CenturyLink

"Dear Sirs: You have been impossible to deal with on the phone. I have been disconnected 4 times trying to resolve this matter. I put up with terrible service with you for 5 years with it consistently getting worse. The last time on Feb. 28, 2017 after the technician left it stopped working within 30 minutes and the tech would not come back and I was told it would the following Monday before a technician would come fix it. I told you at this time to disconnect me because I was finished with your incapability to serve me. I had told you earlier in February I would not pay my bill until it worked without interruptions for 30 days.

I spent numerous hours on the phone with you and waiting for technicians to arrive over the 5 years to repair my service. I paid you for 24 hour 7 days a week service which I never received. I sent you a bill for $935.00 for you wasting my time trying to restore your service over a period of 5 years. You did not disconnect my service at the time I requested but ignored me and keep charging me which I will not pay for. I am going to pay for the last month of DirecTV which is $112.02. I expect you to pay me a sum of $935.00 as billed to you prior. When I receive a check from you I will consider this matter closed."

After 5 months, I finally received confirmation from a customer service representative that we have not been under contract since February of 2018. I asked to have this resolved by a supervisor. I spent 30 minutes on the phone thinking I was being transferred to a supervisor, when I was, in fact, transferred to an out-of-service phone number. Now I have to start this process all over again. This practice is clearly deception and may violate consumer protection regulations.

After giving me my contact number, I was disconnected. I am still waiting for someone to call me back. Went to their website and found through customer relations their "Unresolved Issue - Email Us" website. Sent message about not being able to terminate service and received a reply email saying someone will contact me in 24 hours... Still have not hear anything from Century Link after two days. My strategy now is to stop paying bill until they figure out that I am no longer paying and they automatically terminate the service. It will screw up my credit, but it will be easier to repair my credit than to deal with CenturyLink. I can't light no more of your darkness, I'm letting the sun go down on Century Link. Good Riddance.

I just want my one month refund and my new modem so my internet works. The whole MONOPOLY of Centurylink is like dealing with a bunch of untrained idiots reading from a script. The moment a new provider comes to our area, I'm out (along with a good share of my 1800 other acquaintances in the town)... Train your help Centurylink...and do right by your customers, I shouldn't have to pay for something I never received. And fix my stuff!!!

When I ask to speak to a supervisor I'm put on hold until I give up and write this review on my PC. At this point I don't need a phone or internet from CenturyLink. I'm going to switch back to cable and cancel all of the CenturyLink and DirecTV accounts since they can't make them work. It's very frustrating talking to someone in the Philippines who doesn't speak very good English and can't help with anything other than what comes up on his computer screen. It's time to get rid of this poorly run company and let everyone I know how terrible the customer service is with CenturyLink. Good riddance to a lousy company (that used to be great).

The trouble started when they offered to move me from 3Mbps to 6Mbps at no extra charge. That sounded great. The minute they did the switch, my phone line became riddled with static and almost unusable. I contacted customer service and the service tech arrived within a reasonable amount of days. They said the problem was in the house. I had worked as a sub-contractor for Time-Warner and had the skills, equipment and know how to install a phone line so I did just that. I confirmed that the line had static at the NID. I disconnected all other lines in the house and ran a single new line to the location of the modem just so I could tell them with confidence that it wasn't an inside problem.

The second trip out, the tech swapped out our old modem for a newer model and told us that was the issue. Still no joy. I asked customer service several times to check their new connection at their panel. After several weeks of horrible phone service, they finally checked their own equipment and found out they had a bad board. After they fixed that, service went back to normal.

Since then, it has been a long, extremely trying relationship. From billing issues to issues with returned/ exchanged equipment. We suffered a lightning strike about a year ago now and lost the modem. I went through a month or more of being told several times the replacement modem would arrive in two business days, only to finally find out that the modem was discontinued and couldn't be shipped. The order also seemed to disappear a few times. During this time I was forced to purchase a modem of my own. I got it working and was able to use the internet again. Finally, the replacement modem shows up, but it has the wrong power cord with it. I took it to the closest CL storefront (which is over an hour away) to get the correct cord and to return the fried modem. I thought all was finally back to good. Once again, no joy.

