CenturyLink

Wait, I have never been late, so shouldn't this matter? As we talked, I said I pay through my Bill pay system. I was told that I could sign up for auto-pay, and still pay through bill pay ahead of the due date. All is well. After completing that account review, I then had a review of my second account at another location. Indeed, we can change this to price for life, auto-pay, But that speed (7 meg) would be a lower cost, $35. Hook me up. After the first month, settling previous charges, credits, and payments applied, we settled into a normal routine, $35 and $40 respectively. This was all done back in February. I have not had any issues, and am very happy. My savings totals nearly $50 a month.

So, I thought, Mom is a CenturyLink customer, phone and internet. We did an account review at this same time. Because she has a phone/internet combo, she wasn't able to save Mom much. However, they were able to get her $10 dollars off her internet, and $10 off her phone, a month for 12 months. For her, that is a huge savings. I am sorry to those that have had bad experiences. But people are more inclined to write a bad review as opposed to writing a good review. So, I am writing a good review, and look forward to being a CenturyLink customer for many years to come. God bless the freedoms of America!

Seriously, that's my only option, call every day until you say a spot has become available? But there's a wait list, won't those people get priority? Yes. So call every day to see if a spot is available after all the waitlist people are served first but you can't add me to the waitlist? Yes... Unbelievable. What a joke their customer "service" is. If I could have given them 0 stars I would have. CenturyLink is the worst.

In the future, I will cancel service, call 2 weeks ahead of time when I want it back and schedule a tech to come out so that I actually have internet within a day of arriving to my location. The cost is about the same for me (paying 6 mo vacay hold or paying service charge). So I'm cancelling service from now on. Not doing vacation hold. I own my own modem so I don't need to do anything for their equipment. Also, you can do none of this (cancelling, etc) on a weekend. They only have customer service hours Mon-Fri. Not very service oriented. Suggest you all cancel and not vacay hold for extended service holds. Less hassle.

We are having the issue again and decided we would wait it out a few days to see if the problem corrected itself. It is not fixed and when we tried to contact the call center which the girl was very nice, she said that the system was down and that we would have to call back in an hour or so when their system is back up. At my workplace, if our system is down we don't tell the customer to call us we call them back once it's up. So we can not get a work order started to be able to fix our almost monthly internet issue. I will hope that eventually in the future it will get better. The insane part about our internet issues is that our neighbor who has exact same internet has no issues.

The next technician did spend about three hours here changing things on the outside line. But, he even he said it was not 100%. His intentions were to follow up with "Engineering" and discuss the problem here. Well, the ball got dropped. I became ill in 2019 and required two surgeries. I never heard back from the second technician. Recently I felt better and was ready to pick up my still ongoing CenturyLink situation. But, on the same day technician three was scheduled to arrive (5/9/19) I actually called Comcast-Xfinity and just had their "blast" 150 MBS installed. I was only getting 8MBS (all I could get here) from CenturyLink and I felt that even if by some miracle CenturyLink would fix the line instability issue it really was not worth it anyway. I will retain my land line with CenturyLink but will be cancelling the internet come Monday (5/13/19). I live in Hampton, TN.

It is important to express that despite maintaining inside line coverage on my account for eons (13 years) as well as having an expectation that CenturyLink would automatically cover any "outside" line issues I was unable to get my ongoing and long standing problem with "line instability” and unreliable internet ever repaired. The company was not going to reline any portion of the lines servicing us. We were literally left to feel that we somehow had to initiate any repair here ourselves. It was all clearly "bizarre". I am also sending a copy of this to Centurylink escalations.

Addendum: They never made it clear just where on the lines this "instability" was. The first technician said it was inside, the second technician said it was at the NAD and on the outside lines he went to work on. He was out there a long time but everything he tried did not rectify the problem. We never did get the problem taken care of. We kept being told on phone calls to CenturyLink by agents who tested our service that the trouble was "line instability".

