Complain about a product or service

Mediacom Cable

Phyllis of Demotte, IN January 24, 2010

I am a VIP Mediacom Customer and never ever been late on one bill since I have had their service (several years) From time to time we have experienced outages of all the three services we have and never had any explanation as to what the problem is or for "my time" being wasted by a tech/putting me on hold. Now I have many complaints in the past years but I'm totally upset with the Major outage since 01-20-2010 through the present 01-24-2010.

We have been without Internet, cable, email, phone up and down like a yo yo, BUT the most important to me right now is NO PHONE service since 01-20-10 I live in a area that their is no cellular phone survive and I have gone to my sons house to use his phones, i have gone to the Mediacom Web support page and emailed them.

Notifying them I have recently had a Life threating surgery, my spleen has been removed and I need my phone service to get my PT/levels and next appointment calls from the various doctors, also they need to verify my appointments with me, prescriptions, etc. AND NOT ONE COURTEOUS EMAIL BACK FROM ANYONE FROM MEDIACOM

I'm not going to answer this because I still have no phone service or any communication from Mediacom. I'm scared, I'm living in fear right now and not very good for adding this to my health right now, I'm 63 years old.

brian of ottumwa, IA January 21, 2010

It's amazing to me that there are not more complaints on here about this company. I hear them ALL the time, see them on people's Facebook pages, etc. Ask someone about Mediacom and see how many times "reliability" and "good service" come up vs. "terrible" and "down constantly". This is a serious problem. We are paying from a service from a utility here, and are not only getting crappy service, but crappy customer service.

I am writing this after yet ANOTHER 5 hour down time on the so-called High Speed internet service. Worse, when I signed up for their cable/phone/internet package, I expressed concerns about what would happen to their phone service if the internet connection went down as it frequently did (that was two years ago people) and was told the two were not related so phone service, which has "utmost priority" would not be interrupted. Trust me, every time the internet service does not work, and that's probably at least 10 times a month, the phone is down as well. In fact I'm sitting here typing this since my internet finally came back up but my phone is still not working. Worse yet, you don't even know it. I am constantly getting calls from friends and family on my cell saying "Your phone is down again." It's insane how much these people are offline. Not only that but they are ripping YOU off since you can't get through to them without being on hold for an hour if you can get through at all so most people don't even bother to call to get credit. I know people who take 10% off their bill each month when they pay it just because of the outages.

Would it be acceptable if your power was out, randomly, hours at a time? How about your water or gas? They are utilities too, and that just doesn't happen. How about if you called to find out what was going on and couldn't get through to anybody who could actually answer your question or help in any way and this went on over and over again every month?

I have had Mediacom techs in my house over 10 times in the last several years. That's no lie. The other utilities have been to my house exactly ZERO times. I have had lines run, modems swapped out several times and signals checked so many times it's insane. Thing of it is, the techs are great -- I have a great time laughing with them about how bad the customer service is and about how their system is down constantly. How sad is that? Well at least it's job security for those guys.

Anyway, enough already. Do something about it! DEMAND your credit every time your signal is down for hours at a time. Write your favorite politicians to put a voice to this issue. Enough is enough!

Neva of Gaylord, MN October 25, 2009

I have noticed that mediacom is puting partial comercials on and after these come one in a succession of 3-6 in the space of 1 min. literally, they then play their comercials that lasts 3 min and in their entirerty.Oh, Verision, Activia, 1/2 of Progressive's, plus a couple others are granted full comercials but no one else. They can run a lot more of their mediacom comercials per hour as the prior patrons have been wrongfully charged for full comercials when they haven't seen the chop-job that they have done on their patrons comercials.This is wrong and should be addressed by someone, somewhere.At the very least the companies that patronize the comercials should be made aware of their comercial practices and that they are stealing their monies without running the comercials as they promised their patrons.

Karen of Moyock, NC October 1, 2009

I noticed an increase on my monthly bill so i called the company to find out why. I was told it was a rate increase. When i asked if notification was given i was told that it was included on the statement for May. I did not recall seeing this so i looked back at my statements all the way to March and there was absolutley no information about a rate increase.I called them back to inquire further about this and the man was very rude, did not provide his name and when i asked to speak to a supervisor he told me that it wasnt going to change my rate. He then put me on indeterminate hold. Is it legal to increase rates without proper notification?

Rafael of Jarvisburg, NC November 1, 2008

Internet cable service is uninstable, connections drops for hours every single day. If you call to complain, they only have to answers. Or service interruption on your area or scheduled stop for service. The 2nd answer is even worse, as it's scheduled, why am I not warned about it ? I need internet to work and study and I can't afford not to have service for hours, like today, since 12pm (7:15pm now) and there's no service.

I'm an international student under F1 Visa status and I must have all my college homework and tests done on time. If I fail my Visa may be cancelled and I have to leave the country. Me and my girlfriend already have several problems because the lack of service.

Roxy of Valdosta, GA July 16, 2008

This problem started back in May - disconnected my cable by mistake instead of my neighbors. In June my cable was once again disconnected by mistake it took almost 2 weeks to get it back on and than I was charged an installation (but it has been credited when I stated that I would contact the Better Business Bureau). Now, July 15th cable is out once again. The first time I called this evening they said it was due to an outage - okay I can understand that this happens; but after almost 5 hours out of service I called back and was told by another person that there was no outage in the area - I said but if there's not than why was I told earlier there was.

