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Review by DurhamDanger 
member for 25 days, 3 visits, last login: 12 days ago
lodged 25 days ago
 Durham,Durham,NC
 Contract price not specified.  "Local Tech Support are Great" "Oversold DSL leads to speeds LESS THAN Dialup" "$5 credit off bill still does not help crappy speeds"
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I was one of those many people who had Verizon before they sold Durham to Frontier. The sale was years in planning during which time Verizon ran Durham into the ground. On the switch to Frontier my network immediately bottomed out. However the field engineers and local techs worked through the issues and fixed my 3Mbps/768kbps to acceptable speeds hovering around 2.5 Mbps.
Until last week that is...we have been experiencing terribly crappy speeds during the evening hours and just plain crappy speeds during the day. We've even had network disconnections happen now. My last speed tests are now showing horrific speeds of 168kbps down. That is even crappy for dial-up!
When consulting with the technician, she admitted Durham has been over-subscribed in DSL and they don't expect to have it completely fixed until June 2013. Sending me over to customer support, they could only offer me a $5 credit for six months. That's five dollars off unusable service? It's like handing a company money for absolutely nothing.
I was supposed to get a call from the local technical manager to either explain the issue and do something about it or offer up something else. Nope. No call today.
I am having to move to another service (most likely Earthlink cable) to get the Internet back into my house.
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Review by smtfish
member for 10.1 years, 87 visits, last login: 32 days ago
updated 32 days ago
- Shepherdstown,Jefferson,WV
- Contract price not specified.
- "pleasant employees, sometimes helpful, always professional"
- "inefficient bureaucracy, *!# yahoo ad-laden webmail, slow dsl offerings, monopoly"
- "love-hate relationship with the new/old Frontier"
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At my home office, I have the only DSL speed supposedly offered in my area which is 2.5 mbps down, 512 up. (There used to be multi-tiered offerings but when I inquired I was told I only have one option). I've been a customer with Frontier both on the business side (POTS,T-1,metro-e,PRI) and their residential side (POTS, DSL) for over 15 years. I oversee services which total over $1400/month to Frontier.
I abhor their sales/marketing function. As a customer, I get constant mailings to buy services I already have, while at the same time being exhorted to go green with electronic statements. Physical statements often have ads selling junk for 3rd party services. Their sales technique to a captive audience in what is essentially a monopoly market is ineffective at best- irritating at worst. Having been a long-time customer, my irritation with Frontier continues to escalate over time. In addition to their snail mailings their current Yahoo web-mail is laden with cr@pvertising, C'mon I'm a paying customer. If there was another option for combined phone+internet I'd jump ship in a heartbeat.
Frontier is a multi-headed monster. I've been transferred between as many as four agents in a circular loop. I've signed contracts for services that took 6+ months to install (still in process). After the sale is made - don't expect the salesperson to call back if there is trouble. Where's the accountability?
Frontier has many gems in its technical support staff if you can get to the 2nd tier support or talk to people actually making the repairs. They are pleasant, intelligent, stay on the problem until it is resolved, and followup.
One problem I've noticed is that the support functions are divided by specialty (by necessity) but they often don't talk to each other. As a result diagnosis is often slow and sometimes the first response is along the lines of "we can't see a problem, it must be on your end" or "are you willing to accept any fees before we come out" Jeez, I thought you were the experts. In a world where network testers can tell me a line break is 50 ft away, I still don't understand why their troubleshooting tools seem to be lacking. This is both a technology and a management issue. Focus here first- not on your marketing. There once was a time after a recurring number of failures with Frontier, that I had a dedicated rep - amazingly all the problems and frustrations seemed to vanish almost instantly. Sadly that hasn't been the case for some time now
Frontier executives, please sit in on a support ticket from beginning to end. To truly understand the magnitude of your inefficiency, don't interfere in the process because then you won't see all the circular loops and hoops your customers are jumping through.
Frontier, cut your sales and marketing budget, streamline your support processes and use the money you save to improve your infrastructure in WV, improve your internet offerings to be competitive with Comcast, and get rid of the yahoo mail for residential customers. . . Then perhaps instead of deterring other people from signing up for your services, I will actually recommend you.
update 2013Mar6. I still stand by my original review but I will mention on the plus side I was able to increase my speeds to roughly 6 mbps down/768 kbps up. That said, they seem to be severely bandwidth constrained at their Charles Town, Central Office especially during the evenings. Heck, they even admit it on their speedtest.frontiernet.net webpage. I've been with them so long, I probably could be described as tel-codependent.
