| [Other] RCN - a look back at seven years as their customer I was an RCN customer for over 7 years until about a moth ago I decided to make a switch to FiOS. The primary reason for the switch was that the RCN prices had become grossly uncompetitive. Every couple of years in the past I would speak with the RCN local care and they would offer me either a slightly better price or a better package for the same price. Unfortunately, those modest discounts couldn't mask the fact that the RCN prices were getting less and less attractive. In a nutshell, even without any discounts and promotions FiOS would have been less expensive for the same package than I was paying RCN. With the discount, additional channels, and more bandwidth it was impossible for me to stay with RCN any longer.
However, given that for most of the time I was a reasonably satisfied customer I thought it would be fair (and possibly helpful to new or potential subscribers) to provide a quick summary of my seven-year experience with RCN.
First, the good:
1. I experienced very few outages during those years. Perhaps just one or two a year.
2. The promised bandwidth was stable with few fluctuations and the channel selection very reasonable.
3. The tech support on the phone was very good and the tech support on this forum extraordinary. Many thanks!
And now the bad:
1. Compared to HD OTA channels and to what I am now seeing on FiOS, RCN HD channels seemed a bit soft and overly compressed. Not a big deal overall unless you do a side by side comparison.
2. The customer service (not to be confused with the tech support) varied between awful and atrocious. Just list the most egregious examples:
(a) RCN attempted to charge me not once but twice for the installation and activation even though that had been advertised as completely free. It took a very long time to correct that.
(b) Once, years ago, when I had to pick-up a new set-top box, something that had been previously cleared with the tech support, a customer service rep accused me of lying! According to her script customers were never supposed to pick the STBs themselves. Supposedly, only a technician could do that and charge for the visit.
(c) Two months ago, one of the reps kept me on the phone for over an hour promising competitive pricing. I wanted to cancel my subscription and she was saying that RCN did not want to lose such a valuable customer, etc. In the end she promised a much lower price which even though still higher than FiOS was reasonable. The only catch was that her boss had to call me back and approve it. Unsurprisingly, nobody called and when I followed up five days later a somewhat rude rep told me that RCN NEVER offers any competitive price adjustments and that the first rep had completely misled me.
(d) Several weeks ago I officially cancelled my subscription and another rep who sounded very polite told me that I was all set and that I just had to return the RCN equipment within the two-week grace period. The rep was polite but today I learned that she to had misinformed me. I learned today that RCN continued to bill me through the grace period. Even worse, they apologized for what the previous rep told me but have no intention for refunding my money for that period. Even worse they gave two inconsistent stories why they had to bill me for that additional time.
(e) It gets even worse, I downloaded today the next-month's bill from the RCN site indicating that they still see me as their cable and internet (but not phone) customer and that they intend to charge me for those services. I has to spend another hour on the phone with a service rep and eventually she told me that I should ignore that bill but she did not sound reassuring at all...
So, my advice is whenever you speak with a customer rep record the conversation if possible.
Cheers! |
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 lilhurricaneCrunchin' For CuresPremium,Mod
join:2003-01-11
Purple Zone
kudos:51 | This sounds like a job for rcncares 
Hoping it all gets resolved for you - to your satisfaction soon |
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| Thanks. I don't think the issue deserves any more time and effort.
For me the most annoying thing is the discrepancy between the tech support side which has always been very good and the customer reps who are either incompetent or outright rude or misleading. |
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 rcncaresEmiliePremium,VIP
join:2012-01-04
Gainesville, VA | reply to atomtom
Re: [Other] RCN - a look back at seven years as their customer I would like to make sure you have no further issues. Sent you a PM. emilie |
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| reply to atomtom
I quit RCN last year around this time to switch to FIOS. I was with FIOS about 3 months, and went back to RCN.
The complaints you have about RCN could have been my experience with FIOS:
1) FIOS reps completely misled me with prices. RCN quotes straight-forward all-in prices including premiums, equipment, and taxes. Each bill from FIOS was huge surprise, and when I called to resolve the discrepancy, I got "your price *is* $XXX *but* that dosen't include equipment or HBO"...or this or that or the other. Three bills and three surprises, and each time there was a new excuse.
2) Nobody took my complaints about YouTube seriously....there was some bottleneck where Youtube was useless between 5 and 11 weekdays. The minute I went back to RCN, said bottleneck was gone.
3) FIOS sells these amazing download and upload speeds....but beacuse its network is congested with so many more people, the only place you get the advertised speed is on speed-test websites. I had better Netflix HD streaming from the slower connection I had with RCN.
Bottom line is that all these companies have a lot of work to do on customer service. My advice is to *NOT* sign a long term contract with FIOS. See how it goes before being locked in to something with weaker service and higher prices. |
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| Komosatp,
Just to make it clear I wasn't trying to advertize FiOS - my experience with them is simply too short to make any generalizations.
Moreover, I stayed with RCN for over seven years exactly because I was satisfied with the quality of their service.
My posting was about the huge discrepancy between the excellent tech support and really incompetent customer reps. For example a polite but ignorant customer rep I spoke with yesterday managed in five minutes to give me two contradictory and inconsistent explanations why I was owed much less credit then I expected. |
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| reply to rcncares
Thanks, rcncares (Emilie)! I just sent you a reply to that pm. |
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| reply to atomtom
said by atomtom:My posting was about the huge discrepancy between the excellent tech support and really incompetent customer reps. It's funny...my experience has been the opposite. Billing has always been as-expected, but tech support and technicians have been another story.
First it was the months long fiasco when the first TiVo HD came out (years and years ago) and getting cable-cards to work. then it took months discover why certain channels were pixel-ating on the TiVo only, not the HD converter sitting next to it.
Then I don't know how many times a tech came to my place without the cable cards he was supposed to install. Or the guy who rang the door-bell once and left in a matter of seconds as we were in our basement (I ran down the street to let him know we really were home).
I didn't take your posting as an ad....I'm just trying set appropriate expectations. |
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| Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that my experience with the RCN tech support on the phone and on this forum has always been very good.
I had only one in-person encounter with the RCN cable installer and it wasn't very good at all. |
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