Everyone Hates Their Internet Service Providers

I loved my ISP until this past week-end, where I found out that since they upgraded their offerings last year (we got free increses in speed and bandwidth, yay!), they also removed the maximum they could charge for going over the cap. I also learned that the email I had put on my ISP profile was used for all their communication sspam EXCEPT the bandwidth alert, which went to the ISP-specific account no one ever uses.

Around the 20th I saw I had done a ton of HD streaming and had gone over my cap, reaching my maximum (so I thought) charge already, so I thought I might as well dld everything I wanted for the next month, which is something I had done once before. Then last week-end I saw my bill had $140 additional charges o_O

Called and complained, and it was a pain. Tech finally agreed to give me a $50. It was someting but I was still bummed. I had always had great service and a better experience than with other ISP, and had been a client for many years with no complaints. 5 mins later the tech called to say he had cleared all the overcharge, as trying to enter just a $50 discount was a pain and it was simpler this way.

So I'm unsure how I should feel about my ISP right now. They didn't really care, and they are lazy, but I got my money back.

Slice of life.
 
TwistedAegis said:
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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No, I HATE comcast because its service is absolute shit at my house. I am constantly, and i mean 3-4 times a day having to recycle power to my modem because it doesnt stay online. It just refuses to last a day without me having to reset it, I go in there and the "online" light is blinking, and even if it reconnects, unless i reset it it happens again. My ping has terrible spikes, ill be in a dota 2 match with a ping of 90, then it spikes to the 1000 range, multiple times a game. I have purchased new modems, new routers, and nothing fixes the issue, and its pricing is bullshit for a bullshit service. Calling them you never reach a person in your area, its an out of country call center. When i call and they "test the line" they find 0 issues, its a shit company with shit service
 
I like my ISP but wish it was a lot cheaper.

$140/month and I get 5 statics, and 50 down, 10 up, no caps, no port blocks, no bull. Couple outages a year. (Comcast biz)

I probably do less than 100G/month of traffic anyhow, but nice not worrying about the cap.
 
Robstar said:
I like my ISP but wish it was a lot cheaper.

$140/month and I get 5 statics, and 50 down, 10 up, no caps, no port blocks, no bull. Couple outages a year. (Comcast biz)

I probably do less than 100G/month of traffic anyhow, but nice not worrying about the cap.
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Oops forgot to mention that my ping is 11-13ms to work vpn servers, so that is really nice as well.
 
VladDracule said:
No, I HATE comcast because its service is absolute shit at my house. I am constantly, and i mean 3-4 times a day having to recycle power to my modem because it doesnt stay online. It just refuses to last a day without me having to reset it, I go in there and the "online" light is blinking, and even if it reconnects, unless i reset it it happens again. My ping has terrible spikes, ill be in a dota 2 match with a ping of 90, then it spikes to the 1000 range, multiple times a game. I have purchased new modems, new routers, and nothing fixes the issue, and its pricing is bullshit for a bullshit service. Calling them you never reach a person in your area, its an out of country call center. When i call and they "test the line" they find 0 issues, its a shit company with shit service
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Do you have business?
 
In college I had a smaller provider called Armstrong. They were great. I paid 60 bucks for basic cable which included all the actual network stations I watch, an HD-DVR box and 15/5 internet. No contract and customer service was great. They'd have a tech out no later than next day if there were any issues; my only issues being weather related. I miss them.

They're also great for a lot of my companies clients. They're quick to get anything resolved and their prices are worlds better than Comcast. 5 bucks for a static IP vs 15 from Comcast.
 
VladDracule said:
No I do not
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I have biz & comcast almost always replaces the modem & the line run outside. Sometimes on the same day or the next day. They are usually pretty quick.

If you can get business, the service is worth it (no caps as well!)
 
Do I have my current provider? Yes. Do I hate their broadband service? No.

I hate my provider because they also provide my TV service and their TV service is shit but I have had no issues with their broadband service. Plus, in my apartment, they are the only option - which is lame.