The modem wasn't returned properly. After several months went by, I noticed that I was getting billed for two modems. I was forced to go back to the store to get this corrected. Luckily, I had my receipt. I was happy to see a credit for the double billings. The bill I was receiving kept creeping up. I had noticed that somehow, the monthly charge for in home service had been slipped back into the confusing mess that their statement is. I had refused this charge from the beginning since I only had the one phone connection and could repair that myself. I had that removed and decided that since the modem bought was working just fine, I didn't need to keep paying a rental fee to CL.

Returning the modem was a huge hassle. I returned the modem I had to the storefront and got a receipt. (This turned out to be the last time I could talk to someone in person since that storefront was closed soon after.) The returns didn't work for some reason. I was billed for a piece of equipment I didn't have and was told I didn't return and was still getting charged a rental fee for the second modem. I did finally get this worked out, but not until several attempts were made and copies of receipts were sent in (email and fax). The worst of which was during a chat session where after explaining my billing issues, they answered with a sales pitch for their price for life program.

I am now experiencing line troubles after yet another storm. The first week, I could have a static filled phone line or DSL service, but not both at the same time. The tech "fixed" the problem by removing the repair the tech of almost a year ago put in place. I was out of town for a week, during which we had another heavy rainstorm which toppled several trees in the area and knocked out our power for almost 12 hours, and now I don't have a dial tone at all. This was tested with a phone that is known to be working on the port at the back of the house. I entered a service request Saturday evening and was given an AMAZING window of ONE WEEK! No specific day, just a "We'll be there before Friday at 5 pm." I truly hope they take the time trace the problem to the source this time.

I am stuck with CenturyLink for communications service right now. At least their new plan doesn't have the "loyalty" discounts. Why should I be the one to have to ask for a discount for being a long time "loyal" customer in good standing. However, a competitor is moving into my neighborhood. It may be a year or two more before they reach my street, but I will be switching just as soon as I am able if CenturyLink can't get it together. Good luck CenturyLink.

We walk through all the solutions -- how things are connected, etc. They give us a different excuse every time - it's the devices, it's the modem, it's the connection. We purchased a better modem which worked better, but then when the system throttles down again they tell us it must be the unsupported modem so we have to switch back and pay them another $11 a month for a crappy modem.

The last thing really takes the cake. We pay $10 a month extra for their "service" which is supposed to provide us with checks of the system inside our home. After calling and begging multiple times, they finally agree to send someone out. We take off work for an entire day to be here, but no one shows up. When we call and ask why, they tell us they came out but nothing was found.

The first CSR tells my husband that they came and didn't find anything so they left. When he pressed, a different CSR said that if they check from the outside and find nothing wrong, they don't go to the door. Yet another said they did go to the door and spoke to someone but they don't know who. When I called, the CSR (extremely condescendingly) told me the technician came to our door and spoke to "the customer" who told them they did not call in a ticket and there is nothing wrong with their internet. Why on earth, after begging and pleading for someone to come out, would we tell them there was nothing wrong and we don't know why they came???

Needless to say, I asked for a supervisor, at which time she hung up on me. As they usually do. They provide us our phone, so they know our phone number - plus the fact that their automated system and every person you speak to asks for phone number and social security number at least twice in every conversation. But they never call back or apologize for hanging up. CenturyLink service is so terrible that it borders on the ludicrous. We're trapped into this rinky-dink slow internet, that works only about 70% of the time, until someone (anyone, please) runs fiber down our 1-mile country road, or until we pay another $100 a month for satellite internet. Which will also go out when it rains, right? So much for living in 2018...

