| [CenturyTel] Seriously degraded service over the last couple of Over the course of the last month service has seriously degraded. The last 8 days straight it has been unusable. I'm pinging my servers 130 miles from me at 300ms and above. I've called, chatted and emailed support and I've heard "Your line is fine." everytime along with that it's "peak traffic times". I KNOW MY LINE IS FINE, THE PROBLEM IS WITH CENTURYLINK'S EQUIPMENT/INFRASTRUCTURE!!! Also, how is it "peak traffic" 24 hours per day 7 days per week? The Centurylink support is useless, and it seems they are unwilling to help in anyway. Which means my 10Mbps DSL is about as useless as dial up when you have several servers to manage, btw, my servers are at a clinic, a hospital and a school district. VPN is useless with high ping, low bandwidth and ridiculous packet loss. It really bothers me how uncaring and unwilling to listen to the cries for help and I don't know what to do.
/rant |
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| Re: [CenturyTel] Seriously degraded service over the last couple Where are you located? |
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| I'm in Arkansas (River Valley). Can I get some Cox cable here... I miss Cox, but they sold it to some other company, and I don't think they offer broadband. |
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| reply to jang0
Hey, jang0.
We'd be happy to look into this for you. Would you please email my team the information and possibly include your username (jang0) in the subject line so it gets top priority?
TalkToUs@Centurylink.com
Thank you so much!
-Doug
@Centurylink Help Team |
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| reply to jang0
Same situation here, same geological area. I finally submitted enough FCC complaints that someone from CL called me today but I doubt anything is ever going to be resolved. I actually feel pretty bad for the guy who called since I was completely pissed off over something else at the time and ended up snapping at the poor guy (well, more like raging about the quality of service) pretty harshly. I didn't feel quite as bad for the guy as I feel for myself after being stuck with this horrible service for well over a year, but pretty bad nonetheless.
Unfortunately, about the only information I gained from the call was a small clue as to how far CL actually has their heads up their collective asses. Their network is so fragmented and unmaintained at this point that the guy wasn't even able to see that my modem was turned on and synced. Not that he didn't have the capability, mind you, just that it showed up as not even being connected.
Horrible. |
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| I get it man... I'm almost to the point of punching the walls and tearing my hair out. I mean, I need to do things after I get home from work, but I can't because the rest of the world is streaming netflix, and playing farmville, so my work has to suffer. I'm looking into other broadband options, and when I find the right one, I'm taking alot of people with me. |
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| Man... I wish there was an alternative here. ANY alternative. I'm at a point where I would even consider some kind of 3G EVDO based plan if the monthly data caps were high enough. 
The sad thing about your situation is if you mentioned to CL that you needed the service to do work, they would probably tell you it's not a business class line and to just deal with it. |
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| reply to jang0
Welcome to the club.... |
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| reply to terminx
It's kind of like work. I mean I check our exsi servers constantly (OCD?). My wife is from Scotland as well and we haven't been able to video chat with her family in Dundee in quite some time (atleast 1 month) because of these problems. I don't like to see her sad, and to me, it shouldn't make a huge difference if you're business class or residential. We're still paying customers and if the service isn't up to standard, they should fix it. |
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| I completely agree that we're paying customers and they should fix the sub-par service but I'm quickly losing any hope that it'll ever actually happen. As far as they're concerned, since we're paying for "up to" however much bandwidth they're completely in the clear as long as we get a signal at all. It's total BS.
I don't know about your specific area's situation, but over here they're selling a product that doesn't even exist. The town I live in has about 700 residents. There are 6 DSLAMs, each one accommodating 48 subscribers. Each DSLAM is fed by a single IMA link (inverse multiplexing over ATM), and each IMA link is essentially a bundle of about 30 T1 circuits.
One T1 circuit is 1.544 mbit, so 30 of them is 46.32 mbit. CenturyLink will happily sell each of those 48 customers a 3 mbit or more connection to that DSLAM. Let's do some simple math... 46.32 divided by 48 customers equals about 0.96 mbit per customer, also known as less than one third of what I'm paying for.
The ONLY way to fix this is to either drop 2/3 of their customers in this area or to physically dig and run fiber to feed these DSLAMs. Both of these options are very expensive, which is where you get the answer that it's not "economically feasible" to resolve the situation when you badger them about it enough.
The fact that they're literally the only ISP servicing this area just makes it even less likely that anything will ever be done... since nobody has any alternative, there's nowhere for unsatisfied customers to go, and since nobody wants to be without any Internet connection altogether nobody drops the service. |
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WHT
join:2010-03-26
kudos:3 | reply to CenturyLink
said by CenturyLink:We'd be happy to look into this for you.