However, back when I had FIOS (in my old rent house), I had zero complaints about either service.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
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.
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CenturyLinkHelp said:
Our team of managers would like to help with your service issues. Please send account information & any pertinent details here [email protected].
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Not sure if real...CreepyGoogle, is that you?
 
I had Century Link for 2 years. The fastest service was 7mb. (It was really 6mb and when I called and complained they said wow 6 that is good).
Anyway I have Mediacom and they say I have 50mb, I really have 57. I find it ironic they are 7 faster then advertised.
BUT they have caps. I only use 1/2 the cap but still. I hate caps.
 
I was fine with POTS and a dsl line until 2004, when verizon tried to increase my rates for no particular reason. So, I switched to comcast. First few months were fine, then downhill. lots of lost connections at random times, whether I was using the connection or not. The cable tv was borderline, because sometimes channels weren't available, all I'd get was a 'the channel you requested will be available shortly' or some other crap like that, while my neighbor was watching the same damn channel accross the street (I can see his porch tv from my living room). Comcast never fixed that. We changed the box, the guy checked the wiring and said everything was fine. I could also not get on demand shows about 90% of the time. so, three years ago I went back to verizon. since then, the new fiberoptic service has been decent, but the price isn't. I barely need phone service, but they want $40 a month for it as pots is no longer available. So that and the tv, internet with two dvr's(you can't put your own in, they keep changing the channel setups) it's costing me $150 a month. So I work an overtime day once a month to pay my car payment and verizon. Still, sucks to get charged so much for something I barely use. But at least the service works, unlike crapcast.
 
I have comcast in nashville, and i cant complain one bit. I have lived in this home almost 10 years and count the number of outages on one hand, if that. Always max speed, etc.
 
I hate my provider... Cableone.

Mainly because there is no competition, besides century link, which isn't really competition. Cableone's speeds fluctuate a great deal, their service has been good, but not great.

However, if there was just competition....
 
CaffeineMan said:
I had Century Link for 2 years. The fastest service was 7mb. (It was really 6mb and when I called and complained they said wow 6 that is good).
Anyway I have Mediacom and they say I have 50mb, I really have 57. I find it ironic they are 7 faster then advertised.
BUT they have caps. I only use 1/2 the cap but still. I hate caps.
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Not sure if you mean you synced at 6 or a speed test gave you 6. There is a difference there. You can sync at 7Mbps but a speed test might only show you about 6 because with ADSL using PPPoE, ATM, and then IP all together you have a lot of overhead loss. So you are going to lose 13% - 15% because of that. So in perfect conditions if you synced at 7Mbps you would only see about 6Mbps max when doing a speed test. Some places bump your sync so that you might sync closer to about 8 so that a speed test will show you about 7 if you are supposed to get 7.

once you move to pure IP and start using DHCP instead of PPPoE (so VDSL, cable, Wireless or fiber) then you don't have as much overhead. only about 2.7% so a 20Mbps might come up as 19.5Mbps when doing a speed test. (using the same 7Mbps connection as before would show as about 6.8Mbps)

As for why Mediacom is higher than advertised, that is actually normal for cable companies and even some WISP (might be true of some DSL also), as they have bursting turned on in a lot of cases. While they might sell you a package of X speed, if they have the bandwidth there for it when you start to download or stream something they might allow you a few seconds at a higher rate, then will drop you down to what you get. Maybe during a stream they might let you burst a few more times. Depends on how they configure everything. if you were to do a constant speed test. you would notice that you might see 57 for a moment, then it is going go drop down to 50 or lower. It is really nothing more than a way for them to give you a warm happy feeling when you do a speed test. for really small files they will let you get them faster so you appear to get faster speeds, but when you are actually pulling down files of worth (streaming, downloading games, playing online games....) you won't see the same speeds as that speed test were showing you.
 
Verizon FiOS here and zero complaints. 50/25 but the best I've seen is about 35/25. Still plenty fast for my home use.
 
that is what happens when stuff is monopolized, no competition and no innovation, crazy prices for shit service,
the only reason verizon fios might not have complaints because it's pretty fast compared to everything else, but really, the speeds they offer are pretty slow considering it's a fiber....
 
