CenturyLink 'Fires' Customers For Excessive Use... But Doesn't Provide Tools to Track Consumption Earlier this month CenturyLink confirmed to us that the company now imposes usage caps of 150 GB for 1.5 Mbps lines, and caps of 300 GB for anything faster. Users who exceed those caps get on-screen warnings and are urged to upgrade to faster tiers or business-class service. However, some other users in our forums say they are being kicked from the network entirely for excessive use. One user, who freely admits he uses a lot of bandwidth, states that not only did he not receive one of the warnings before being disconnected, but that CenturyLink provides no tool to track usage: I'm a heavy user and I was aware this may be a problem, so I did opt for the fastest speed Internet I could to get the largest data cap available for residential service. I also searched Centurylink for a data monitor tool in my account settings or something and could not find it. I came here and learned there was no such tool (at the time, not sure about today). With my previous ISP they had a data cap, but it was not enforced, I made the assumption that Centurylink is probably not enforcing this as well in light of them not providing the monitoring tool (my last ISP even had this). Yes, users can use their own measurement tools and/or router firmware to track usage, but this very frequently doesn't match up with the ISP's own usage logs or data collection methodology. Traditionally the tools ISPs provide for their users haven't been particularly reliable either, though that's a larger problem for companies that are trying to charge users overage fees per gigabyte, something CenturyLink tells us they're not doing -- yet. Still, if you're going to the lengths of actually kicking people off of your network, perhaps making it clear how much data they're using is a good idea.
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 | | caps No surprise here, users want to get as much out of the 'net as they can. Isp's want to get as much money out it's users as it can, you see..  | |
|  |  cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:7 | Re: caps said by itsme :No surprise here, users want to get as much out of the 'net as they can. Isp's want to get as much money out it's users as it can, you see.. No, consumers want as much as they can get. ISPs want to minimize bandwidth usage while maximizing revenue. If ISPs only wanted as much money as possible, they would implement caps with overages or per-byte billing. If it was only about the money, they wouldn't get rid of bandwidth hogs as no revenue is worse than limited profitability. The only exception to this is if a person consumes more bandwidth then what their monthly rate actually pays for. Possible, but I bet not very likely. | |
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2 edits | Comcast on the other hand Comcast has temporally removed the cap in my area. Plus the upped the speeds for free. CenturyLink should take notice. | |
| |  FBGuyPremium
join:2005-03-19
Evanston, IL | Re: Comcast on the other hand just wait. overages are coming. | |
| | |  tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Saint Clair Shores, MI | Re: Comcast on the other hand said by FBGuy:just wait. overages are coming.
How so? Comcast has not enforced it's cap since EARLY last year (think it was around Feb 2012). Big reason I was told (by a field tech so take this info with a grain of salt), was CC wants people to "stream" from it's xfinity service. Maybe CC internet ONLY users might see a cap/overages. Therefore I doubt CC will impose the 250gb cap on those who have their tv service too. Just a hunch. | |
| | | | FBGuyPremium
join:2005-03-19
Evanston, IL | Re: Comcast on the other hand No, there were several blog posts last summer from people who had their service disconnected. They were enforcing as of last october IIRC. | |
| | | | | tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Saint Clair Shores, MI | Re: Comcast on the other hand said by FBGuy:No, there were several blog posts last summer from people who had their service disconnected. They were enforcing as of last october IIRC.
Maybe in your area but my cap enforcement has been "suspended" since early last year. I did see where they were upping caps though in some markets. Right now, with my service, my cap would go from 250 to 450gb per month. During mid Dec of 2012, my max used was 268gpb and mind you, I have 3 ROKU's and 1 BD player with internet access and the kids were home for almost 3 weeks with laptops, Roku access and phones using the net.
