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Review by conleys See Profile

  • Location: undisclosed location
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
  • Install: about 60 days
NOT GOOD AT ALL
HORRIBLE
CenturyLink IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST

1. 40mgps Promotion was a complete LIE!!! It is only UP TO 40mgps... So if it is at 5mgps, then they feel that they are giving you solid service. THAT IS AWFUL. Pay full price for terrible connection....

2.. I had OVER 300 Minutes with Tech support and they never helped

3. I was told by one of the "Managers" that he was the highest in the company and couldn't help with my internet which was down for over a month at that time.

4. I had 3 "techs" come over, who were more confused than Scooby-Doo and were unable to assist.

5. 2 of the techs claimed, "oh your wiring outside is damaged, probably by squirrels"... This was not the case.

6. Can't guarantee a wireless connection, therefore they use it as a cop out to not give their clients internet.

7. I WAS OUT OF SERVICES FOR THE FIRST 3 MONTHS AND THEY COULD NOT HELP, BUT THEY ARE CHARGING ME STILL.

8. The techs work until 4pm daily, but they cannot work on your place if you are not home. SO DO NOT EXPECT TO GET HELP IF YOU HAVE A FULL TIME JOB.

9. After starting in late February with CenturyLink, I finally got a fluctuating connection

10. After over 30 phone calls, 300 minutes on the phone, 4 techs coming out, ZERO customer service, being disrespected by the "customer service", not getting anything CLOSE to 40mgps, and numerous contacts with the Corporate level, STILL, I am being BULLIED into paying a termination fee for the lack of services I was given.

CenturyLink is the absolute WORST!!!!

Sincerely,
An IT Specialist, who got cheated by this awful company's services

member for 9.8 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 9.8 years ago

gapmn
join:2013-11-10
Saint Paul, MN

gapmn

Member

Sorry to hear your story.

Sorry to hear your story. CL does state "up to" for a reason, because most of the houses will not qualify for the 40M service. In other words, depending on how far you live from the DSLAM will determine what download speed you qualify for at your address. What does CL's website say your address qualifies for?
kgloffice
join:2004-08-24

kgloffice

Member

Centurylink Service and the "up to" service clause

I am 1/4 mile from the DSLAM in a rural area. The fastest service available is 1.5Mbps. Except....in the evenings and on weekends, I am lucky to get .5Mbps. I worked with the CenturyLink techs who verified over two months that the wiring from the cabinet to my modem was OK.

Bottom line: CenturyLink has oversold capacity in this area and does not provide enough bandwidth to the DSLAM from the CO. I wrote a letter to the Attorney General of Arizona and CenturyLink's response was essentially that they would release me of my contract without penalty and that their terms of service clearly stated speeds "...up to..." 1.5Mbps. BTW, CenturyLink has stopped selling new service in this area.....

Industry standards for DSL are 75-80% and Centurylink's own standard is 80%, according to their tech support. In other words, CenturyLink charges me for a service that by their own standard, they are not providing. That is a fraudulent activity in my opinion.

A note on their techs and technical support: they have all been great to excellent and tried very hard to solve the problem until it became clear that the area is under provisioned and they can't do anything about it.

The "up to" clause is essentially an escape clause for poor service and should not be allowed by law to be applied so liberally. By their use, a service of 10kbps should be acceptable...we need the FCC or someone to solve this egregious use of the clause.

One final note: less than a mile away, 7Mbps service is available from CenturyLink across a major road.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

Re: Centurylink Service and the "up to" service clause

DSL service is extremely distance-sensitive, but one of the other things that I don't know if many people understand is that there are a lot of different DSL technologies, and almost more important than the technology that's feeding the DSLAM near you is the technology that's feeding that DSLAM with Internet.

I live in Flagstaff and I'm on one of the older DSLAMs still in service. It's fed by some number of T1 lines, each of which can do 1.544 megabits, and for each T1 they bring to that DSLAM, they can feed some number of customers. I haven't actually heard any hard numbers, but I've heard it's a 1:8 ratio. You are sharing a 1.544 megabit T1 with up to eight other customers. In my experience, CL does a reasonably good job of splitting the available throughput evenly among customers whose lines are doing anything, so it's not unreasonable (from a technical standpoint) that you're getting .1 to .20 megabits of throughput.

It's still way faster than dial-up, and "High Speed Internet" (how DSL is classified, regardless of how slow some DSL technologies are) is a completely unregulated service.