My husband who deals with them keeps having to call and haggle over the price because we had asked to step down to a lower package because we don't use our house phone and twice we had been told it was done. Then we get a huge bill. It wasn't done. Our home phone still doesn't work and they want to shut off our service. So he calls he gets a hold of a really nice agent who tells him they're going to step us down because why should existing customers pay twice as much for the same service as new customers. And we were supposed to get a $100 credit on our bill and she told us not to pay our bill until we got that $100 credit.

Stone 2 days before the due date of the bill our service got shut off. So I get online realizing what happens look for the credit it wasn't there I still pay the bill in total. Then the next morning the internet still not being on I go on chat and speak to Cory ** about getting it turned back on. Corey ** tells me that they closed my account completely and in order to do something I had to sign up for a whole new package. They also told me that there was no just Internet Packages available in the area and that the cheapest one was the same price as our old one. I asked if we could just turn the old package on and I could allow my husband to call and talk to somebody because I was at work and I was getting very busy but they said no our internet would not turn back on until I gave another $75 and that it would be back on that day. Well all of that was a lie.

I gave the $75 on top of pay my bill and now we're in that can't get turned on for almost a whole week. So my husband calls. He offers to send screenshots of the chat to prove to them what this person did and how they lied and they told him about those chat agents don't really work for CenturyLink. Well my question is is how on Earth is a company allowing someone else to make decisions in their name and not claiming responsibility for what they've done. So the bottom line is the service is pretty decent however you have any issues buckle up 'cuz it will be a bumpy ride. It is never easy to just get a hold of someone and have an issue taken care of. And it'll take you an hour and a half to get to the person that you know can just flip the switch of the computer and fix it and then they still won't do it. They'll still make you wait no matter what.

3 hours of being passed back and forth it was finally resolved. Well my internet would only work a few minutes at a time and I contacted tech support again and got the same thing with my account info not matching. I decided to cancel. I called to cancel and the tech was arguing with me when I declined to be sent to tech to resolve the issue. He said, "Well it won't take 3 hours and it is because your account isn't paid." I told him I didn't want to argue with Jim and to just cancel my service at which time he hung up on me. I called back and now none of my verifying information was there, my SSN, my phone number, all was gone. The second girl was rude and horrible as well but at least she got the service cancelled. This company has to have the worst customer service. It is a tie on what is worse their internet or their customer service. I will never use them again.

I cannot imagine how this company stays in business treating their customers this way. It's no wonder after they keep destroying their reputation that they must change their name. After this experience, I don't care what they change their name too, I'll never do business with them again. To those who claim 5-star service with this company, I call BS. There is no way you are a customer--more like an employee.

I contacted Century Link again but was told they didn't have an answer for me and I would have to wait even longer for installment. However, they have kindly charged me for the service, although I have not had service for over a month. I'm already receiving bills for an installment that never happened. CenturyLink has not only neglected us, but is not providing service, taking my money. I've never been so disappointed in a company. We are out money, for the two days that had to be taken off of work, and the money I've paid without service. Now I will have to terminate my service and find a new internet provider. Plus, I will be out for the money, as they are refusing to issue a refund.

Fast forward to this year: There has never been a single point in my service where I have gotten the advertised speed which I subscribe to (40 Mbps). This is common, but what is not common is I usually got about 18 Mbps, which is drastically lower than the speed I paid for. When I contacted CL customer support, the people I would speak to would have me run the proprietary speed test on their website, which would register 40 Mbps, but if I ran any other speed test on the internet, it would register at 18 Mbps or lower. There is a technical reason for this which in my work experience I am well aware of.

When I asked specific technical questions as to this point, the customer service reps have never been able to answer questions in a way which demonstrates that they understand how the internet actually works. The underlying frustration for me was that I did not sign up for CL to connect to their servers, but to access the internet as a whole at the speed I am paying for, across every service (within reason), but they were unable or unwilling to provide me the service I was paying for.