I think my market may be lest strict because there is AT&T and WOW in my area. WOW does not have a cap, at least on the 50mbps service. I do recall not having a cap early last spring (that's march in my book  ) | |
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| | Unreliable My CenturyLink 1.5 Mbps service was so pathetically unreliable the past year that 150 GB/month would have been totally impossible to achieve. It finally improved a couple of months ago. CenturyLink does not have competent customer service, and they'll just piss off more customers if they don't offer a way to monitor usage and don't offer reliable upgrades. Faster tier? I'm not holding my breath. | |
|  RRedlineRated RPremium
join:2002-05-15
Williamsport, PA | I just don't understand... ...why companies don't use a tiered throttling approach to dealing with "abusers?" After so much data is used in a given period, throttle the connection by a certain percentage like 50%. After another block of data is used, throttle it again...repeat that until you are down to the defined minimum speed (one that is not too unreasonably slow).
Or they could just upgrade their networks.
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One nation, under Zod! | |
| | | Centurylink Centurylink is simply a crappy company. And competition doesn't make an ounce of difference to them. They compete with two cable companies in a city close to me, but they have no desire to compete. | |
| | | | Re: Centurylink There too busy trying to grow and become the third largest phone company instead of provide their current users will world class service. | |
|
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Pleasant Hill, MO | Is business class uncapped? Earlier this month CenturyLink confirmed to us that the company now imposes usage caps of 150 GB for 1.5 Mbps lines, and caps of 300 GB for anything faster. Users who exceed those caps get on-screen warnings and are urged to upgrade to faster tiers or business-class service.
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| | | | Re: Is business class uncapped? Business lines are uncapped. | |
| | | me1212
join:2008-11-20
Pleasant Hill, MO | Re: Is business class uncapped? said by silbaco:Business lines are uncapped.
Well at least they know businesses need bandwidth, unlike TW. | |
| | | | | | | | | Re: Is business class uncapped? I wouldn't look for it to change. Their business DSL is terrible as is. They wouldn't want to upset their revenue source even further. | |
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| | well then centrerlink well then centerlink customers will then fire you too if they can go with another provider like Verizon fios | |
| dynodbPremium,VIP
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN | Correction- user was warned One user, who freely admits he uses a lot of bandwidth, states that not only did he not receive one of the warnings before being disconnected, but that CenturyLink provides no tool to track usage: You might want to read his post again- he said they were warned via browser redirect, but didn't pay particular attention to it. | |
| | | | Re: Correction- user was warned Centurylink doesn't provide a good method for sending the warnings. They say they had sent me two warnings before, but I only saw one and I was lucky to even see that one (it showed up on someone else's computer screen, they are computer illiterate and didn't even know Centurylink was our ISP so was confused and thought it was some fake message).
For some reason nobody ever saw the second warning Centurylink claims to have sent.
I mostly just wished Centurylink had done a better job communicating these warnings to me. An email at the very least seems would have been more reasonable. But I never got any emails or letters. Just that one odd browser redirect. Which seems like a poor method to communicate the warning. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·MegaPath
| He also states that he was AWARE of the cap, but ASSUMED they did not enforce it only due to his old ISP did not. This is totally the user's problem and not the company's. This is a lesson learned about assuming something. But as always the company is to blame for the customer's fault and next, he'll be calling for regulation due to the fact that he assumes and does NOT read nor ask questions. | |
| | |  NormanSPremium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:6
·SONIC.NET
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| Re: Correction- user was warned said by TBusiness:He also states that he was AWARE of the cap, but ASSUMED they did not enforce it only due to his old ISP did not.
User's assumptions aside, he also states that there are multiple users in the house, and the browser redirects went to other users who weren't involved in the bill-paying, and had no idea what they were seeing. Any communications about the account usage should be positively directed to the party responsible for the account. A browser redirect is not sufficient for this purpose.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
|
joe_h
join:2010-05-26
Las Cruces, NM | 250Gb or 300Gb? So the first line reads "300GB for anything faster", yet the prior article linked in this one states that 250GB is the cap. Which is it? | |
| | | | Re: 250Gb or 300Gb? I was wondering the same thing. Karl...? | |
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| | I called into tech support before... If you call into tech support they can pull up how much you use!
