CenturyLink

I did manage to speak to two agents based in the US, who were helpful. The last one promising $300 reward card, for my brother, but only a $100 arrived. We both returned the equipments well within the 30 day period after canceling both account with their provided shipping for Colorado. Today, we get another shipping label return address to Kansas. I just have this bad feeling that when I call to explain all of this, I will spend more than 90 minutes again. I wished DirecTV had internet so that we would be freed of Century Link.

Well Saturday morning a modem shows up via UPS (which he claimed didn't deliver on Saturdays) then on Saturday my appointment was between 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, well by 4:20 pm I call and I'm told their TECHS DON'T WORK ON SATURDAYS!!! So why in the world would I be scheduled for a day techs don't work!!! I reached out via chat around 2:30 pm to confirm my appointment and they CONFIRMED IT! When I ask why I was LIED TO, the agent said, "You weren't lied to. The rep just didn't know." How the HELL does a rep not know their TECHS DON'T WORK ON SATURDAYS!!!

Cox may be a little more expensive but they are WAY MORE PROFESSIONAL!!! Cox will reach out to you via phone to confirm your appointment and the TECHS WORK ON SATURDAYS!!! I never got my services set up. I canceled the order and ran as fast as I can in the other direction. CenturyLink has to be the most UNPROFESSIONAL company I have EVER DEALT WITH! Not to mention their reps hang up phones in your face. I think they all work from home!

The service reps were extremely rude and lied to me just to get me off the phone. This company is trash, stay away from them. All they care about is the money they charge you. They could care less if your service is interrupted or whether you're satisfied or not. All they want is your money and that is very clear, they have a reputation with me as being spot on with charging you and are very fast about billing you but very slow about service issues and scheduling a tech to come to your home. Overall when a new service provider comes available even if it's slower I will switch over.

My first bill was only about 30 dollars cheaper after this so called discount so I called back in April to cancel the service. On 06/01/2018 I received a bill of 748.00. I called to complain and they told me they would do an investigation but informed me I was charged three early termination fees of 240.00 EACH plus for the house phone I had kept on. They said because I requested the discount, which I did NOT request, but was pushed into it by their retention department that was trying to talk me out of terminating the service. Since WHEN should it cost me 748.00 to turn off a service that would have been FREE to turn off if I had not accepted under duress accepted a "discount" that saved me a total of less than 50.00? Now I am going BACK to surgery and I can't afford to pay my mortgage. I have NO idea what to do!

That rep hung up, so frustrating now they tell me nearest date to hook up is July 6th! This is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. Horrible customer service. Horrible business. Waited 3 weeks for the connection date of June 13th. Now they're telling me I have to wait an additional 3 weeks to July 3rd because THEIR EMPLOYEE (installation/tech rep) didn't want to do his job. It's unacceptable! Told them they could have their stuff back and to send me a return box. Absolute worse place I've ever dealt with.

This company is horrific. Have been a customer for 20 yrs but even if you were a new customer there's no reason a repair service date should be so far out. I am so disgusted with the way we are discarded. One of the times I called I asked why so far out for repair and this supposed manager I asked for said, "We have other customers." My jaw dropped. I said, "Are you serious. Then maybe you should hire more help. We have to pay our bill and this is the service we get. Pretty saddd!!!" I called from a cell phone for 4 days and never got a sooner date than June 13th. So we'll see if the repair tech even shows?

Still with no answers I gave up that day. Called back the next day only to be told by 4 different people that I had to talk to someone else and they would transfer me. I requested multiple times to speak with anyone who could put in a work order for a technician to come to the house and make sure the job was done correctly. I totally understand that due to my location I will not have “fast” internet. I still feel like should be able to receive the fastest available and not whatever the technician seems “okay” with giving me. If I had any other option for internet service provider I would switch. Horrible company. Horrible customer service. As soon as there is another company available in my area I will switch even if I have to pay more for the service.

I work in customer service and this company is just too big for their breeches. We’ve all called and complained multiple times but each time we call to complain again, it’s like no one can find any other complaints... really??!! No one knows why we don’t have service. No one has fixed it. No one knows when we will have service back and we live in an area where cell service is spotty at best.

This MAY have been a possibility on my part, but my best friend who just moved into his new house as well in the same area, had the same awful experience and was rescheduled 2 or MORE times to get his new service hooked up. I had 0 belief the technician would show up on the new date on the 12th, the manager I spoke with was adamant. That was the best he could do. I have been in a family that has been a customer of CenturyLink for 30 years. This is simply unacceptable practice and I am appalled. Do not make promises on dates for service if you cannot adhere to them. If you cannot adhere to them, call the customer the day before and let them know you cannot be there. Absolutely awful experience.