Comment was I really don't know. We will have to send someone out tomorrow and check out the problem and I needed to be home for this. I explained to them I just can't take off work everytime the cable goes out and you have to send someone out to check it. They acted like oh well that's your problem not ours. This is just so frustrating that this keeps happening and why?

Been without cable once again. Not able to enjoy a relaxing evening at home. It's frustrating that you pay for a service and not receive it. If we had a choice for another cable company to use I would definitely do it.

Jon of Ankeny, IA September 30, 2006

I live in Ankeny Iowa and have been using Mediacom's high speed internet for the last three years with no problems until a month ago. I was try to use my connection to play an online game and kept getting dropped from the server. I went out to the web to try some speed tests, which had horrible results. Basically, I am paying 65 a month for 5mb (5000 kbps)download and the test I ran come back at 300-900 kbps). I called into Tech support and told them how slow my speed was. They did some checking and decided to send out a tech to take a look.

The tech changed around some wiring and checked the signal, he then decided it had to be my modem (since it was a little warm). He brought in the new modem but was unable to get it to work since their website for registering it to my account was down. He left the modem (not working) and said he would take care of getting it registered by the time I got home from work. I came home to a modem that was not registered, but at least I could get to their website to do it myself. After I got the modem working again I went and did some speed test, with the same horrible result. I called back in to tech support, the did some more checking and sent me an email with a different speed test (a batch file that pings www.yahoo.com 20 times and then does a trace route which is exported to a text file). I sent back the results which showed response times of 2400+ miliseconds (ms). Incase you don't already know the average response time i should get is around 42ms. I got an email back from tech support stating they looked at my results and "the numbers there look pretty good". I emailed him back asking basically if he was insane. I then got another email inresponse from a different tech telling me he "reset the device and this problem seems to have been resolved" and to call back if I had any more problems. Did some more speed test same horrible result, so I called them a third time.

This person was somewhat helpful, she saw that I was getting numerous timeouts on the T3 connection and would send someone out to fix it. The second tech comes to my house, checks all the same stuff the first one did and then decided he needed to run a new line from the main box in my backyard to the side of my house (now i have a cable laying accross my grass). This didn't solve my problem. I told him that the person I talked to told me I was getting timeouts on the T3, he then informed me that he couldn't fix that and would have to send out the line guys. As soon as he left I called tech support (very frustrated) and asked why they would send someone out they knew couldn't fix my problem. She informed me that they couldn't directly send out the line guys and that only an onsight tech could do that. I asked to talked to a supervisor and was put on hold for almost 10 minutes. She came back on and told me that she had talked to the supervisor and was told to call dispatch to see if the line guys could come out that day, if not it could take up to 72 hours. I never did get to talked to this supervisor I asked for several times. I then kept checking my speed all the way through the 72 hours the said it could take with no improvement, so at the end of the 72 hours I called tech support again. I asked to talk to a supervisor at the begining of the call, It took an hour and a half of try this try that (which I had already done three times on other calls). He then decided they needed to send another tech to my house. I asked what else they could possible do, since they had already replace everything form the main box going to my house. Fianlly I get to talk to the supervisor I originally asked for.

After some discussion I asked her if the problems I was having was because they oversold their bandwith when the started offering 10mb download speeds. She said that she wouldn't put it that way, and it was more like the underestimated the demand. She then told me that everyone in Ankeny was sharing one server (I assume she meant router) and that they were slated to put in a second "server" in three weeks. She told me she would give me a month credit and I could either have another tech come to my house (to do nothing) or wait three weeks for the new "server" to be put in. Meanwhile they are still billing me 65 a month for these unusable speeds. If it doesn't improve before they put in a new "server" I would have to continue to call back to receive credits. What I got out of all this over the last two weeks was that everyone in Ankeny is paying 65+ a month for service they are not receiving and unless everyone calls to complain there will be no credits to anyone, even though Mediacom knows this is a huge problem and everyone is having it.

Cindy of West Des Moines, IA August 22, 2006

I am a Mediacom high speed internet customer. One day recently I found out by chance that business emails - to me - were being blocked. AT&T is Mediacom's "backbone" and they were the ones who did it. I haven't yet been able to talk to a human about this (almost impossible) but we think it is because my domain's email was being forwarded (along with all the spam I get) to my Mediacom email address and they mistakenly thought that the spam was coming from MY domain. This should be illegal - I can't imagine that we would allow the post office to behave like this. How are you supposed to know if emails are blocked from coming to you?

Rich of Johnston, IA June 7, 2005

Mediacom has known for over a year that there is a problem with the cable that runs from the junction box to my apartment and won't do anything about it. This problem has been detected by 5 different service techs from mediacom out on service calls...each one claiming a supervisor will contact me regarding the problem, Which never happens. 8 or more service calls, a bunch of broken promises, and still the reception is shotty. It's gone on for over a year now, with no remedy in sight. Until a competing cable company enters the market (if that ever happens,) I'm stuck with Mediacom, as there is no clear line of site for a dish. In short, Mediacom is all talk, and no action!

Adam of Charleston, IL April 28, 2005

Upon canceling our cable service we were told that we should disregard our next bills by the mediacom customer service department. Approximatey 2 months later after receiving no calls or notices of late payment, we recieved a letter from a collection agency stating we would be charged for late fees and be turned in if we did not pay immediatly. We came to the company and told the representatives about our situation and were disregarded and told to pay.

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