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bksmith5
Tagging along
Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Charlotte, NC

4 edits

bksmith5

Premium Member

Confusion at the Fargo CableOne office - "The Saga Ends" :)

(FINAL EDIT - 11/17/2008 3:55PM CST)
This story has successfully concluded. I do offer "thanks" to 'toddandlolo' for prompting me to soften my original posts because, in fact, my only intention is to help others to see what I went through and avoid the dissatisfaction and upset that I felt as I went through this process.
(/FINAL EDIT)

(EDIT) Modified the topic to be less of an attack and more of a potential warning. I will tack on whatever results come from today's phone call with CableOne in a new reply at the end of this thread. I've also made this post a bit more nonspecific so as to soften the appearance of a direct attack. This post is to serve as a warning to others, not just as a soapbox for me to vent from.(/EDIT)

I called CableOne in Fargo and spoke with their Internet Manager a couple of days ago. We discussed CableOne's bandwidth throttling and I explained that if they did not have any tiers that WEREN'T measured/throttled, then I would not bring my business to CableOne. I was assured that "the SOHO service is not throttled."

After a day passes, I did a little digging and found the new location for the webpage that lists their "Internet AUP" (AUP = Acceptable Usage Policy for those who don't know). That page is here:
»www.cableone.net/AUP/Pag ··· AUP.aspx

On that page is the link that takes you to the list of limits for the various tiers:

»www.cableone.net/limits/ ··· its.aspx

I called the Internet Manager at the Fargo, ND office back up and we spoke again. I stated that I had found the Internet AUP and the list of the thresholds being monitored even on the SOHO line. The manager said that the limits page is "outdated and doesn't reflect the new policy that says that the SOHO service is not monitored." I took this person at his/her word.

Today, a couple of CableOne Fargo's techs came out and installed the CableCards into my HD Tivo and provided a Cable modem. As the techs finished, I spoke with them from my office and asked them about the throttling of the business line. Just as the Internet Manager said: the line isn't throttled.

Funny that.

When I get off work, I go to the new house and find that no information was left regarding my static IP address (it's part of the SOHO package) and my wife was complaining that she could not surf the web yet from my laptop. I called CableOne's phone-based tech support crew and spoke with someone in their Arizona office. That guy informed me that the techs and the local Internet Manager were all lying to me and that the thresholds are, indeed, in place because ALL of CableOne's customers' lines are centrally monitored and regulated from the Arizona office.

Imagine that.

So, I decided to run a test to see who told me the truth and who was lying to me... I queued up about 10GB's worth of downloads from my MSDN account and sat back to await the results.

I used the Microsoft File Transfer monitor and the Performance Monitor built into Windows Vista to keep an eye on things.

The downloads started and ran at a semi-consistent 700-900Kbps speed.. until I finally hit the 7.2GB limit. Now my download speed cannot exceed 500KBps (or approximately 4Mbps) as per the Limits page.

It's pathetic what people will do and say to try to get business. What a loser.
John Patrick
join:2001-06-07
Sioux City, IA
·Sparklight

John Patrick

Member

Re: Fargo's CableOne Internet Manager is a liar

Maybe your Internet Manager was confusing SOHO with Fiber Based Solutions. I talked to my local office about the difference between the two and its substantial. Might be worth a call back to talk about that. If you really are downloading that much a month.

bksmith5
Tagging along
Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Charlotte, NC

2 edits

bksmith5

Premium Member

(EDIT: Modified this response post to be in line with my modifications to the opening post.)

It is impossible that the Internet Manager could have confused the two because not only did I bluntly ask if the SOHO cable modem service was throttled... I also walked the manager through CableOne's own site to find the AUP (since I was told that the manager didn't know where it was at on the new site). Once I did point this person to it, the response I was given was: "Oh, that's outdated.. I'm not sure why they haven't corrected this yet." (or something very close to that quote).

As to my "downloading that much a month" -- it's not unreasonable for me to be doing so. While I am willing to pay a small premium to avoid being limited (in my words to the Internet Manager: "I'm willing to pay for freedom from limits such as the throttling that is done on the Residential services.") I am not willing to spend as much as it would take to get into their "Fiber Based Solutions". It's bad enough that the next two cable tiers jump so dramatically in price:

-----------------------------------------------------------
Small Office / Home Office ( SOHO ) - $99.99 (though I was told that it is SUPPOSED to be $79.99 with residential TV service) and is rated for 8Mbps down by 1Mbps up.