She mentioned his name and wanted to know if we were friends or something. I've tried solving these problems online numerous times with and without assistance (never got beyond attempted address changes which all failed), and that's when the lies started. Multiple times I was told that the problem had been corrected, only to find it had not. Today, some three months later, I got another bill forwarded to me for an account I have no real association with in any way. So I spent a frustrating hour on the phone with CL reps who passed me around, lied and hung up on me. There is no customer complaint or quality control phone number but was able to email the issue to them. If or when the mess is cleaned up I may come back here and update the review.

I called 2 days later and still not done, finally got a Supervisor of Finance, now being told can take up to 90 days, and now the "old" account can't be found??? Something is obviously wrong. How can one person find it, and now it just be gone? We got rid of our land line so they changed our number, accounts have to follow a person!!! How hard is it to transfer the payment from a closed account and credit the new? Obviously very. I am very, very unhappy. They treat you like you are a liar! I'm sure this review will not help me get this issue taken care of, but I have nothing to lose at this point except my $148.60. I have records to back me up so they will not get another penny out of me!

Long story short it was an hour away. When I finally got the package I noticed that it was correct but my name and apartment number was missing. A CenturyLink technician even stopped by exactly a week after I initially set up my service to verify that my Internet was working and when we told him we still haven't received our modem he didn't seem surprised. So here I sit, an hour away from home, trapped in traffic with a screaming baby in the back seat! I'll update my post if I decide to stick with CenturyLink.

It appears I was not told the truth that he had checked out the panel as this would have been obvious had he done so. He was going to change me to another line but then called back again to tell me the office was closed. Not trying to be Captain Obvious here but after 5 on a Saturday evening, duh? I was told he would be back by Wednesday. So here I am on Wednesday, waiting on the technician only to find out my work order has been cancelled. Even though the modem is presently connected, I have 4 logs from the modem where it has disconnected, retrained and reconnected over 15 times in the last day. Their last attempt to resolve the problem is to send another DSL modem. As I am informed by the support person, these are repaired modems. I have to question the quality of repair since this will be the second modem, and the service on the line and their panel equipment has so far proven subpar.

I have contacted support a number of times and they say they can't detect anything wrong with the connection. I requested a technician who was scheduled to stop by between 1pm-4pm but then shows up at 10am so I have to run home from work to let him in and of course my internet is working just fine as it's not peak hours so he can't do anything. He offered to switch out my equipment but we both agreed that it most likely wouldn't fix anything as the equipment performs just fine during non-peak hours.

They seem to throttle connections during peak hours or just don't have the infrastructure setup to handle the traffic. Whichever it is there is absolutely no point in ordering anything more than their lowest speed plan in my area as the performance of the higher speed plans when most people use it is an absolute joke. I attached an image of some speed tests that I have taken recently. The peaks are tests during non-peak hours and the dips are the speeds I get during peak hours. Can't say I would ever recommend their service but thankfully I have 1 other option in my area that I will be looking into.

8-1-18 No delivery, called back. Upset customer, sent up to manager after 31 minutes. Spent another 19 minutes with manager during which we determined that our area now has “bonded DSL lines” This requires a VDSL2 modem that we do not have. All this to say, CenturyLink knew they changed lines in our area and chose not to notify customer and wasted over 2 hours troubleshooting a problem they already know that we had and THEY actually caused... Amazing. By the way, so far no confirmation numbers have been traceable when we call back so they are apparently made up by the tech on the spot and not logged. Not impressed for a technology company. But anyway so sorry for the problem, they will send one out to arrive by 8-4-18.

8-7-18 Still no modem. Since the last confirmation number is also not trackable we start from the beginning once again. Folks, you can't make this level of incompetence up. Spent another 33 minutes starting over with tech support and they don't actually know about VDSL2 or bonded lines and that the product we have is not compatible. Let’s try a supervisor! She decides this warrants a discussion customer retention which feels a lot like an attempt to anger the customer since her delivery time for the product they caused us to need has an 8 business day delivery now! Then she accident dropped the call, but in my mind it was a hang up.