I called again last night for a service call and they’ve scheduled me again for Tuesday 6/12/18. I don’t who has all of this time to hang around the house for CenturyLink technicians to bumble about my home just to permit .3 Mbps increase in speed, but I don’t. This is the worst internet service in the entire country and their response time is equally disgraceful. When I began a chat Tuesday, Hannah took 38 minutes to get through the process - I could only guess that she must have been reading the manual as she went through the questions to ask me.

This is the very reason some of us are hopeful for Broadband Over Power to become a reality. It is hard to be competitive in this world with this type of service being the only internet infrastructure available. Internet is now a part of life and integral to staying in business like having electricity and running water. For people, like me who work at home at night to stay in touch with clients or to conduct research, this puts me at a disadvantage among my peers.

I have paid twice for the same Internet and got a runaround that lasted six hours before my husband was able to get the funds to pay the internet bill again! They signed me up for autopay without my knowledge since they "stored my card info for my convenience" and when there was nothing to take, they canceled my service. I feel like I was being played by all but one of your customer service reps, who I already mentioned in this post. One of the reps sounded like he didn't care, I immediately asked for his supervisor, and my call was placed on "hold" never to be answered again and I hung up. Whenever I asked for a supervisor, I don't think I got one at all, I was just being passed from phone to phone at the same center.

Oh, I didn't even get close to the speed I paid for after the "upgrade" until today when I went through this nightmare so I could finish my finals for school. If I had the money in the first place, I would have paid it but why should I pay twice for the same service and why did I get passed for the amusement of your customer reps, one who couldn't even be bothered to sound professional? Why couldn't billing or financial or whatever you want to call it not see that there were two account numbers under my name and only one was active? I got that one from the helpful tech and he was the only one that didn't blame the others for being incompetent. Except for him, it seemed to be a group effort.

It is unacceptable that a company cannot provide better customer service than this. Offering to give us a credit for the time that we are unable to use their service does nothing to fix the problem we have of not being able to work this weekend and the problem is still not going to be resolved since we are not able to be home on June 13th for this to get fixed.

Tech then wanted me to hook up a computer to the modem to run tests on it. I repeated my clarification on how I determined that it wasn't an issue with the modem, router, or any onsite hardware as it was regional, and just wanted an ETA on the repair if they had one. I explained that DNS lookups worked, but pages did not load. Tech then asked me to run a speed test. I reminded the tech that I had just stated pages don't load, so I couldn't run a speed test. They then were going to reset my line to resolve it. At this point, it was about a half an hour into the chat, and we weren't getting anywhere. It could have been an easy "let me check" and either "yep, there's an issue, ETA is x" or "sorry, we don't' have an ETA quite yet" Instead the rep was following the script closely without actually paying attention to what I was saying.

You have to give your techs some education and permission to think outside the box a bit. This was a poor experience - and I don't fully blame it on the rep. I've done front line call center work - so I get the limitations placed on them by the vendor. It's OK to be honest with your customer - if you don't have an answer yet. I know not every customer will be happy with that - you can't please them all - but my experience has shown me that a little acknowledgment and honesty goes a long way. Because the tech had to follow the guidelines so closely, they wasted my time for about half an hour, and I never got an answer, just attempts to fix things that weren't actually broken.

After receiving my Service Order confirmation in the mail, it stated I would owe over $100 a month!!! When I called Centurylink to dispute this, they told me I had to email the customer service rep to fix it!!! WHAT!? I have to email them to correct their mistake? Anyways it was finally corrected and I never received a bill until MAY! I had even told the customer service rep I hadn't received a bill yet and she said to watch out for it. Fast forward to May. I receive a bill for a bit over $100 and I figured it was because it had been a few months since I had even received one so I paid it. Mind you, I never even ended up using the phone because the business fell through but that is neither here nor there.

We are moving and I decided to cancel the service altogether since it is not even being used and upon speaking with the customer service rep who basically told me I was delinquent over $500 dollars and would need to pay that plus a $200 early termination fee in order to shut it off. I AM COMPLETELY LIVID!!! Lets say the conversation did not end well and now I am stuck with a bill over $700 for a phone I never even used or even got a bill for until months later!!! But this is somehow MY fault! I don't do their billing, I don't send out their invoices, are you kidding me!? I have excellent credit and make sure all my bills are paid. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever dealt with a company in my life. Steer clear of them. They will screw you over.