HAHAHA....Six months too late. Complaints in the works to be escalated to state attorney general's office for fraudulent advertising and FCC.
Paying $120 for 10 Mbps line and not getting 1/10 of that, *consistently*. |
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| reply to jang0
People from CL were here 3 times today. They eventually drove up to the DSLAM itself and tested the connection directly at my port, which of course gave them the same spotty results they got when testing from here. The guy they sent didn't understand what the guy he was talking to on the phone (supervisor for the whole area around Greenwood, AR) was saying but it was confirmed that at least a new IMA group would need to be run to fix the problem. It's apparently being escalated further but they of course couldn't give me any kind of actual timeframe for the problems being resolved.
It's unfortunate that the validation of everything I've been saying for months doesn't necessarily equate to the problem ever actually getting fixed. I guess if it's still not resolved and I don't hear anything by April I'll start submitting the FCC complaints again, since those seemed to get the ball rolling more than anything which frankly surprises me more than anything.
jang0, since you're in the same rough area you should submit some FCC complaints of your own. I was doing them every day for a while... the turnaround time on them is 2-3 weeks I think so I know I was submitting them for at least that long. |
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| I saw a CL truck on my street today. False Hope. I'm sure they tested my line or lines on my street. The problem still exists. Just horrendous service, especially after 3pm, usually lasting to 11pm, when I have to get some sleep.
So basically, the hours I'm at work the DSL is fine no troubles at all, but when I come home, it's worthless.
They tell me it's peak traffic, am I just supposed to only use it when it's not peak traffic times? That must be their solution.
Problem is... it's PEAK TRAFFIC FOR A REASON!!! I NEED IT TO WORK DURING THOSE HOURS JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE FREE WORLD!!!
I love when the connection is solid except when you need it to be.
I'm dumping CL as fast as humanly possible. |
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| reply to WHT
said by WHT:said by CenturyLink:We'd be happy to look into this for you.
HAHAHA....Six months too late. Complaints in the works to be escalated to state attorney general's office for fraudulent advertising and FCC. Paying $120 for 10 Mbps line and not getting 1/10 of that, *consistently*. At least he's offering help. Good luck with your complaints the the AG and the FCC... lol. You got a better chance of winning the lottery. |
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| I have no problems with the support staff that try to help. I just get angry as can be over the shoddy service. I know what it's like to try to help people, I spent a loooooong time on a helpdesk, I know how it is. My problem is with their crappy network. |
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| reply to jang0
Got another call from CL today... dunno if they're just blowing smoke or not, but the FCC complaint really seems to have started a fire under their asses as far as getting the stuff around here fixed is concerned. The same rep from CL has called me every day this week to give me updates on the situation and now he's trying to find out just exactly what the manager in this area (who is in Greenwood) is going to do to fix this. I think he said something about escalating it to that guy's manager as well.
Since CL is still the only option here, I can only hope something happens... |
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| Almost into 2 months but day 15 or 16 of incredibly high latency and unusable interwebs... last trace route I had hops of over 1100ms. I'm going nuts. From looking at this forum and others around the net, it seems to be every one of CL's smaller markets. I'm beginning to think that they are never going to fix this problem. It really sucks I've been with CL for over 10 years and I honestly think they just don't care... at all... but I'll bet they still deposit my checks.
I'm not taking a shot at their support, I know those guys do a good job, this is a complaint about their equipment/infrastructure, it's gone to complete crap. |
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| Im thinking about canceling my CL and running a hotspot off my verizon phone. I can get faster speeds its cheaper and I can go anywhere... |
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| reply to jang0
I feel for you guys, I really do. I'm currently living in an area which has access to Comcast and it's been a night and day difference. That's not to say they don't have problems, but Comcast is definitely the lesser of two evils where CenturyLink is concerned. Every once in a while one of my neighbors will get overcharged on a bill or something and start making noises about switching to CenturyLink, and I can only shake my head and chuckle.
I sincerely hope CenturyLink collapses completely, and their rural markets can get some decent quality broadband. It's especially painful to see it go on when I was a Qwest customer and knew other Qwest customers who had the service for almost ten years with nowhere near the problems CenturyLink has introduced. It's completely shameful. |
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| You hit it man... it's SHAMEFUL to just stop caring about paying customers... I know for me it's only been going on for about a month, but some that I've seen it's been a year or more.
Class action lawsuit? |
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