Yes they have our number because we pay them for phone service but no they don't call back. Same day, call #2. Manage to get the “parts dept”. They are happy to ship one today!!! Amazing, they will add to our bill. So TWO weeks in on a problem they caused and now we have to buy a part that we just hope they actually ship. In any other business, this would be an epic fail... but based on the reviews from the last few days it's just business as usual.

They will spend hours and sometimes days trying to rectify our connection issues. Sadly, for them, they support a sub-par product that is inferior in every single aspect. If it rains, our Internet DSL drops constantly, getting as many as 1,000 resets in a 24 hour period! Additionally, the phone line gets a VERY LOUD BUZZ that continues for days after the rain clears up! We are hostage to this service because of where we live - if you have a choice - choose someone else.

On June 14th, the phone line having seemed to have been cut off when I tried to see if I had, at least, a dial tone so I could make an attempt to speak to someone again, as we were contemplating terminating the account and wondering if things had improved. The service being unsatisfactory anyway, I then called CenturyLink to officially and permanently terminate our phone account. My wife and I both spoke to "Alex" on this occasion, from about 12.15 p.m. to after 12.30 pm, each listening to the other's conversation as witnesses, and he agreed to terminate our account officially. He gave his badge number as **.

A subsequent CenturyLink billing included a charge of over $200 for this disconnected "service" (added to our usual monthly internet billing of just under $70) and we are refusing to pay, due to the service being cut off by CenturyLink without notice within a week or two of installation. It is true that a fellow had "installed" it, which involved punching a few numbers into our system in a visit which seemed to last about three minutes at the most.

But the service was not good, was shut down by CenturyLink, according to the CSR, within one or two weeks without notice, and we had both asked for the account to be terminated on June 14th. We have had internet service for two years or more with CenturyLink and have always paid our bills until now. We are disgusted with this whole situation. The tech who had come to our house to 'install' the service, claimed he was increasing our internet speed but it has actually been a lot slower since his visit.

Summary: We don't want the phone service. It was not "as advertised" and there was horrible static; we had service for two weeks at the most and actually stopped using it after a day or two; then we were disconnected with no forewarning and charged well over $200 by CenturyLink. We are disgusted with what we had thought was a reputable company.

We asked if they could waive those charges given the circumstances... They said "oh the last department could have done that for you at the time of reconnect, now you need to wait 30 days until the next billing cycle to request the charges be removed". Waited, called back, account was STILL inaccessible and could not pay on app/site/phone. After a maddening amount of time spend transferring between departments again Tech Support was able to get us back into the account and finally credit the $25 reconnect fee. While on the website I saw "price for life $55 1 Gig (1000 Mbps) speed for the same price we are paying for 40 Mbps. Asked if they could bump us up to the advertised speed on the website after we verified the deal was available in our area. Tech said "no we can't in this department, call back tomorrow and have The Loyalty Team take care of it for you".

Called the next day to have The Loyalty Team say they couldn't do it... We had to chat with The Online Team. The Online Team said the deal was for new customers only... But to call back The Loyalty Team because that department FOR SURE can honor the deal for us. I took screenshots of this information including the name of the agent. When calling back The Loyalty Team they said "we apologize for the misinformation... But there is no way for us to honor the advertised price". Eventually I gave up and had spent way too much time wrestling with them. At the end I asked "well can you at least credit my bill for all of the trouble we've been through from the start including this!?" They said they would issue a $35 Visa gift card...then...Wait! "The system won't allow me to issue you the gift card. Let me give you the phone number to our Visa Gift Card department..."

I laughed, and had basically gone numb from this extreme nonsense. About an hour later I said "** I'm calling that #". The Visa Gift Card department said that The Loyalty Team put a note stating to issue us a $30 gift card (somewhere we lost five bucks lol). HOWEVER... The Loyalty Team MUST be the ones to issue the card and The Visa Gift Card department has nothing to do with issuing Visa gift cards. I told them that I do not want their gift card and I will be shopping for better service. Maybe I should take some of the blame for entertaining the idea that something would eventually go smooth and continuing down their "rabbit hole" of **. I bet most normal people would have just left sooner.