As an interesting sidenote, if your wire length is only 1/4 a mile, your modem will likely tell you if you poked it in the right way that it could synchronize at 8m/1m or even faster. That doesn't mean CL can sell you that speed today, but if they fed your RT-DSLAM with something faster (like bonded g.SHDSL lines, or fiber Ethernet) then you would probably qualify for the same service that is available across the road.

If you're actually only 1,300 feet from the DSLAM, then when they feed it with fiber and put in a VDSL2 system, you'll probably easily qualify for 40M -- and the overselling on VDSL2 systems, which are fed by a gigabit Ethernet line, is far less noticeable.

That 80% number CenturyLink cites is probably if your modem were only syncing at 300 kilobits/sec, for some reason. It's actually really interesting CL would even make a promise like that, because the ATM protocol that gets used to carry data from the DSLAM to your DSL modem incurs like a 15% overhead of its own on the 1536/896 kilobits per second your modem is probably connected at.

And, there are a few possible reasons CL has stopped selling new service in your area, the first of which is that there are no more ports left on the DSLAM, meaning they couldn't physically connect a customer even if somebody offered them $1,000 a month and agreed that they didn't care at all how slow it was.

The second and admittedly slightly more likely scenario is that CL has committed to only overselling T1s a certain amount, and they've reached that amount.

The good news is that you're so close to the DSLAM, because when they do upgrade everything, you'll likely qualify for all the best speeds, which is nice.

condust
@97.122.184.x

condust

Anon

over price for bundle

We change our service because the other company's charging us $150/mo. We came to have CenturyLink for phone & internet plus DirectTV for cable. Upon application, we said BUNDLE. For the 1st 2 months, we we're charged $90 something, on the 3rd month - we were charged $140 something. I am wondering now, where is the bundle here? On our 4th month - we have $190 dollar!! We also thought that we were bundle and tied up for 2 yrs for $90????????

In late Jan 2014, you have your advertisement about BUNDLE for $90. Landline isnt acknowledge as one of the bundle? I also have AT & T cellphone service. not also acknowledger as bundle? On the statement
"it says tell us what we want" to make us HAPPY.... now I am telling you that I am NOT HAPPY...

These is not to mention the hassle that my husband need to add me into the account eventhough I'm the one who called for the service and I'm the one PAYING for the service!!!! My bank account says it all in your file !!

Can you please explain?

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

The answer is ...

.. we live in rural America. We all have the same problems with connectivity from the second tier wireline carriers that serve us. CL and Frontier are two of the second tier companies that come to mind. AT&T, Comcast, and Cox deserted us 15-20 years ago when they sold out their small and mid-markets from coast to coast to companies like the New Jersey cable carrier that created Suddenlink. I can assure you that regardless of how bad you think CL is, others are worse, but I digress

If I remember correctly CL offers: 4/1 in their DSL service area, and 10/1 in their ADSL2 service area. The problem is for every ____ farther from the provisioning equipment the speed drops In my area the 10/1 ADSL2 drops to 1.5/.512 about 24 blocks from the plant. CL is replacing 1000 feet of line full of holes which should stop some of the phone problems. However.

The internet is unregulated. The phone IS a utility and it is regulated by Federal Law. However neither cable, nor satellite, or broadband providers are regulated by Congress or by conscience. Providers have the unfettered control over their equipment and the cost to you. Service is determined by the equipment in each plant and the service area which is proprietary and has changed little in the last 75 years.

In rural areas we don't have many options: cable or phone Internet. It is possible that satellite is faster, but 4G over a 2.5G isn't going to get you much. Another option is a Bonded Pair. It might get you a 4 or 5 but it is costly.The last option is cable which could give you a naked 4/1.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

Re: The answer is ...

The OP might actually not live in rural America. CenturyLink serves several urban and suburban locations, and if they were being offered 40 megabits, then CenturyLink has started the process on fiber to the neighborhood upgrades in their area.

Of course, 5 megabits is slow enough, and he doesn't say that that's what CL would sell him in terms of speed (i.e. you're 16,000 feet from a DSLAM so you can have 5 megs on ADSL2+) or if he is actually getting 40/20, 40/5, 40/2 or 40m/896k from the DSLAM but can't speed-test faster than 5M, which would indicate severe congestion at either the DSLAM or the BRAS.