Enterprise - $199.99 - 8Mbps down by 2Mbps up

Enterprise Plus - $399.99 - 10Mbps down by 2Mbps up

-----------------------------------------------------------

It's disgusting to me that they charge such ridiculously high prices (for any business-class service) and yet they still apply such underhanded techniques as throttling because they're too blasted cheap to upgrade their own infrastructure.

I'm going to wait until Monday to actually cancel this service because I'm going to specifically call that Internet Manager again and explain just how much I appreciate being lied to and see how he reacts.

Seriously.. I asked this person in two completely different phone conversations "Is the SOHO internet service throttled?" and he said no. The techs who came to my house answered the same question in precisely the same way. Yet, when I was forced to call CableOne's support in order to get my (VERY) botched TV and Internet order corrected, the Internet support gentleman bluntly replied, "Yes, the SOHO line is throttled." He even checked with one of their network engineers that he works with to troubleshoot technical issues with -- and that guy also stated that the SOHO service is throttled. After checking with the network engineer, and giving me his response, I directly asked, "So what you're telling me is that I've been lied to by not only the Internet Manager, but also the technicians who installed the service at my house?" To that question, he answered, "Yes, they absolutely did lie to you and it's not right that they did that."

I could get blustery and go off about bait-and-switch and/or verbal contracts.. but it really isn't worth it.

I'm unhappy because I was lied to, pure-and-simple. As I told the Internet Manager before: I understand, techinically, why they might choose to throttle and I even applaud the fact that they are more transparent and upfront about it than so many other ISPs in the nation.. But I want to pay for a service that does not do that to ME. That is why I would pay a premium for their services.

Since this does not seem to be the case -- and I am not about to lay out the HUGE amount of money that a fiber would cost (since Verizon is not out here performing a mass deployment of FiOS as they did back at my old home in Maryland) -- then I must seek service elsewhere.

The SOHO line is 8/1 in terms of that offering..but is throttled and costs $99.99 (or $79.99 if the local office really does discount it).

Qwest's DSL (at my home) is rated for 7/896 and costs $47/month (roughly) and is not throttled at all.

Unless that Internet Manager can fix this, I am switching to Qwest on Monday. I'm even willing to abandon my HD Tivo and go to DirecTV since those companies don't bald-facedly lie to their customers.. (Though they, too, are not perfectly honest about everything. No big company ever is, in my experience.)

areoh
join:2001-11-10
Kansas City, MO

areoh to bksmith5

Member

to bksmith5

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· QalXaIxs

bksmith5
Tagging along
Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Charlotte, NC

bksmith5

Premium Member

That was.... awesome. Thanks! LOL!

toddandlolo
Premium Member
join:2008-10-11
Albuquerque, NM

toddandlolo

Premium Member

I really don't think this is the place for an ad hominem against one person. Pick on the company, the policies, rather than a single person who might just be mistaken or misinformed by corporate. By offering his name via IM, it discredits your statements to me-- just seems like you are trying to make it personal against him, IMHO

areoh
join:2001-11-10
Kansas City, MO

areoh

Member

Good point. But, at the same time, it does seem was givin the run-around a bit (by more than one party even.)

I'm kind of wondering if CO is thinking of dropping the threshold on biz tiers. If so, perhaps there was some kind of bad communication deal.

bksmith5, let us know how tomorrow goes.

bksmith5
Tagging along
Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Charlotte, NC

1 edit

bksmith5 to toddandlolo

Premium Member

to toddandlolo
said by toddandlolo:

I really don't think this is the place for an ad hominem against one person.
As a general rule, I would agree with you. However, this particular case is one wherein a person with a position of authority had the audacity to lie to a customer who asked a VERY clear question. The same lie was shared twice, if you read my entire post.

Is it personal? To a degree, it is because I am highly offended at how I was handled by this individual. Any thinking person with any amount of intelligence would be offended.

As for picking on the company or its policies -- That is not and was never the point of this post. The purpose of this particular post was to warn Fargo-area folks against the duplicitous nature of someone "in charge" at the company who is acting in a manner that is improper and should be avoided at all costs.

