Fuck ISPs
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Fuck major ISPs support smaller ISPs if you have one available. I literally emailed my ISP about a deal they have going on and it took 2 emails to reduce my monthly cost by $5 for higher speed. My previous ISP actually reduced my bill without me doing anything after their costs went down.
Maybe Ars can look into ISP's jacking rates up. Fuck you Charter. I see that extra $5 you added on my monthly statement.
Almost all these companies run on an annual schedule where the price will keep going up until you hit the "standard" rate.
Gotta call and threaten to cancel (or actually cancel) to get it back down
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Helen Marie Plourde, an 86-year-old Minnesota resident, just spent over a month without home Internet and phone service because CenturyLink failed to fix a problem that began in July.
Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, put Deloney in touch with us.
"For the past month, [Plourde] has been going to my mom and dad's house to use the Internet two times a day because hers went out and CenturyLink can't be bothered fixing it.
That didn't end up being necessary because CenturyLink sprang into action after Ars contacted the company's media relations team on Thursday night.
A CenturyLink technician went to Plourde's home on Friday morning and fixed a line problem on a nearby street, restoring her Internet and VoIP phone service.
On Friday morning, CenturyLink told Ars that "the help ticket did not escalate through Velocity's process properly, so it wasn't in our system."
The original article contains 510 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Aka, "not my fault".
CenturyLink is absolute garbage. I rented a DSL modem from them. It got fried by lightning so they had to replace it. They sent me a modem that wasn't compatible with my service. A couple years later, I had another one get zapped. I double checked with not one but two customer service reps to make sure they were sending me a modem that worked with my service. They sent me one that wasn't compatible with my service. Then they took a few weeks to send me one that actually was compatible. When it got here, it either didn't work or something else in the wiring was messed up (probably more likely).
That last part might not have been their fault but I could have known about it 3 weeks sooner. At that point I didn't have much confidence they'd get it fixed while I still have my youth and good looks. Fortunately a smaller fiber company had just started serving the area and I was able to immediate cancel the CenturyLink service. More than 3 times faster and slightly cheaper as well. Also symmetric upload is pretty nice. CenturyLink is in for a rude awakening as competition appears in places where they previously were the only choice.
I looked at Centurylink's "compatible" modems and they're all rated 3.5 stars and cost $150+ or more.
The next best thing is satellite at $100 for 30Mps, versus 200Mps for $40 for CenturyLink, or Comcast.
I'll give CenturyLink a chance because I really hate Comcast. But God I wish there was more competition.
This exact scenario is what starlink is for
I’ll give CenturyLink a chance because I really hate Comcast.
I can definitely believe that Comcast can manage to be more horrible than CenturyLink. Not an easy task though.
The next best thing is satellite at $100 for 30Mps, versus 200Mps for $40 for CenturyLink, or Comcast.
Don't go with satellite if you care about latency at all. (From what I know, it also tends to have pretty pitiful upload speeds.)
I looked at Centurylink’s “compatible” modems and they’re all rated 3.5 stars and cost $150+ or more.
I had their service for 6-7 years and I have to admit I never had an issue with the modem (and the service was generally reliable with little downtime). Their customer service though...
"Ars on your side!"