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 | | Ditto Very well written sir!
I agree 100% with your evaluation.
Just to compare, TDS telecom has its own in house web app's to access every type of DSLAM they have, Anymedia, Calix, ect. You could even Telnet into a stinger if you needed to. And that was just level 1 support. If you needed to adjust a customers Modulation it was on call to a SR , to have them adjust them.
We had a Intranet chock full of granular topics to find the answer if you needed it.
I find that frontier spends gob's of cash on truck roll's due to their CSR's throwing their hands up in the air, or just putting to problem on the customers end.
Time to clean house frontier. | |
| | | Off topic. What does TDS telecom have to do with this review? Don't spam the forum. | |
| | | | Re: Off topic. trying to sell TDS's service in other areas??? They are a CLEC as well. | |
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| | Yahoo! Mail If you don't like the Yahoo! Webmail why use it? Why not go else where to obtain your own domain and host it some where? | |
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Review by Gentoo
member for 60 days, 19 visits, last login: 29 days ago
updated 45 days ago
- Carbondale,Jackson,IL
- $45 per month
- (24 month contract)
 about 21 days- "Good off peak speeds and not much else"
- "Extremely High ping, Congestion, and Horrible tech support."
- "Oversold network, It's just not worth it."
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I signed up for frontiers 3Mbps/0.750Mbps Dry line DSL package for $40 a month plus a $5 modem rental fee. When we signed up they told us it would be on in 1-2 days. That never happened, we ended up waiting about 3 weeks with multiple calls to frontier wandering what the hell was going on. I'm not sure if there was a legitimate problem or that they just don't care.
Were I live frontier seems to suffer extreme congestion problems, starting at noon my speed slowly drop then about 7-10 it just dies completely with downloads as slow as 0.10Mbps. Then at midnight my speeds skyrocket to a constant 2.8Mbps. Overall I'm not very pleased and living in rural southern Illinois, I won't be seeing any upgrades for a long time.
I am no longer a Frontier Customer.
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Review by brkr19
member for 65 days, 2 visits, last login: 59 days ago
lodged 59 days ago
- Genoa,Dekalb,IL
- $40 per month
- (24 month contract)
- "Very slow and costs as much as Comcast"
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Slow speed. Called tech suppt of course the speed test says 1.5mb/sec but thats not what I get when I download and the browsing is slow too. Tech suppt says "not our problem".
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Review by asdfasd2
member for 7.1 years, 5 visits, last login: 63 days ago
lodged 70 days ago
- Columbus,Platte,NE
- Contract price not specified.
- "Not owned by recording industry. I've never had a C&D."
- "Unstable, speeds not as advertised, poor tech support, VERY slow for what you pay"
- "Don't use them unless they're the only ISP in town."
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For the first few years of being with this company (since around 2003), I was miserable. Something in their box out in our yard was messed up, it was making our connection essentially unusable for MMO gaming and completely down altogether when it rained. They kept sending techs out, they started threatening to charge us for the tech trips, they kept not fixing the problem. Some of their attempts at "fixing" it resulted in our speed dropping to half for no apparent reason and it took years to get them to revert THAT change (same old distance excuse, despite the fact it was 2x faster before they started messing with it to "fix" things). EVENTUALLY, they finally replaced whatever was buggered up in the box and apologized.
The net itself, when "working correctly", is unstable, especially in the evenings, because they need a serious hardware upgrade to get with modern times. There are times when pages won't load or game latency spikes up to 2000ms.
I still have random short periods of no connection at all, though fairly rare now - 1-3 times a month.
That aside, their prices for slow internet are absurd. If your internet is slow, they will blame you or the distance, even if it's their problem.
Also worthy of note:
This is one of the companies that tried to implement a 5gb cap on slow $50/mo 3mbit connection with a steep charge per gb. Bandwidth doesn't cost nearly that much! And it's so slow compared to modern internet!
I'm not exaggerating, unfortunately. I've put up with this company because the only other ISP here is Time Warner - it's way faster but it's owned by the recording industry and too far to service me anyways.
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Review by SteveJobs
member for 263 days, 82 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 108 days ago
- Flanagan,Livingston,IL
- $70 per month
- (24 month contract)
- " Always on"
- "Slow speeds"
- "Good for people that need always on internet"
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To note, the zip code i entered is a town that is in my county, as I do not want to give my exact location.