I called in and just was wondering why speeds were too slow. And I asked how much bandwidth I am using and they told me was surprised! I can ONLY get Centurylink in my area that is the only in my neighborhood. | |
| | | access is already limited by speed What difference how much you download? You could use half your allotment, and you don't see refunds..so why the fuss from ISP's for overages. At least avg it out, and if the total over a year is higher, then maybe they have a case, but allowing for usage at a specified rate does not congest the network, unless they already over booked the area as though they were sellling too many 1st class tickets. | |
|  viperpa33sWhy Me?Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL | Hi Roger I really feel sorry for the people who have CenturyLink. CenturyLink is one of the worse companies around. They bought other companies so they can play with the big dogs but did little for the company itself. My parents use to have Embarq until CenturyLink rolled in and bought them out. Now my parents have more problems then they know what to do with.
As for the caps, all I have to say is, "Hi Roger"
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Obama can kiss my butt | |
| Mr Matt
join:2008-01-29
Eustis, FL
kudos:1 Reviews:
·CenturyLink
 ·Comcast
·Embarq Now Centu..
| Were customers dropped for excessive use in Prism areas. I wonder if CenturyLink is getting rid of high usage broadband customers to protect their Prism TV service customers. Here in Central Florida CenturyLink is pushing Prism Television service. A friend of mine signed up for Prism about a year ago and has seen the quality of Prism service deteriorate with increased pixelation and dropouts over the last year. They were so dissatisfied with Prism they went back to cable TV. Of course rather than correcting the problem CenturyLink charged the customer an outrageous ETF. If I had a customer that was impacting Prism customers by downloading a lot of movies from Netflix I would drop them like a hand full of hot wet mixed fertilizer. | |
| | Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
·MegaPath
| Re: Were customers dropped for excessive use in Prism areas. Customer should read to see if there was a clause about the ETF. Just because you have crappy service, doesn't give you the right to get out of your contract in most cases. Companies protect themselves and customer should read.
But other companies do just as you say. if TWC had a customer killing an entire node and people started complaining about it (which they do but takes someone to actually locate that user) they will in fact disconnect them. They're AUP/TOS for both TWC and RoadRunner state they they will and have a cap. But do not state what the usage limit is. | |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | Warned, not fired The option exists to buy out the cap, via business-class service.
What's the problem here?
Should the rest of us pay more so a few can prove to the world how much they can download?
Do we have to share a DSLAM with a data hog? | |
| |  Simba7I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT | Re: Warned, not fired said by elray:The option exists to buy out the cap, via business-class service.
What's the problem here?
Should the rest of us pay more so a few can prove to the world how much they can download?
Do we have to share a DSLAM with a data hog? Define "Data Hog". We're all technically "Data Hogs" if we use more than 50GB in a month according to a few ISP's.
The point is.. Does "Business-class" service magically fix the issue? No. Does upgrading the pipe to the DSLAM fix the issue? Yes. They just want more money either way, but not fix the actual issue.
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Bresnan 30M/5M | CenturyLink 5M/896K
MyWS[PnmIIX3@3.2G,8G RAM,500G+1.5T+2T HDDs,Win7]
MyLaptop[Asus G53SX,32GB RAM,2x750GB HDD,Win7]
WifeWS[A64@2G,2G RAM,120G HDD,Win7]
Router[PE1750,4G RAM,3x36G HDD,2xIntel Pro/1000+GT Quad Port,Gentoo] | |
| | | BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN | Re: Warned, not fired Exactly. CenturyLink doesn't offer any prioritization for business class service on their DSLAMs. If a node is already congested, switching to a business connection (outside of DIA) will offer no improvement.
I've seen some serious congestion even on their FTTN VDSL2 deployments. Those DSLAMs should be fiber fed (via Metro E), and if that's the case there shouldn't be any issues feeding those DSLAMs with proper capacity. That's a simple engineering task, nothing physical to modify. It comes down to $. Something has to generate revenue to pay down that old Qwest debt...