Simply put: I would hate for others to have to be misled by this person as I was. If the person who'd misled me was a "standard sales person" that would be one thing. This was a manager of a relatively small office in an area that is quite proud of its citizens' integrity and honesty.

With all that said, I do agree that offering to share the manager's name is improper and I retract that offer with my apology for being out of line in that regard.
bksmith5

bksmith5 to areoh

Premium Member

to areoh
said by areoh:

I'm kind of wondering if CO is thinking of dropping the threshold on biz tiers. If so, perhaps there was some kind of bad communication deal.
That is a possibility! But if that's the case, then it is still the manager's responsibility to be sure that the manager has a clear understanding of timelines before making promises that cannot be currently kept. Wouldn't you agree?

After all, in any Customer Service role (whether as the normal phone-answering-rep or as a person "in charge" in a role that is higher than the norm) it is critical to remember that setting expectations is key to a prosperous relationship with the customers!
bksmith5

3 edits

bksmith5

Premium Member

The End of the Story

So I try to call the Internet Manager (referred to as IM from here on in this posting) several times to get clarification and an explanation as to what happened with my "sad situation."

When IM called me back, I opened by sharing with him the story of what happened during my installation. IM was surprised by the lack of HD service for my TV. When presented with the problem of the SOHO Internet service not being listed on my account, IM replied that there would be no SOHO Internet service on my account until I registered my cable modem. My only comment to this was, "I was not informed as to the process to activate Internet service via CableOne nor was any documentation left to instruct me as to how to get online with my new "Static IP service" (which, as it turns out, is a reserved address, or group of addresses, in a DHCP pool -- per the Arizona tech support guy).

I also shared my conversation with the tech support rep in Arizona with IM. IM replied that, as far as anyone here knows, there is no throttling on the business Internet services here in Fargo. IM did agree that Arizona is the "control center" for everything that has to do with throttling and IM even said that they occasionally implement changes without notifying the management here in Fargo.

I concluded the conversation by reiterating that I refuse to pay for a service that is throttled and would always go out of my way to avoid being throttled. I asked to have my cable modem service canceled and IM agreed to do so.

In conclusion: IM did a good thing in that IM offered on to not charge me for the couple of days that I had the service (without prompting). IM also listened to my complaints and criticisms without overreacting and, when confronted with the facts of my story, did also offer a verbal apology for the situation -- which I accept wholeheartedly on the hope that IM was, indeed, misled or misinformed as well.

With all of this said, I am keeping my CableOne TV service (even despite it being more expensive than DirecTV) because of how IM handled this with me. I now have more respect for IM than I had when I first ran into the problem I documented above.

My final thought on the matter is this: How in the world can IM be a manager and not know his own company's policies. Especially a policy that has, by all accounts, been in place for at least a year (or more)?

Perhaps R!O can state if my understanding on the matter is correct? I am curious about this.

Regardless, my "saga" has reached a satisfying conclusion -- leaving me feeling better about how events transpired. To that end, I am going to modify the title of this thread one more time in order to reflect the reality of the story, as IM presented it, as I believe that IM truly did not know -- though I am honestly surprised by that!

areoh
join:2001-11-10
Kansas City, MO

areoh to bksmith5

Member

to bksmith5

Re: Confusion at the Fargo CableOne office - "The Saga Ends" :)

Glad everything worked out!

Since being a CableONE subscriber, I've had conversations with three different IM's regarding technical issues and general questions (two local and one VERY helpful out-of-sate IM that took-it upon himself to tackle my problems - I'd shake his hand if I could.) One IM even provided me with chart and other bandwidth details regarding my issues. So, based on my experience with CO IM's, they've all seemed very aware of the limits, policies, and technology behind the company. So, it does seem a bit odd that your IM wasn't "in the know" regarding the SOHO thresholds... the same goes for the tech team that installed your cable gear. I think that's a pretty significant communication issue b/t AZ and your area's IM. I'd still like to know why the IM thought that the info on the site was outdated and should have been changed.

Anyway, glad things have come to a close for ya.

bksmith5
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Premium Member
join:2001-04-07
Charlotte, NC

bksmith5

Premium Member

Thanks very much for the background information about your experiences with contacting various IMs. Thanks, also, for the support through this.

Here's to hoping that Qwest is not only as good as I've heard from folks on my team at work..but that they also deploy their "Fiber to the Node" (FTTN) solution soon... and increase the upload speeds for the higher tiers!