Cablevison Optium Online Boost since 2005 and still love it. One of the reason why I still live in NY.
 
Just switched to uverse simplay because I worked for at&t, comcast certainly gave me faster internet but I am one of the communities that is Fiber to the house. I get really good ping rate and I get consistent 22Mb down, could use higher speeds but att has limited FTH customers to lower speeds for now to keep it consistent across market. I have to admit It has never gone down in a year. That was the only problem I had with comcast. It went out on me about 7-8 times that I had it in 2 years. I hate frequent service outages and that was the case with comcast when I had them.
 
Vielgus-Kutas said:
that is what happens when stuff is monopolized, no competition and no innovation, crazy prices for shit service,
the only reason verizon fios might not have complaints because it's pretty fast compared to everything else, but really, the speeds they offer are pretty slow considering it's a fiber....
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That doesn't explain about the areas where it isn't monopolized. A great misconception among many people is that there is a great monopoly keeping everyone else out of the game. There isn't, you can go start up your own ISP in your home town if you wanted. All it takes is money. That's the problem is that people don't want to spend the money because they don't have to or because they know they won't get a return on investment.

People go out of there way to explain why there isn't competition. "Well DSL isn't competition because it isn't as fast" "WISP isn't competition because it isn't as fast" "3g home service isn't competition because it isn't as fast"... There isn't any competition in most of your minds just because you don't want to consider there to be competition. I don't care how shitty it might be but if you have a choice between Comcast, CentryLink, home access points from all 4 cell carriers, 2 different WISP, and hughesnet, then you have competition even if all the speeds aren't the same. you just have one that is doing better than the rest.

People will sit and complain about how the local telephone company is a monopoly but I bet you were able to cut your land line and still have phone service through a cell phone. So guess what, you had other choices. if you ported to vonage, magic jack, some other sip carrier you had choices. if you ported to a cable company then you had choices.

The only real monopolies still out there for utilizes are power and water. There are hundreds of thousands of ISPs out there. Some of your larger cities probably have multiple smaller ISPs that you never heard of. And you probably will just blow them off because A) you haven't heard of them before B) they aren't cheap C) their speeds aren't as great and then you stay with the larger guys that are cheaper and give you better speeds while complaining that nobody else is out there.
 
Vielgus-Kutas said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYslyrm3oU
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That video doesn't really help anything. They do talk about some states being "locked down" but that was more of they prevent the cities themselves from building a network. That doesn't say that 10000 other companies can't come into your town and build whatever they want. While a lot of the video is technology correct about certain things. I won't call it entirely correct, nor does it help prove that every area is controlled by a monopoly with only 1 internet option.

Let me follow up with this. I work for a small telephone company / ISP. we lose customer all the time switching their internet and / or phone service to somebody else. take both to Comcast or Mediacomm, or they switch to their cell phone and get a device from them to do wireless through their home feed by 3/4G. I watch as new ISPs pop up all over the place. I go to training classes and events where I talk to people that work for ISPs or CLEC phone companies that popping up in some new location. In the area just south of me I watched as a company that started off just offering dialup expanded to do fixed wireless and then started doing DSL over Centurylink's phone lines. They aren't alone on that as NetZero and EarthLink which were known back during the days of dialup are still out there and offer DSL over the phone lines of other companies. The CLEC side of my work went into the middle of city serviced by Frontier and started offering 1Gbps FTTH to businesses right next to the Frontier office. Frontier didn't want to offer fiber to anyone so we decided we would go there and do it then. And we aren't the only company that does that type of stuff.