The proverbial straw which broke the camel's back was approximately 2 weeks ago when I needed to move my modem/router to a new jack. I contacted CL and explained the situation, that I only have one jack which is active on my account, and I need the other jacks activated (as the other account in my home was no longer active). I encountered a rep who could not fathom what I was talking about, but got me to a rep who knew exactly what needed to be done, but were unable to do the actual work order. They transferred me to another rep, who then told me that I would have to install new jacks, which would come to a cost of $500+. This seemed absurd, as to activate one single jack required no actual work according to their technician, so to reverse this process should not be any different.

Additionally, if I were to move out of my home and someone else moved in, the person who moved in would be able to activate an account on all the jacks in the home with no issue. The rep wouldn't budge and kept making statements which demonstrated that they basically had no idea as to what had been done before or what needed to be done now.

What was even worse was that the rep tried to sell me faster internet, and when I explained that I had never once gotten the advertised speed, they blamed my modem/router, which is a Netgear device which is fully compatible with CL (though they do not offer tech support on, understandably, as that would involve more advanced training, etc), and far more advanced than the cheap modem/router combos that CL charges customers for. It's incredibly frustrating to have more technical knowledge than the person that is paid to be knowledgeable in their subject and is the gatekeeper to resolving your concern.

When I cancelled my account, the rep who I contacted was very pleasant, but the damage was done. There is a larger, cable internet service provider in my area which I have been apprehensive about for years, but at this point I was willing to give them a shot, as CL had shown that they were unwilling to keep me as a customer. I got service through this larger provider, and I am paying less for 150 Mbps. Checking the speed, I am actually getting closer to 160 or 170, even during peak hours. When my house was built, cable wasn't a common thing, so there are no coaxial cable jacks in my house, but this other internet service provider was willing to come out, install them, and none of this is at any cost to me whatsoever.

In summary, there will be areas of the country where CL is the best option, but if I can avoid using them I will continue to do so. I recommended them to friends for years, but will now caution against their use because of my experiences and poor customer service.

6 months and many phone calls, hold time and transfers later, we are still being told he must pay for at least the month of December although they have pared back most of the charges since. They insist there are no records of cancellation but at the same time say that the service was discontinued and then reinstated when he paid what he thought was his last bill. We have spent a ridiculous amount of time on this and have never gotten a consistent story. My father is worried they will harm his credit and feels like he is being asked to pay for services he cancelled just to avoid that. Although the customer service reps we've spoken to have been polite, they seem to have limited information, roles and authority even after speaking to a supervisor.

After calling back and on hold for 45 minutes I finally connected with someone who actually took the time to figure out what was going on (thank you Charlie) but after all of that I was told they could not schedule an appointment and at some time I would receive a call from engineering when they had time to review the ticket. I am still waiting for this call so I can have my install finished, sadly I have a feeling this call will never come.

April 20th arrived on time but as to be expected, the tech did not. He was about 45 min. late, not a huge deal and I don't want to sound like a cliche, but still. I shook his hand after we exchanged greetings and he stated to me (mind you this is the second sentence this man has said to me) "You aren't going to be happy because we can't install your internet today." I said alright, we discussed the issue (fiber line needs to be bored up to house), he installed some equipment on the house, left his business card and said call him in 10 days if the install still wasn't complete. April 30th rolled around and I called him because no further work had been done. No answer, no return call, chatted with an online rep. who ensured me it would be completed that day, it wasn't. Contacted CenturyLink support again online the following day and was told the new install date would be May 7th, May 7th is here (today). No bore crew, no fiber line, no fiber splicers.

So I jump on chat again, and I am told new install date of June 6th. Now that wouldn't be a big deal to me, I am fairly patient and I worked as a broadband tech. for 2+ years so I know how it goes, but no temp. line apparently could be installed, nobody contacts me with updates, and the install date was pushed back 3 times at this point, even though they had my start up fee (albeit only $60), and I had enough. Contacted my old ISP and they are coming to install the same speed of internet in 2 days for only $4 more a month than CenturyLink. Luckily they have a line up to the house, but will need to reinstall the box on the house due to CenturyLink removing it to install their box. What a joke, and a waste of my time.