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Review by chris92 See Profile

  • Location: Milan, Rock Island, IL, USA
  • Cost: $90 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 14 days
Reliable, and Fast Speeds
Initial Install, and phone tech support, Data Cap
Extremly incompetent Phone Tech Support, but the actual service is pretty good!
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

Reliability: I only had Mediacom go down once for a couple hours in the 3 months I've had them. I wouldn't say that's too bad.

Speed: This has been very consistent. After finally getting 30Mbit service, it has been a solid 4.43Mbytes down (~33.5Mbit on Speedtest.net) every time! Considering we live in a house that is a good 3 miles away from the city, that is pretty good!

Data Cap: pretty bad. The first 2 months, I reached to about 85% of my 350GB cap. I have since upgraded to a 999GB cap.

Initial Install/Tech Support: Extremely incompetent. See story below.

Online Tech Support: MediacomChad has been very quick to respond, and great so far!

My Story:

Starting out in June of 2013, I decided to go with Mediacom, because AT&T DSL only offered 3Mbit service to our new house. We came from having AT&T phone service, and wanted to transfer the phone to the new house. Initial call to order service was okay; they offered what seemed to be a pretty good deal - 30Mbit Prime Plus service and Phone add-on for $69.99 + modem + taxes. Time from the call to the actual installation, was around 5 days (including a weekend). I went with a recommendation from people at work to get the Motorola SB6120, so I bought this for $59 on Amazon.

Initial Install:

This (seemed) good; the install tech initially insisted that we backfeed the telephone wiring so we can get phone service to all phone jacks. I didn't want him messing around with that, so I insisted that he didn't. (We have a cordless base station with 3 extra phones anyways). When it was time to transfer the phone number over to the new modem. It didn't work. The tech spent about an hour on the phone with several phone calls "trying" to get it to work. Once he gave up, he activated the Prime Plus internet, and it worked as advertised (about 33Mbit down, and 2.3 up). He scheduled for another tech to come back in 3 days to fix the phone transfer.

Since the Motorola modem didn't arrive by install time, the tech installed a Cisco modem with a built-in wireless. That worked okay - the wireless signal didn't really reach outside of the house. When the modem arrived (the afternoon of the initial install), I plugged it in, and activated it on the Mediacom Walled Garden Site very easily. This, paired to an Asus RT-N66U router made quite the pair!

Trouble Started:

That night, when I was downloading some files, I notice that the speed wasn't quite fast. And so, I did a Speedtest. Low and behold, I was getting a very solid 3Mbit down and 500Kbit up. First thing I thought was that great, they misunderstood me the whole time thinking I said 3Mbit instead of 30Mbit. I decided to wait until the tech to come to fix the phone to discuss this issue.

2nd Tech Arrives:

When the second tech arrived, the phone transfer worked with ease through the Mediacom Walled Garden Site. I could have certainly done this myself without the tech arriving. Then I asked him about the internet speed, and why I'm only getting 3Mbit down. He looks on his sheet and says, "Yes, you ordered the Launch Speed". Uhh no I didn't, I ordered 30Mbit service. The tech said he couldn't do anything about it, and that I would have to call up tech support.

1st Call to tech support:

This was about a 25 minute call with a lady that was trying to "figure out what happened" I was on hold for a good 15 minutes of the call, until she said that she would call me back after she talks with her supervisor. She never called back.

2nd Call to tech support:

I called around 11:30 PM that night and talked to a guy who initially looked at it and figured out what happened. But before that, I had to give him my Mom's last 4 of her SS number (It was my mom's name on the account as she was paying for it). I didn't know it, and didn't want to wake her up, so I couldn't do anything at all. I asked about my previous call about this incident with the guy, and he had NO notes that indicated that I called about this. Looking back, the lady from the first call didn't even ask for the last 4 of my Mom's SS number either!

3rd Call to tech support:

I called the next day around 11AM, and another guy answered right away. My mom was with, and we first added me as an "authorized account person". I then explained the entire situation to the the guy, which took a good 5 minutes. He started off checking my modem, and said that the signals were way off, and THAT was why we were only getting 3Mbit service! I finally got an answer!!! So, he wanted to schedule a tech to come out to fix the "signal" problem. He had to transfer me to an agent to do this. It was until I was on hold for 45 minutes, I hung up.