Though, it does sound like there are some pretty severe wiring issues going on, and unfortunately in order ot get that kind of stuff looked at, you just have to call CenturyLink, set an appointment, and take a day off of work, and there's no way around that.

linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
United State

linicx

Premium Member

Re: The answer is ...

What CL has in the office, or what can be done in the office, doesn't mean it leaves the offices. CL has a footprint in 38 states. The fact is service can differ greatly from place to place.
We have a 100Mbps pass through in the office. The very best we see in our small town is 10/1. Compared to the 5/1 and 6/1 offered in nearby larger towns, I am not unhappy.

Will speed increase? Maybe. Will it be capped? Maybe. I am not capped and I can afford what I have. I am not unappy.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

5 megs where?

When you say you only got 5 megs, do you mean when you called or went on their web site, you could only choose 5 megs as a speed, or do you mean that you actually chose some 40M package (40/20, 40/5, 40/2 and 40m/896k are available speed tiers) but when it was installed and running, you could only get 5 megs off of a web site like speedtest.net?

One of these things (you could only buy 5M) is a pretty normal situation. As gapmn See Profile says, you may be very far from the DSLAM, or even though fiber+VDSL2 upgrades are taking place in your town/county/whatever, your specific service area may not have had them yet. (I'm personally in this group and can only get 1.5M service, and less than 2 miles away, customers can get 5 or 7 megs, and less than 5 miles away, there are premises that can get 40/20M, all on different equipment.)

In terms of getting outside wiring fixed, unfortunately you just have to have them over, to test, and if they find it's not your inside wiring, you need to pursue getting the issue fixed by wiring technicians. That often entails a day off, or if they have any available (they probably won't, because I imagine they're a hot commodity) a weekend appointment.

If CL is your only choice, either by way of a cableco not existing, or by way of the cableco being terrible, then it helps to learn about your local area, what equipment CL is using, and about DSL equipment and technology in general, so that you can be more informed when you're speaking to CL.

I've done it and I'll likely have to do it again, because my line is suffering some noise issues at the moment. In my experience, you do have to be persistent, because if CL perceives that you're "fine" with an issue (either by way of not contacting them or whatever) then they're happy to let an issue slide. From what I've read, this isn't because they're just going to sit at the shop and twiddle their thumbs -- they do maintenance and build-out, and that keeps the company busy.

Sometimes you have to be the squeaky wheel, but it may help to calm down a bit and ensure that you approach the issue with professionalism. The squeaky wheel needn't be indecent to the tech support.

As a side-note from an IT professional who is actually on the tech support side of things (though not for a telco.) People who call in and claim that they know any given system because they're tech support are often a) wrong b) extremely grating, and the call is way less productive. If you actually know some things about the system, then please feel free to talk to the support agent about what you think the issue may be, or where you want to start troubleshooting. Although the tech support group will likely start troubleshooting from your house -- for good reason, it's the easiest thing they can eliminate as a target that needs to be worked on.

If you've already eliminated internal wiring as an issue, then you can go back to your records and say something like "oh, well I spoke with your colleague $NAME on 2014-05-DD and we eliminated that as a potential issue. We found that the DSL modem stats were about the same with it on my desk and at the demarcation point, and believe the trouble to be on CenturyLink's end of things."

And then, you can ask "Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot where the issue lies, or can we have a ticket to have the line conditioned and inspected?" -- Often, this is where the home visit comes in, and what the tech will do is look at CL's side of the NID/demarc box, and then look at your utility pedestal or the ariel splice. CL can drop a new wire form the box/splice to your house, and if they find that that's in bad shape (chewed by squirrels, for example) they may elect to do exactly that, and then ask that you test the service for so long before calling back in. They may also do things like rewire the pedestal and remove bridge taps, any sort of loading coil that may still exist (if you haven't had DSL before, etc.)

Good luck!
coryw

coryw

Member

Pricing

One other note -- the $30/mo price is just that, promotional pricing.

The non-promotional pricing for 40M (any tier) is going to be above $70/mo, and the non-promotional pricing for 5M is going to be a bit closer to $45/mo. In fact, here are the details of their promotional rates:

»www.centurylink.com/comm ··· pup.html

If they let you subscribe to 40M service, then at the end of month 13, your pricing will be close to $70. If you are subscribed to 1.5, 5 or 7, then you'll be paying $40 or $45 at the other end of the promotion.