We used to be with Verizon, before frontier bought them out and we have seen a great increase in service. We have always been on the 1.5mbps tier until June of this year, when we upgraded to their 3mbps plan. It has been pretty well, my parents reporting that the computer that is bridged via LAN from the router said they have had more problems, but i do not believe them. The extra bandwidth was appreciated, however not enough. The cost is extremely expensive for what we get, as we can get 15mbps on Mediacom for 10 bucks a month. We are unfortunatly locked into a contract, so we can not leave. However, I am severely frustrated at them, as a rural town down the road gets 7mbps internet, while our max is 3. And we live in a much larger town then the town that gets 7mbps. And they have had it before the bonded DSL was announced, also. I see all of these awful stories with frontier, but we have had no issues. The support has always been helpful. I do not like how they charge $85 if the tech steps foot in your home.
We also have our phone service bundled with this, That is 30 bucks a month, We have no complaints here.
I see great potental in frontier once their bonded dsl becomes fully deployed.
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 Review by aguypd
member for 4.9 years, 1915 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 134 days ago
- Silver Springs,Wyoming,NY
- $36 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 7 days
- "First year is free"
- "We lose our connection every time it rains"
- "Switched back to RR"
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(update 2010-09)I am still glad that I switched back to Road Runner. However, my mother still uses Frontier's DSL. She consistenly gets bandwidths around 3.5 Mbs on her 10 Mbs service. The latency is usually around 50 ms. It can be frustrating to work on the computers at her house and attempting to use the Internet, after getting used to Road Runner at home.
We decided to get rid of our telephone service with Frontier, too, and switch to Time Warner's Digital Phone. Frontier wanted to charge us $200 because they said we had entered into a 2 year contract with them for the Telephone service. The two years for the DSL when we had it, ended back in May of 2010, and we never agreed to a 2 year contract, so I guess they just automatically put us on one.
My wife called the service department and complained and the customer service representative, said that they would cancel the $200 charge.
(update)After continuously comparing bandwidth between my mom's dsl with Frontier and our Road Runner connection, the Road Runner connection is always about three times the bandwidth and less than half of the latency.
(update)My mother, who still has Frontier DSL, got hit by lightning. She called Frontier's customer service and told them that she lost the phones and DSL. The service tech came out and got the phones back online, but never checked the DSL. She had to call them again and finally drove an hour to one of their centers, to pick up a new modem.
(update)Forget trying to get anywhere with their customer service. If you tell them you have an issue, only when it is raining and the lines are wet, they will still send a technician the next day, even though the sun is shining and everything is dried out.
(update)Switched back to Road Runner after less than six months with Frontiernet. It was a mistake to ever switch to Frontiernet.
Switched from Time Warner's Road Runner to Frontiernet's 10M DSL with a new plan that the first year is free and the second year is only $30/month and a promise that the 10M was available to our house. This turned out to be a mistake
After having the service for almost a month, we had several problems and tech support was a 45 minute wait on the phone. Technicians came out the next day and found a problem between us and the CO. Our speeds, 3568/374, are better than they were yesterday, 503/260, but not as good as they had been, 4417/376. This definitely is not what they promised us, though.
Apparently, when it rains our connection is unstable. This is terrible. I guess I have to hope for a drought, so I can have a good connection. Because of the bad connections in the wet weather, Frontier keeps throttling back our speed, instead of fixing the actual problem. The latency has really tanked, too. We were getting a latency around 35 ms, but now we are over 80 ms.
Every time it rains, we can look forward to speeds around 500/200 and a latency over 100 ms. It is terrible.
Frontier has released their announcement on their caps, and our speed is down to 95/78 with a latency of 695 ms. Go figure.
After lying to us about the availability of 10M being available in our area and their position on net neutrality, I am not holding our breath about their honesty, that people in their price protection agreement, won't be capped, also.
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Review by nate155
member for 6.5 years, 18 visits, last login: 56 days ago
lodged 150 days ago
- Delta,Millard,UT
- Contract price not specified.
- "Nothing"
- "Everything"
- "Not much choice..."