It isn't so much that there isn't competition possible or out there in many cases. It is that people don't care to push past this is what everyone else offers for this price so I am going to do the same. Look at it like gas stations, having 5 next to each other doesn't lower prices. Instead if one raises their price the rest follow suit since they know that they can get more money also since the other guy is. Ignoring everything about the big guys for a moment, it isn't cheap to offer something like fiber to a person so few people are going to want to decide I want to start up a new company and go offer cheap ftth to this city as they are looking at probably $1000 - $1500 on the low end per drop just to get everything into the ground. Of course that is assuming that you hit every house out there in an area. if you go to a subdivision of 200 and hit 3 houses, you are looking at a lot higher price. For rural areas it cost about $44,000 per mile to bury fiber. Cities will cost much more. so lets say you bury your 10 miles to service those 3 people in an area mostly serviced by somebody else. You spent $440,000 do to do, that works out to about $147,000 per customer to get them service. Nobody wants to do that as you will never recover that. So you pick and choice where you can offer to and get the best return if anywhere. That is your limiting factor, not that people CAN'T start up a company to do fiber or that existing companies control everything. It is that nobody wants to spend the money to do so.
 
people are building their own local fiber networks, so there clearly is a need for better/faster service, and the fact that they can do it and provide much better speeds for much better price is a proof that we are getting screwed by the broadband providers, and the anti freemarket behavior of the big ISPs shows that they are in fact a monopoly, duopoly, and they want to keep it that way, call it what you will, still the same outcome,
i live in a city with over 1.5m people and the only option in my area for any service above 2MBs is Comcast, that is a monopoly
 
As an ISP I think Comcast is pretty good.
IF you can void them sticking you with "refurb" cable modems or IP phone modems you will do fine. Insist on a new Arris/Motorola unit. Those are the only issues I ever really had.
But if you supply your own modem; smooth sailing.
NOW, their cable TV business is CROOKED. :mad:
They will try to FORCE you to buy expensive channel packaged you do not want with tactics like eliminating channels from lower cost packages.
I dropped their TV service after they tried to pull that stunt on me.
Stuck with them for internet because the only workable alternative is AT&T DSL which is even worse.
 
Vielgus-Kutas said:
people are building their own local fiber networks, so there clearly is a need for better/faster service, and the fact that they can do it and provide much better speeds for much better price is a proof that we are getting screwed by the broadband providers, and the anti freemarket behavior of the big ISPs shows that they are in fact a monopoly, duopoly, and they want to keep it that way, call it what you will, still the same outcome,
i live in a city with over 1.5m people and the only option in my area for any service above 2MBs is Comcast, that is a monopoly
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Better speeds are needed. I will not disagree with that. But the fact that cities are doing their own only shows that nobody else wants to do it. I don't want to drink battery acid. Doesn't mean that there are laws that prevent me from doing it. So if I or anyone else wants to drink battery acid we can. The fact that somebody might hire a side show freak that does that to make money doesn't mean anything. Just that the rest of us don't want to drink battery acid. Same here, cities doing a fiber build do it because they can't get any other company in there to do it. The cost is still not cost effective for anyone to be willing to rush out and do this unless they are forced to.

As for your city. I bet you have more choices than just Comcast. If not again that isn't due to Comcast keeping everyone else out, it is because nobody gives a damn about your area does doesn't see any value in giving you anything better. As I stated before if you have cell phone service then you have 4 carriers there that you left off. if you can't get higher than 2Mbps then that means that DSL in your area either is shit or not offered.

This is where things get interesting when it comes to people. Either high speed internet is a right and the government needs to steep in, start taxing everyone for internet service and then give the money back to ISPs for them to upgrade everything. Which people don't want. Or you have to allow a free market to control everything, which a free market says fuck you to most people as it isn't cost effective to actually give them decent internet. Look at it this way. you have 1.5M in your city. You are looking at probably $3 billion at least (probably more) to do a fiber to the home overhaul of everything. If you were a company would you want to pay $3 billion out of pocket to do something unless you are being forced to? Nobody else wants to come into your city and spend that much. So you end up kind of stuck in a free market because nobody is going to be the first to start pumping the money into anything. Once you do get that 1st person then everyone else starts to follow, but you need somebody to give that kick in the ass to start.

