hit and miss. Recently I upped my internet from 3 meg to 10 meg (better streaming for the wife and kids, nvidia grid on the shield for myself) and not only was it painless, the lady actually dropped our bill 2 dollars lower than what we were paying before the upgrade.

But then I returned their modem we were renting because I bought a motorola surfboard 6121 (docsis 3), the one we were renting was an old docsis 2. However it took forever on the phone to tell them that I needed them to switch the MAC address on the account so I could use the new modem (and change whatever they needed to change to let the account know I could now use docsis 3). Thankfully, after the 3 hour wait, its been rock solid all week.
 
I had FIOS, I moved Arizona and have a choice between Centurylink and Orbitel, two of the worst providers. I went with Centurylink since I can get 40/20, but their service is terrible and they lie.
 
Have a feeling I'll be hating mine. Moving to a house that appears the best I can get is "up to" 6mbps/768kbps DSL from ATT. That's it, they have no competitor there so no reason to offer anything better. Well there's satellite, $100/mo for 10mbps and 10GB/mo or something, lol.

This is going to suck extreme dong coming from 85/35 FIOS.
 
BeavermanA said:
Have a feeling I'll be hating mine. Moving to a house that appears the best I can get is "up to" 6mbps/768kbps DSL from ATT. That's it, they have no competitor there so no reason to offer anything better. Well there's satellite, $100/mo for 10mbps and 10GB/mo or something, lol.

This is going to suck extreme dong coming from 85/35 FIOS.
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Depends what you're doing. If you're mostly downstream (ie Netflix) and surfing it could be ok. 768 up is probably ok for games that have dedicated servers (ie not so much for Xbox/PS3 peer games). VPN on 768 could be tough if you rely on that for work.

From what I've heard anything short of dialup is is better than Sat. Shitty upstream and bad latency for games.
 
I don't know why would ANYBODY here (USA) give their ISP a passing grade, unless you're using Google Fiber... Bottom line is, the PRICE!!!! And Google destroys everybody on Mbps/$ ratio, which is a norm in more pro-consumer, pro-competition areas of the world.... As long as anybody here is "OK" with, or even praises ATT, Com-Warner, or Verizon at any level, that's all they need to keep the "status quo" and shoving their comparatively piss-poor service, and outrages fees up our collective a$$...

On as a side note, isn't anybody outraged that the great U-$-of-A now has ONLY three major ISP's....??? Almost 320 mil people, MOST of which live in major metro areas, and no real choices, outside of moving to a Google Fiber chosen city... Da FUQ!!!!!
 
Google Fiber here. No complaints. Getting greater than 1tb speeds .. I routinely see 1.3tb download on massive downloads
 
I have FIOS and I do not hate them at all. Crazy fast, no caps.

Why don't I ever get interviewed for these polls?
 
I dont hate Suddenlink

Been great for me, acceptable service quality, (5 min outage once a month at 2am, and then new ip)
35$ a month for 20mbit (advertised at 15mbit)
No slowdowns in evenings.
 
I actually don't hate time warner -- I get 15 down 1 up - for 36 a month after taxes.

I download whatever I want, and however much I want and have never been hassled by them. The price is somewhat fair, I'd be overjoyed if I could get 20 down 2 up for the same price *shrugs*

All that talk of the merger makes me worry some. The scariest part of all is *if* Time Warner starts being a dick to me the only other alternative is AT&T DSL in my area, whom i HATE in terms of service, reliability, and price (had them for a few years before I bought a house, and it was shit for what I paid)
 
I love my TWC internet. It went from 50mbps to 100mbps for free and I really do get 99.9% of the speed increase. Outages happens maybe once or twice a year. There is only slight slowdowns during the early evenings sometimes.

However, the best of the best is that there are no data caps. I sincerely hope the merger with Comcast falls through.
 
collegeboy69us said:
I actually don't hate time warner -- I get 15 down 1 up - for 36 a month after taxes.

I download whatever I want, and however much I want and have never been hassled by them. The price is somewhat fair, I'd be overjoyed if I could get 20 down 2 up for the same price *shrugs*

All that talk of the merger makes me worry some. The scariest part of all is *if* Time Warner starts being a dick to me the only other alternative is AT&T DSL in my area, whom i HATE in terms of service, reliability, and price (had them for a few years before I bought a house, and it was shit for what I paid)
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I feel the same way about Comcast, almost. I still think it is overpriced and of course I hate their customer service with a passion. But at least it is stable and decently fast at 30 Mbps. Like you I have had the unfortunate pleasure of being stuck with AT&T DSL when I was renting a room during an internship. I endured sub 1 Mbps download speeds, short disconnects every 5 minutes, and several incidents of much longer outages. That and I had to share the connection with 3 other tenants. I considered spending extra money to buy my own internet line, but AT&T was the only ISP to serve the house I stayed in, so yeah, screwed. Going back to Comcast felt amazing by comparison, though I still wouldn't want them to gobble up Time Warner if I were in your shoes.
 
We had Time Warner here in Kansas City for the year it took to get Google Fiber to our Fiberhood. They gave us a free bump in speed to 100mbit. Early on the box on the side of the house was installed incorrectly and we got a little bit of packet loss. After complaining they sent a guy out who fixed everything up. Never had any issues with my downloading from them which was a lot. Prices were crazy tho, $90 after taxes a month.

With Google Fiber we basically get all the hardware. It's ours. Nexus 7 2nd Gen, 3TB storage DVR, 1TB Storage something or other and 2 of the boxes have built in Wi-Fi. For $120 we get the internet speed and tv / dvr. We love it.
 
Must be nice.

Out here in the northeast, my best option is TWC with 20Mb down, 2Mb up at around $60/mo. Utter crap, but the only option if you consider DSL is 2Mb down, 768kbps up at nearly the same price.

You city guys have it good.
 
I don't exactly hate my regional ISP, but I do hate paying $60/month for my lowly 6/1 plan. I would love to have higher speeds, but that's their fastest package.
Maybe I should look at it as a small price to pay for getting out of the city and moving to the country.
At least it's pretty consistent and anytime I have had trouble, I speak to a real, live human, unlike when I lived in the city and had to deal with comcrap. :)
 
My access may be slow, but my ISP was completely awesome, and they got bought out by a slightly larger but still damned good company.
 
I've been sooo happy with Century Link service. Their call center people are kinda lame, but they service people they send out to fix stuff are really nice and I haven't had any problems at with it being reliable. It's not very fast, but I don't care about that. Most of the time, the faster link is just nerdy bragging rights. As long as websites load and I can get e-mail, it's great.
 
schizrade said:
I have FIOS and I do not hate them at all. Crazy fast, no caps.

Why don't I ever get interviewed for these polls?
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I'm guessing you don't watch Netflix then? Cuz I have fios 75/35 and it's an embarrassing blurry mess.
 
That's terrible. The only ISP I could ever love is one I ran, or was run via a community of nerds like myself. Something like a community fiber project.

Until then I'm happy with Comcast, seems to work fine. And they are waiving their datacap of 250GB in that they're not currently enforcing it...yet.
 
The reason people hate it is because they're pretty much forced to go with them. People want choice,even if it's artificial. I'm a pretty laid back guy, but nothing is more infuriating than being forced to go through Comcast's bullshit pricing structure or awful support any time you move or have an issue.

(Case in point, just moved, required 5+ hours on the phone. Didn't transfer the equipment, jacked up the pricing, anything they could do wrong, they did. Need to call them AGAIN, because they haven't billed me yet at the new place. I should just say screw them, but it will come back to bite me, not them.)
 
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