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We have had Frontier internet for a number of years and like clock work since we have had them can almost guarantee I will have a high latency from 4 pm to 11 pm and all day on Sundays and Saturdays and holidays and im not talking about 150-200 ms I am talking 350-2000 ms they told me 2 months ago they were working on the problem. come to find out they over sold service and they cant support the number of users they have on. not only that their upload speed is capped at 23KBS download avg goes about 110KBS late at night might get 140-150 KBS we were sold as it being a 3mibt connection but I was told the line can't support it though how it can suppose an insane amount of users I don't know they say they have no plan to increase peoples speeds even though a cable company is moving in in 2014-2015 that will offer most users in Town 25mibit for same price If I was in the main 84624 Area I would not sign a contract with this company as I'd wait for cable or go with the wireless alternative
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 Review by asdjf
member for 8.2 years, 640 visits, last login: 52 days ago
updated 169 days ago
- Old Fields,Hardy,WV
- $70 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 18 days
- "Better than satellite"
- "Incompetent, rude and slow"
- "They take advantage of people."
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Let me tell you a story, one of many, of how Frontier is the most horrible ISP there is.
I called to get them to bring up the upload speed to somewhat match what I am paying for (3M/512kbps) because upload at the time was only 200kbps. The next day the speed dropped to 1mbit down/0.1 up. Called tech support and they said that rather than fixing the speed issue, the tech lowered our speed down to the one meg tier because that's "all we are capable of getting", nevermind that we were getting 2.6Mbit/s a couple days ago. Tech support said this was done because we are 20,000 feet from the CO but we are not, it is only 700 feet away as told to me by the CSR when ordering the service.
I go back and forth with them for a while and then they transfer me to customer service's escalation department. They tell me that they can downgrade me to the 1mbit plan but it would be an extra $20 a month. How does that even make sense?? I want the speed fixed and they want to not only put me on a lower speed but charge me more for lower speed. This lady just kept saying that I was getting the speed that I should be getting, that's all that I could be getting. And after telling her again that tech support specifically told me that they downgraded my speed she told me that they will think about sending a tech out. She then went on to threaten me with permanently having no internet service if I complain about the speeds. I am not kidding, this woman actually said that if I kept 'making changes to my account' that I might not end up with service at all. Even though I want them to fix it, not make any changes.. After this exchange I ask for the woman's name, which she refuses to give. I ask her three times, and each time she said have a nice day. Unbelievable.
I have a great many stories like this about this service, like how they cannot find my city on a map and they say it does not show that I have service with them even though I am on the service right now, that this is not their area even though all my neighbors have frontier, about the many times that techs cancelled the install order when they could not be bothered to come to the house.
Comments:
 spewakR.I.P DadkinsPremium
join:2001-08-07
Elk Grove, CA
kudos:1 | wow Nailed it! | |
| | | Reply When you say 0.2M, do you mean MB/s or Mb/s? If you were advertised 512 Kb/s then that equals 0.512 Mb/s or 0.062 MB/s. If you were getting 0.2 MB/s or even 0.1 MB/s then you were indeed getting more than what they offered. | |
| | | | Re: Reply I mean Mbits, Mb/s. | |
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Review by xorca
member for 184 days, 0 visits, last login: 184 days ago
updated 184 days ago
- Slaterville Springs,Tompkins,NY
- $45 per month
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I am using frontier now for 3 years=0A =0AThey are by far the worst teleco provider=0A =0ANot even the phones work as they should=0A =0ADSL:=0A1. slow and you have to constantly call them to fix it =
(on average I have to call once a month). After complain few days it is wor=
king fine then back to old, send me 4 different routers to try to please me=
but it is not helping.=0A =0A2. they do not inv=
est in new things=0A =0A3. main IT support =
is horrible they do not have basic tracking software to notice that I call =
every 4 weeks=0A =0A4. I finally have different =
choice and I am moving service to Clarity Connect=0A =
=0A5. I would switch phone service long time ago but some how they hav=
e monopoly in my area (I do not know why)=0A =0A=
it is worst of the worst
Comments:
xorca
join:2012-10-05
Slaterville Springs, NY Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| Frontier DSL service I am using frontier now for 3 years
They are by far the worst teleco provider
Not even the phones work as they should
DSL:
1. slow and you have to constantly call them to fix it (on average I have to call once a month). After complain few days it is working fine then back to old, send me 4 different routers to try to please me but it is not helping.
2. they do not invest in new things
3. main IT support is horrible they do not have basic tracking software to notice that I call every 4 weeks
4. I finally have different choice and I am moving service to Clarity Connect
5. I would switch phone service long time ago but some how they have monopoly in my area (I do not know why)
it is worst of the worst | |
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Phone and internet service and customer service
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