Gaff
Every Villain Is Lemons
join:1999-09-05
Mineral Wells, TX
clubs:
 ·AT&T Southwest
 ·Suddenlink
|  The End
I stuck it out with Suddenlink for a long time but, as I posted in another thread, I have ordered AT&T DSL and will cancel my cable Internet shortly after it is installed.
Back towards the end of November I noticed that in the evenings I would start getting packet loss and fluctuating speeds. I replaced cables and did some other minor tweaks to no effect. The problems were sporadic but would only ever happen in the evening, typically 6pm through to 11 or 12. I am on the 8MB package but at these times I would drop down to 300-400kbits (less than 5% of my line speed) and packet loss would make doing almost anything next to impossible.
Suddenlink came out here in December and checked some things out and found nothing wrong (at the time they came the service was working fine). I had them come out here again in early January, again the service was working fine that day and so of course there was nothing to find. I then sent a message to Pete Abel on this forum complaining that my issues were not being addressed or dealt with and that I was basically being left hanging without any proactive response from Suddenlink themselves.
After that I had a veritable bevy of engineers down here, including three of the local techs (very nice and knowledgeable guys) here at once testing almost everything you could think of. They replaced the modem, checking the wiring, replaced cables, even brought in a laptop and connected it in here to see if they could replicate the issues. They could, and fortunately the problems decided to materialise quite noticeably that day. After being here for over 2 hours they told me that this was a network issue, that the same problems were happening across town, were not isolated to me, and that higher-up intervention would be required. They made several calls to some of these higher-up people and promised to keep me in the loop as to what was going on.
True to their word they came back more than once over the following couple of weeks, saying that some back-end things had been changed around that should help in the short-term but that bigger long-term fixes would be needed. The problems continued but were not as bad as they were, the packet loss was diminished but still there and bandwidth tests showed that I was frequently just barely faster than dialup many evenings.
I communicated with several people at Suddenlink HQ and was told that at their end the network looked good, and for a week or so my service worked perfectly. Then from nowhere it all started up again. I again sent an email to Suddenlink's Corporate Liaison (a very nice lady) saying that I was close to switching to DSL as these issues were persisting even after I was told that they had been resolved.
After I received no reply to this email I decided that I had put enough time into this and decided to order AT&T DSL, including switching our home phone service from Suddenlink back to AT&T as part of the package. It will be slower (AT&T will only pre-qualify my address for 3MB and theoretically my cable is 8MB) but since I'm frequently hovering around 500kbps on an 8MB line I will probably come out ahead of the curve.
I have bent over backwards to try and help Suddenlink resolve these issues. I have kept logs of particularly bad service as they requested me to do and then sent them that information in the hopes that it would help fix the situation, but it is as if I have done nothing.
I have spoken with Pete Abel, Chris Higgs, Johnna Turner and others at Suddenlink HQ in an effort to get this fixed. While they are all very nice people, the problems persist to the point where my wife cannot do her coursework at the University of Phoenix Online, I cannot browse or play games online due to astronomical latency and packet loss and in the end we have had no choice but to move to DSL.
I have been a Suddenlink customer for well over 7 years, since when this area was owned and operated by Cox Communications, and feel very let-down by this whole situation.
Hopefully when my AT&T DSL is installed on 5th March I will finally have an Internet service that works all the time instead of frequently becoming unusable in the evenings. |
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Pete Abel
Premium
join:2008-01-15
Saint Louis, MO
·Charter Pipeline
1 edit | This is the first I've heard of the failure to provide an enduring fix to your issues. I am so very sorry we did not get this worked out for you. I will loop back with those who dealt with those issues to determine what went wrong and how things might have been handled differently. While that effort apparently won't matter to you, since you've made the decision to move on, perhaps it will help others. Please accept our apologies and best wishes. |
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Gaff
Every Villain Is Lemons
join:1999-09-05
Mineral Wells, TX
clubs:
·AT&T Southwest
·Suddenlink
2 edits | If you ever do manage to fix the problem I would be interested in knowing this to perhaps reconsider cable service at some point in the future.
I would much rather have cable than DSL but right now DSL seems to be my only choice for a stable connection in this area.
I think I gave you guys a very fair run of the mill Pete, and stuck it out probably longer than I should have in the hopes that the issues would be fixed. They were not. |
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longgone
join:2000-12-30
Culloden, WV
| reply to Gaff
Hello Ironheart. Your well worded summary defines the situation that several have had, and are experiencing with the Suddenlink inability to fix and stabilize these ongoing and very similar problems, and you mentioned the circumstances you might even return sometime in the future, then maybe better days for all..... will finally be here.  |
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TheTechGuru
join:2004-03-25
San Antonio, TX
·Windstream
| reply to Gaff
I live clear on the other side of the state and have ex Cebridge Suddenlink and we HAVE THE SAME PROBLEMS!!!
I have a 5mbps down / 512kbps up plan.
Between 5-6 pm and midnight I usually get 800kbps down to 1200kbps.
I don't think it's the local techs or local system that is the problem, I think the problem is with Suddenlink's backbone provider. |
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lxhotboy
@suddenlink.net
| reply to Gaff
Same problems here. I have just about the same package and at the exact same times of the day i have slowdown just as this guy describes. 800kbps on a 8meg plan is horrible. Also spoken with Abel who really is trying to get things resolved but i honestly dont think suddenlink will ever be fixed in my area. Its oversold, that probably the bottom line. I will probably end up back on DSL with bellsouth. I will give suddenlink 4 more weeks to fix things and then i am going to demand my money back over he last few months and cancel my services. |
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HarryH3
join:2005-02-21
Georgetown, TX
1 edit | reply to Gaff
Quite interesting that Suddenlink keeps calling me and trying to get me to switch from DSL to their internet and phone service. I think I'll stick with Verizon. |
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trav1856
join:2008-12-26
Cushing, OK
·Suddenlink
| reply to Gaff
I'm having the same issues. We've been going 'round and 'round about this for 2 years now. Slowdowns, random disconnects, to which "Oh, we don't see anything like that happening."...which is bullshit, they're just saying that so they don't have to do anything. I get random disconnects every so often, usually in the evenings around 8:30pm CST or 1:30AM....it's gotten to the point where I'm going to have to build a linux machine and monitor the traffic so I can SHOW these idiots what a disconnection looks like.
Pete, I know you tried to get me some service, but so far, these guys are morons. There is a crack in the Coax or the Fiber in my neighborhood. Everyone in the neighborhood is having problems, and these guys are just too lazy to lift a finger to fix it. There's an Alpha cabinet down the street that's been flashing for a month, (I called the guy directly to let him know what the problem was), there was a drop lying in the highway all day, which my neighbor got tired of looking at and rolled it up...(it's still sitting up against the pole)...
If you have any alternative to Suddenlink, I would seriously consider something else...we're not getting the level of service we've been paying for...just some tech that comes in every time we call, "Can I come inside..?"...nothing has changed since the last time you came in, douchebag.....it was the last time you looked inside the house, it'll be fine this time, GO OUTSIDE AND LOOK AT YOUR PHYSICAL PLANT, JACKASS...
What sucks about it, is that it's a minor little hiccup in the connection, but it causes everything to drop for 15-30seconds, but because these techs can't detect it when they put their meter on it, they assume everything's fine. IT IS NOT. |
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