4th Call to tech support:

In frustration, I immediately called back to tech support and got another guy pretty quickly. I explained the entire situation AGAIN for another 10 minutes, expressing my fury (I was pretty angry, and I don't usually get angry). The guy (a pretty young guy) finally ACTUALLY figured out the situation. He, for some reason, figured out that the problem was from the initial set-up, and that the tech had to re-submit the order in trying to get the phone working right. When the tech submitted the order, he ordered the wrong internet! I asked the tech, "But what about my modem signals, the last guy said that they were very bad and that was why the speed was slow?" So the guy took a look, and said that they were excellent (WTF?). And so the guy finally gave me my 30Mbit internet right there on the call, and he rebooted the modem to change it. It worked!!! The only thing that he couldn't do was confirm any prices, but he would submit a ticket to "get it right". So I decided to wait until the first bill came to see the prices.

1st Bill:

The first bill was over $80. It had all kinds of credits, and partial service charges on it, and somehow came to about $80. We went ahead and paid it, even though we paid $69 at the time of the first install. When the second bill came, everything was good, it was a little over $70 which was what I expected.

Online Support:

MediacomChad has been great so far, very quick to respond to questions. I was curious if 105Mbit service was available in my area, and sure it was! He arranged for a sales guy to call me back. Unfortunately the first guy didn't give me a deal, so I declined.

After a few more calls to the sales department, I finally got a deal to get 105Mbit service for $79 internet + $4.95 Phone + $5 Phone Modem + taxes. First calls to the Sales Department quoted me "at least $149 for 105 internet and phone" I knew I could get better, so I gave it another shot, and they quoted me $99 for 105Mbit + "something more" for phone, but they couldn't do it now until the weekday. So I called back on the weekday, and finally settled on the first mentioned deal.

After getting 105Mbit service, I noticed that I wasn't actually getting 105Mbit service. I was getting about 60Mbit down, and 6Mbit up. I messaged MediacomChad, and he is currently working to get this resolved.

Update: MediacomChad has resolved the issue very quickly, and now I'm seeing 100+ Mbits!

member for 15.5 years, 815 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
updated 10.5 years ago


MediacomChad
Mediacom Social Media Relations Team
Premium Member
join:2010-01-20
Gulf Breeze, FL

1 recommendation

MediacomChad

Premium Member

Service

Hi Chris, I'm sorry to hear about the experience you've had with our other support teams- it's certainly not the way business should be handled. I'm glad to be working with you here, though, to help get these issues resolved! You should have a new IM waiting from me, but definitely feel free to let me know if there is anything I can do for you now or in the future!
chris92
join:2008-09-20
Coal Valley, IL

chris92

Member

Re: Service

Thank you again for the help so far!! You've been a lot better to work with! Highly recommended.

Joe Dirt
@frontiernet.net

Joe Dirt

Anon

Service.

LOL service from Mediacom more like lack of service and crappy triple play bundles. Yes let me rely on a phone service that goes out 3 times a day along with the internet. I had them for a few months with many tech visits and they plowed new cable to my house and it still wasn't fixed. They also cut Frontiers drop to my house at ground level so when I switched back to Frontier I had to get a new drop plowed in. Great company to avoid. I had nothing but problems but I'm glad you are getting better service. I'm just glad I got back to a reliable phone and internet service provider. maybe slower but it stays on and my phone always works. Dishnetwork bundled tv service has much better HD picture quality than Mediacom also.

Mediacom sux
@mchsi.com

-1 recommendation

Mediacom sux

Anon

Mediacom = Total extortionists

MEDIACON SUCKS! THEY ARE TOTAL EXTORTIONISTS! The internet's bandwidth has gotten 100X faster and it is CHEAPER to provide that bandwidth than ever before... So of COURSE Mediacon gives us LESS bandwidth, CAPS us to death and charges us more than EVER!!! Notice how that it the exact OPPOSITE of "passing along the savings to the customer"? They are total liars and they do not care about their customers at ALL! They will nickel and dime you to death and even CHARGE you $60 if you make them come out and they "can't find the problem". (That's their way of getting you to stop calling and forcing you to live with their crappy service.)