Noticed that my first bill had the leased modem on it, but I thought: well, I did have it for one day, and it's only $10, so no worries. Six weeks later, I get my next bill. Leased modem still on. I call and they say that they never received the modem back. (Do a search on this; I now know the UPS guy was right and this happens a lot). Sometime in the last six weeks, I lost the receipt. CL says that I have to keep leasing (and pay for the modem when I finally cancel). So, canceled CenturyLink immediately and here's a preliminary balance sheet of my Price-for-Life experience with them. Preliminary, because I actually don't believe that they will cleanly cancel the account either.

I received five weeks of service from CenturyLink. My price-for-life fee was supposed to be $45/mo, so I should have been charged about $56. I didn't find out that they lost my modem, which caused me to cancel my service, until after I had already paid for next month. CenturyLink's policy is that you don't get any refund on the month's fee. So: 2-month internet service = $90. 2-month modem lease = $20. Cost of modem. I don't know what this actually is. Didn't pay much attention, because I thought I'd just be sending it back. The bill says "Deluxe Modem lease". I seem to remember something like $140 or $150 (which means it was probably a $70 modem). Let's go with $140, but maybe I'm in for an unpleasant surprise there.

I'm not going to count the loss on the overlap with Xfinity, nor the time waiting for the CL technician, nor time on the phone with CL people (by the way, the price-for-life billing is apparently handled by someone else called SimplePay, so you don't have the same service reps, they have shorter hours, etc.). So let's say conservatively that CenturyLink charged/will charge me $250 for around $56 or $57 of service, and for a modem which I told them I didn't want in the first place. What is that, like 400% uplift? Of course, it could go up. They should be very proud of the business they're running there. Back to Xfinity.

Now one year later, the phone is out of service as of today (June 5, 2018) and after being on a chat for over 2 hours with various people I was told nobody could come out until June 18. That is almost 2 weeks. We have a special needs child in the home and my partner works from home depending on the phone for calls and faxes. This wait not only puts my child at medical risk (as well as the rest of the family) since we have no cell service and now no landline. Also, my partner is unable to work for 2 weeks due to the lack of phone.

The service from CenturyLink has been nothing short of a disaster from the start with the 8 days of waiting to now. We have NO recourse since they are the only game in town and we have no other options for service but to bow to them and take their lack of service. My only recourse is to let others know. Not that it will matter. If you have other options... Take them, otherwise if you are like me you can give them a one star or a five star you still have to have them. Suck it up and be ready is all I can say.

Updated on 06/06/2018: I got the same generic, "Sorry to hear about your issue," reply today on this site and it says to reply to the message if I want their help. I can't seem to figure out how to reply to the message. I am sure it is a user error on my part, but there seems to be no way to reply. If there is please explain.

Apparently CenturyLink customer service reps do. After receiving that rep's rant I asked for a supervisor who restated the EXACT SAME SENTENCES TO ME and either could care less that I told him this was rude OR the fact that their customer service is based in India and they have no idea how American culture and customer service is handled. Either way I can’t wait to get another service provider. Boycott customer service for Americans that is not American-focused or American-based, period!

After still not receiving any more information or my modem I called in. First person was condescending and a bit rude. So I went on chat. That person basically told me there was no order. She quoted me a higher service price but lower modem purchase. I snapped a pic of that. What? So I called in again while on chat to try to get a supervisor. That person only wanted to sell product that kept saying no to. After saying no 10 times (not kidding) I hung up. Called back again. I got a very understanding rep who basically told me the price for my upgrade was different than before. Plus the price for the modem purchase is higher than the chat rep told me. She said that the online reps have different promos.I went back to chat. This new person was now telling me a different price for the upgrade and modem purchase as well having to shell out 60 dollars for a tech visit. Nope. Off the chat.

After waiting on the phone again for about 15 to 20 minutes my wife helped me get in contact with Facebook chat rep for CenturyLink. Not exactly the best way to have a conversation. But Scott was somewhat helpful if not limited in his information. Long story longer, my account had multiple errors in it from the time the order was created. Of which no account number and missing codes. Apparently the order was sent to another department to get fixed.

Anyone reading this should too.

I was so taken back that I went online to do some research because I know I am not the only person exposed to this type of inappropriate conduct. It sicked me when I realized there is nothing that can be done because how is anyone able to call out someone when there are no resources governing these type of crazies. Back to the billing-fraud, for those of you who too are experiencing similar issues, you may want to review an article I read: "CenturyLink fights billing-fraud lawsuit by claiming that it has no customers." If anyone reading this has found any relief in either of my situations, please let me know how/what you did. Thank you.