said by nycityny :

When I upgraded from 7mbps to 10mbps they forgot to actually up my speed - they changed the billing system just fine but neglected to provision me at the correct speed.

said by Chala :

How did you know they failed up your speed. What reference/site did you use, and how did you get them to agree and honor it?

said by nycityny :

This happened several years ago so I don't remember exactly which speed test I used but I did use an online test to determine at what speed I was running. These days the speed test I use is »ny.speedtest.rcn.net/.

I had requested the upgrade as part of a promotion where RCN would waive the $10 monthly fee for one year. It was one month into the year when I finally phoned RCN to complain about the slow speed. The telephone technician looked at something on her end and acknowledged to me that I had not been properly provisioned at the higher speed. She made the change.

I asked the woman whether my one year promotion could be extended by a month since I had not received the higher speed for an entire month. She said that she could not do that but that she would credit my account for $10. I accepted that but told her that I was dubious that the $10 credit would actually be applied because of my prior experience with RCN's billing. The woman told me that she would definitely take care of it and knew how to do it since she used to be in the billing department.

Sure enough, my bill came the next month and there was no $10 credit. This is so typical of RCN. I had to call up again in order to finally get the credit applied.

said by Chala :

Ok thanks nyc, so could you tell me why you prefer RCN then a faster verizon fios, or a cable tv network with more channels like Time Warner. For example, i just switched from Time Warner, i had RR,CATV, three stations off the bat i miss are Howard Stern On Demand channel. Sleuth, and NY1. But the picture on RCN appears to be crisper, and the 20/2 high speed package i got from RCN seems to be faster then RR's 10/512kbs even though i don't get RCN's touted speed.

said by nycityny :

Reasons I am with RCN:

1) FIOS is not available in my area.

2) Time Warner requires a cable box to receive reception on all channels (at least they did the last time I checked). I have several TIVO machines that record directly from the coax on channels 2-99 with RCN which I could not do with Time Warner.

3) My apartment has a contract rate of about $32 for basic cable with RCN.

4) I am grandfathered into a package that charges me an additional $84 (on top of the $32 contract rate for basic cable) for: digital tier, all premium movie channels, 10mpbs broadband Internet. Time Warner cannot beat this.

5) I use VOIP phone service and therefore do not have any relationship with Verizon, the POTS company in my area. Cable Internet service allows me to do this. If I went with DSL I'd also have to have a Verizon phone line - naked DSL is not available in my building.

6) Everything works. When I turn on the TV I have a picture and when I turn on the computer I have Internet.