As I said I do understand that areas are stuck to not a lot of choices for really high speed services. And that isn't my argument or "issue", just the mindset that the lack of choices come from any certain company being in full control of an area and not letting anyone else in. Anyone is more the welcome to go into any area. They just don't want to. That is what the free market for ISPs has resulted in but people incorrectly view the free market as one controlled by a few companies that block out everyone else. Any "monopoly" in an area is only due to nobody wanting to spend money on going there and that is it.
 
I hate Comcast, but their service has been dependable. I'm just tired of the price and billing games.

We had a local provider send out fliers, probably a new small provider, that for what I am paying I could get over 100Mbit. My wife tossed the flier. :( I think it was $50 for 50mbit, which is faster than my current Comcast rate.

I found a local provider would provide up to 4GB data rates, but didn't indicate a price! :)
 
I'm very happy with internet in the UK. In my last flat I was paying £12.5 for 15Mb connection (unlimited) and in my current flat I have virgin media £25 per month for 50MB (unlimited), they also offer 100MB (unlimited) for £30. They even discount £1.75 if I go paperless.

Canadian rates prices leave something to be desired.
 
*edit - where did my edit button go, it seems that i'm unable to edit my post more often than not.

I only get internet, not cable or telephone. Bundles prices are also great in the UK. I don't know how they are so much more competitive over here, other than it is a small country.
 
I've had no problems or issues with Comcast......except for the price.
 
Exavior said:
That doesn't explain about the areas where it isn't monopolized. A great misconception among many people is that there is a great monopoly keeping everyone else out of the game. There isn't, you can go start up your own ISP in your home town if you wanted. All it takes is money. That's the problem is that people don't want to spend the money because they don't have to or because they know they won't get a return on investment.

People go out of there way to explain why there isn't competition. "Well DSL isn't competition because it isn't as fast" "WISP isn't competition because it isn't as fast" "3g home service isn't competition because it isn't as fast"... There isn't any competition in most of your minds just because you don't want to consider there to be competition. I don't care how shitty it might be but if you have a choice between Comcast, CentryLink, home access points from all 4 cell carriers, 2 different WISP, and hughesnet, then you have competition even if all the speeds aren't the same. you just have one that is doing better than the rest.

People will sit and complain about how the local telephone company is a monopoly but I bet you were able to cut your land line and still have phone service through a cell phone. So guess what, you had other choices. if you ported to vonage, magic jack, some other sip carrier you had choices. if you ported to a cable company then you had choices.

The only real monopolies still out there for utilizes are power and water. There are hundreds of thousands of ISPs out there. Some of your larger cities probably have multiple smaller ISPs that you never heard of. And you probably will just blow them off because A) you haven't heard of them before B) they aren't cheap C) their speeds aren't as great and then you stay with the larger guys that are cheaper and give you better speeds while complaining that nobody else is out there.
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You are so wrong. I live in the middle of Los Angeles. My 2 options are time warner, or crappy Verizon DSL.

And most businesses actually want to make money. So if the initial investment isn't going to be paid off quickly, they won't waste their time or money. Since they can't lease the existing lines for a reasonable rate that would allow them to make money, they would have to put in their own. And since they won't be tax payer subsidized like the existing lines used by these large coporations, it would be way too expensive. That's ignoring that most places have monopolies in place by the local government anyway. Gotta love what big corps can do with lobbying.
 
i hate mine. DSL is all i can get. Have to call them like clockwork every 3 months because my 8meg service degrades down to 4meg
 
Biznatch said:
You are so wrong. I live in the middle of Los Angeles. My 2 options are time warner, or crappy Verizon DSL.

And most businesses actually want to make money. So if the initial investment isn't going to be paid off quickly, they won't waste their time or money. Since they can't lease the existing lines for a reasonable rate that would allow them to make money, they would have to put in their own. And since they won't be tax payer subsidized like the existing lines used by these large coporations, it would be way too expensive. That's ignoring that most places have monopolies in place by the local government anyway. Gotta love what big corps can do with lobbying.
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I have brought up in other replies there about how the lack of ROI is the real cause for others not coming in areas. And I have also brought up how that is why there is a difference between business and residential offerings because of that.

