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I am a former Service Electric customer that became an Optimum customer after they (S.E.) were purchased. I thought Service Electric was a pretty bad ISP, but Optimum came in and said "Hold my beer." My service has been worse since the purchase. I have the 500/35 plan, but hardly ever see those kinds of speeds during normal working hours. I can see those speeds very early in the morning or late at night, but that's not when I need it most. I also have random small outages for no apparent reason, even when the weather is nice. They sometimes last 10-15 minutes, I notice them when I'm working from home. They never credit you automatically, you have to pester them and once in awhile you'll get the credit. They really need to change their name to "Less than Optimum." Another ISP is rolling out fiber in my area, can't wait to ditch Optimum. member for 5 years, 65 visits, last login: 296 days ago lodged 2.7 years ago
Back to down more than up. Kids use 4G instead of WIFI since the Optimum rarely works. member for 24.6 years, 1802 visits, last login: 70 days ago updated 2.7 years ago
I have gradually cut back on Optimum by using Ooma for phone and streaming services for TV. But I have no other options for Internet in my neighborhood. The locals are good but policies and support are the worst. When their products work, they're good but expensive. When things go wrong you're on your own. I use my own modem and my own router. At the start of the pandemic I did a speed upgrade which was ordered over the phone. The speed never came up, but the billing did. I went to the local office (just before they shut down), they fixed the speed upgrade and recalculated by invoice. I paid the recalculated amount. The next bill showed my payment and the credit. But the credit was dated the first day of the next billing period instead of the day the clerk put it in. The bill therefore showed a $10 late fee. I put in a written complaint that was never returned. I was able to finally get into the local cable store and they did erase the late charge. But I was told I should have paid the entire bill and the initial credit would have shown up, lowering the bill following that one. Sorry, but that amount was in dispute and as per federal law I was under no obligation to pay a disputed amount. I wonder how many customers have paid that improperly posted late fee. PSC are you listening? Fast forward to 2021 and the issue is their Optimum WiFi and "millions of hotspots." I recently purchased a new cell phone and handed mine (Samsung Galaxy J7) over to the wife, retiring her old phone. I went into the Optimum site and deleted several old registered devices, including my "old" phone (probably should not have done that). I then tried to login that phone to an Optimum hotspot and got authentication errors. I did some research and tried all suggestions: forgetting the optimumwifi SSID, turning airplane mode on/off, rebooting the phone and resetting the phone's network settings (that deletes all saved SSID's). No joy. Googling the issue and Optimum reveals that--at least at one time--you could register a WiFi device from your optonline.net account by entering the device's MAC address. According to the forums, that apparently was dropped by Optimum in late 2020. Note that this phone had (for three years) connected to Optimum hotspots without issue. So I called support. Bad choice. I left my number in the call back que and the 40 minute wait was more like 90 minutes. I was connected to an obviously offshore person who was absolutely clueless. He tried to transfer me off to Altice (Optimum's poorly reviewed cell phone provider) and it took several minutes to convince him not to do that since it was not an Altice phone. He put me on multi minute holds several times. He tried to tell me it was a Samsung phone problem. He refused to pass me up to a higher level. Then he put me on hold again, saying I did have the right to ask for a higher support level but wanted to check one more thing. I was disconnected after a five minute hold... (Is anyone surprised about that?) I called back, and this time pushed the button for business support. I got to a US based person within seconds. I told him I was really a residential customer and explained what happened. He seemed to be sympathetic, confirmed my account, took my info and was going to transfer me to the proper support. The transfer went right back to square 1. I gave up. Clearly there is a way to register a device to connect to their wifi network by MAC address at their end. You just have to find the support person who knows how to do it or knows how to connect you with someone who can. Their support staff, at least for residential customers, just doesn't get the proper training. Bottom line is that their products work pretty well when they work. But a good company is judged by their performance when things get tough. An F for that. member for 23.6 years, 61 visits, last login: 153 days ago updated 2.8 years ago
We need better accountability from Altice and more competition. Their network reliability is atrocious. The speeds are fine, when the network isn't dropping constantly. despite the speeds I am getting, I would spend more if I could have guaranteed uptime from another provider. member for 3.7 years, 50 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago lodged 3 years ago
The order process was smooth, tech came out and installed about 2 days after phone order. Tech was very professional. All in all considering I pay a fairly low bill on promo, the service is worth the money. member for 8.1 years, 1714 visits, last login: 5 days ago updated 3 years ago