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| | | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | said by Simba7:Define "Data Hog". We're all technically "Data Hogs" if we use more than 50GB in a month according to a few ISP's.
The point is.. Does "Business-class" service magically fix the issue? No. Does upgrading the pipe to the DSLAM fix the issue? Yes. They just want more money either way, but not fix the actual issue.
A "data hog" is the person who uses an extraordinary amount of data compared to the norm or as we've seen here, intentionally saturates the pipe, to the degradation of other users on a shared medium.
"Business class" by itself doesn't address shared-service performance, but the additional cost will inhibit those who would otherwise just leave the tap wide open.
Upgrading the pipe to the DSLAM costs money, which means _all_ of us will pay for the gluttony of the few. Count me out. | |
| | | | Simba7I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT | Re: Warned, not fired said by elray:A "data hog" is the person who uses an extraordinary amount of data compared to the norm or as we've seen here, intentionally saturates the pipe, to the degradation of other users on a shared medium. Um.. So if I only fed the pipe with a pair of T1's, would I consider everyone on it "data hogs"? I guess so.
said by elray:Upgrading the pipe to the DSLAM costs money, which means _all_ of us will pay for the gluttony of the few. Count me out. Boohoo.. Wait until everything is on the cloud.. Then they can't really bitch anymore.
..and don't tell me they can't afford to upgrade the pipe.. which is a huge ton of bullsh*t. They don't want to because it'd dig into their massive profits.
--
Bresnan 30M/5M | CenturyLink 5M/896K
MyWS[PnmIIX3@3.2G,8G RAM,500G+1.5T+2T HDDs,Win7]
MyLaptop[Asus G53SX,32GB RAM,2x750GB HDD,Win7]
WifeWS[A64@2G,2G RAM,120G HDD,Win7]
Router[PE1750,4G RAM,3x36G HDD,2xIntel Pro/1000+GT Quad Port,Gentoo] | |
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| | | ISPs aren't trying to make ends meet, they are fattening profits, so they're not going to leave any money in your pockets no matter how little data your neighbor uses. Obviously you get a kick out of "saving" bandwidth like some sort of Depression-era survivor or hoarder, but don't try rationalize your perversity | |
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| | access is already limited by speed What difference how much you download? You could use half your allotment, and you don't see refunds..so why the fuss from ISP's for overages. At least avg it out, and if the total over a year is higher, then maybe they have a case, but allowing for usage at a specified rate does not congest the network, unless they already over booked the area as though they were sellling too many 1st class tickets. | |
| | | postal notice today.. from CL said my family is "EXTREME TECHIE" based on our usage compared to the average user at our speed (3M). They urge us to move to a faster $peed. Haven't figured out where that would help us. Our cap would stay the same. Amazon movies will still play at the same speed. Not many are HD. Our usage will actually rise since the speed bottleneck forces the kids to prioritize and share the bandwidth. Knocks out some other simultaneous video streams. Will have to stay atop this. Actually went over cap earlier this winter I think. Wife had a popup that sounded like it but she didn't understand it. This must be the followup. | |
| djcrazy
join:2009-08-05
Minneapolis, MN Reviews:
 ·T-Mobile US
·Comcast
1 edit | heh I really don't understand how Centurylink can even be relevant in today's world. They are way behind the curve and I just don't see any value with the services they provide. I am less than 10 miles from Downtown Minneapolis and in this western inner ring suburb the best they can offer in my area is 1.5 Mbps. What a freaking joke. It is 2013, not 1998. Meanwhile Comcast just upgraded my Blast tier to 50/10.
In parts of the Minneapolis proper, they may offer 40 Mbps, but US Internet is offering 1000/1000 symmetrical for $99.90 in some areas. I would say Comcast and US Internet have left Centurylink in the dust. | |
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