That said you overlooked at least MegaPath for LA for service. I also picked a random address in part of LA and found that EarthLink offered up to 15Mbps cable service. Also see that TelePacific Communications services at least some parts of Los Angeles as that appears to be who Wilshire Grand Los Angeles Hotel uses. That means nothing for your exact address of course but that does show that for all of LA there are more than only 2 choices.
 
Exavior said:
Not sure if you mean you synced at 6 or a speed test gave you 6. There is a difference there. You can sync at 7Mbps but a speed test might only show you about 6 because with ADSL using PPPoE, ATM, and then IP all together you have a lot of overhead loss. So you are going to lose 13% - 15% because of that. So in perfect conditions if you synced at 7Mbps you would only see about 6Mbps max when doing a speed test. Some places bump your sync so that you might sync closer to about 8 so that a speed test will show you about 7 if you are supposed to get 7.
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Centurylink DSL is DHCP (in most areas). Their 6mb plan syncs at 7024 or so, it's been a while.
 
VladDracule said:
No, I HATE comcast because its service is absolute shit at my house. I am constantly, and i mean 3-4 times a day having to recycle power to my modem because it doesnt stay online. It just refuses to last a day without me having to reset it, I go in there and the "online" light is blinking, and even if it reconnects, unless i reset it it happens again. My ping has terrible spikes, ill be in a dota 2 match with a ping of 90, then it spikes to the 1000 range, multiple times a game. I have purchased new modems, new routers, and nothing fixes the issue, and its pricing is bullshit for a bullshit service. Calling them you never reach a person in your area, its an out of country call center. When i call and they "test the line" they find 0 issues, its a shit company with shit service
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Not that it matters, but my parents had the exact same problem (with comcast) and after 3 years of trying to figure out "WTF" was going wrong I figured it out.

My parents house was VERY close to the neighborhood trunk line, and the signal was coming in so strong it was causing the modem to overheat. When this would happen it wouldn't reconnect until I powercycled the stupid thing.

I fixed it by (I shit you not), putting a couple of signal splitters in the way of the coax line to the modem. It caused enough signal degradation that suddenly it worked just fine without any issues.

Go figure.




As for the original point.

I hate the monopolistic/oligarchy that exists w/r/t Telcom providers in the US. I live in an area with 2 options (ATT Uverse, Brighthouse cable). So I'm doing better then a lot of people. But, I HAVE to choose one of those two, and because of the oligarchy, I am forced to put up with ATT's absolutely shitty service combined with outrageous pricing, OR, with Brighthouse's absolutely unreliable service combined with even more outrageous pricing.

For a DVR, 12mbit internet, and the 5 channels my wife and I actually watch, we should NOT be paying $120/month, but that's what we've got.
 
I don't hate my ISP, I hate their customer service.

For the most part, most of the year, we have no problem, and consistently get our max speeds (only 16/2 connection, but perfectly fine for us). However, being a small local ISP, their CS is virtually non-existent outside of banking business hours. Which is pretty useless for most residential customers. So if there is a problem, you call their 1-800 after-hours number, where if you have a problem with your connection you must go through their troubleshooting process (powercycling everything) before they'll escalate it to a service call with the local office. They can't even tweak anything on the ISP end after-hours like reset our connection. So even if there's a simple issue that can be fixed by a simple reset on the ISP end, you still have to wait until the next day. That's what I hate.
 
pigwalk said:
Centurylink DSL is DHCP (in most areas). Their 6mb plan syncs at 7024 or so, it's been a while.
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ADSL is still ATM based, VDSL is Ethernet based. Most of the overhead on ADSL is caused by the ATM. PPPoE only adds a small amount to that. So for places that have went to DHCP instead they are removing about 1%.

That is the reason for some places doing that and having you sync faster so that by the time you remove the overhead you are at whatever speeds people expect to see.
 
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