The package I have includes 200Mpbs down / 35Mbps up. While download is fast and stable and the speeds are great for watching movies, work from home & school remote lessons requires some upload bandwidth. The upload speeds I measure fluctuate during the day A LOT. It does come back to 35Mbps sometime at night. Right now it is 10:15 PM and the upload speed is 2.3Mbps. During the day it often falls below 1Mbps. Even DSL guarantees higher upload speed. Calling or chatting with them mostly boils down to the "disconnect/reconnect/powercycle" routine which in my case has proven to do nothing. One time the technician was able to do something to the "network congestion" configuration (for the network on their end) and temporarily fix the issue for me. A few days later the upload speeds were back to square 1 only that time I had no luck talking to knowledgeable support. It feels like Optimum is a dead end solution. I see a bunch of Reddit posts reporting exactly the same upload speed issue but Optimum seems to be turning a deaf ear to this. I myself work in Information Technology and software engineering, networking is my area of expertise so at least I know how to approach and describe the issue. A regular customer would be simply told that "your download speed is 200Mbps as advertised, the problem is your equipment" and left alone facing the problem the customer can't possibly solve. Unfortunately my knowledge is little help when the solution is up to Optimum support and so-called "technicians" member for 3.2 years, 6 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago lodged 3.2 years ago
I've been an Optimum customer from approx 2005-6. Love uncapped internet and for the most part, speeds are as advertised. At least now they are. 5-6 years ago a story a bit different, but that's water under the bridge. I'm not going to review heavily compressed MPEG-2 1080i "HD" nor the DVR. Last CV DVR I owned it was 10 years ago and I never tried a new "cloud" DVR. IP voice Phone works just fine, I just wish that modem power backup battery won't be an obscure optional accessory. Few reasons for being gripes with my CV Internet. a) DSLreports Speed Test is now showing very bad bufferbloat - Typically D to F scores b) connection could be unstable and CV modem started to show higher than usual uncorrectable errors in stats. I now often get internet disconnects, lasting from a few seconds to a minute. c) Freaking Arris model with g-d Intel Puma chipset. it's still a thing. I recently canceled my tv/voice - and guess what only Docsis 3.0 I could get? You guessed. Same old POS cheap-ass Arris tm1602a modem. d) $85 for 200/35mbps service. It's not terrible of course, but rather pay $70 for a 1000/1000 Update 2019: New $10/m Modem fee and absolutely ridiculous $2.5/m "network enhancement fee" now make me want to drop then today if I had another fast ISP provider available to pick from. Update Jan 2021: I've been running quite successfully Arris 6183 Docsis 3.0 modem at my home since March 2019 and it goes without saying that it paid for itself by Oct 2019 and it's net savings of 10$/month since then. The connection is rock stable and no issues whatsoever. Jan 2nd the Saturday I get Optimum bill in the postbox (yes, I still prefer to do my online banking from paper bills on my desk - call me old fashioned if you like) Anyhow, It's quite normal that the due date for the Optimum bill is less than 2 weeks away - this is their "normal" billing practice. What's not normal is I took a look at the bill today (Monday) and I see that the due day is LITERALLY tomorrow!!! WT Actual F. member for 12.2 years, 994 visits, last login: 8 days ago updated 3.2 years ago
* The plant is currently being monitored by Optimum for upstream congestion, hoping for more upload channels or ODFM soon * Slow upload speeds, otherwise no issues with services * I use my own equipment -- Arris SB8200 modem and ASUS AX88U router. Overall, 8.4 / 10. UPDATES: * On 06/02/2020, I got ODFM downstream (download) and download speeds are great (one step toward 1 Gig offering) * 06/16/2020, 1 Gig offerred * 06/23/2020, activated 1 Gig with UBEE1322 * 06/25/2020, activated Arris SB8200 with no issues * Late July, activated Netgear CM1100 with no issues, discovers using small 28 MHz wide OFDM * 10/05/2020, 4 D3.0 channels added * 10/27/2020, node maintenance 20 minutes. * Activated TM3402A with no issues. Also appears to support VOIP. member for 4 years, 1788 visits, last login: 2 days ago updated 3.4 years ago
Modem: SB8200 What used to be a decent company has fallen apart since being purchased by Altice. Network is falling apart, and company is not maintaining its coax plant. I regularly have lost packets (and uncorrectables), multiple disconnections during work day, and company refuses to do anything about it. I have opened up numerous support tickets, just to have them tell me its my modem, or my router[its not, its ingress into their plant). They will constantly threaten an $80 charge unless you subscribe to their expensive wire protection plan. If you have problems with your connection, you are stuck with them until you switch to another provider. Do not recommend if the connection is urgent for your job, or you game, as you will simply lose connection at random points during the day. member for 21.3 years, 2054 visits, last login: 3 days ago updated 3.5 years ago
I have had service since 2003 and haven't had issues as bad as the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020.) It has taken six months and, as of 10/07/2020, the issue is now resolved following a 2AM node split, Optimum dubbing it as the "last resort action taken." After six months of back-and-forth, including six billed (at $80 each) service calls / technician visits, the final declaration of the issue was overutilisation at the node causing packet loss. If I have learned any lessons, Optimum needs to be held accountable and you need to be a pain in their arse, not letting them peace and quiet until your service is at satisfactory levels. If you can't push more than 6 mbps of upload speeds, especially to video broadcasting and file-upload operations, I suggest you start calling right away or filing informal FCC complaints. When their service is not suffering, however, their performance is on point. That's all I'll say about it. member for 15.6 years, 268 visits, last login: 98 days ago updated 3.5 years ago
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