Centurylink DSL / Customer Service

[Michael Aos]

I jumped on High-Speed Internet (DSL) as soon as it was offered in my area. High-end was 50Mbit down / 10Mbit up, and I was able to upgrade to 20Mbit up for an additional $5/month. So 50/20.

I don't even know exactly how long I've had it. Around 10yrs. Perfectly happy. I worked from home full-time for many of those years, and no complaints.

About 2 months ago, they "upgraded" the local POP's and started offering higher download speeds. When they did that, my service dropped to 40/20 (VDSL2 Profile 12a). Everyone I talked to at Centurylink argued with me that I'd ever had 50Mbit down, because that's not a current speed they offer. WTF? They offered me a new 60Mbit (download, no mention of upload) service that was actually LESS EXPENSIVE than what I had before. I took it.

For the last ~2 months I've had link speed 65471 Kbps down / 45849 Kbps up (VDSL2 Profile 17a) and it's been AWESOME. So nice. I've been telling everybody who will listen how much I like my CenturyLink Internet.

About Wednesday 3/21 or early Thursday 3/22, they performed another "upgrade" and dropped me to VDSL2 Profile 8a. 65471 Downstream / 5501 Kbps Upstream. It's awful. So bad.



I have called and called and talked to person after person on the phone. Multiple chats. They keep insisting I'm lying to them. They say I never had what I say I had, and that there is no problem because I'm receiving exactly what I'm paying for. There are no service offerings that match what I had before. I have screenshots, historical spreadsheets, etc. Doesn't matter.

They scheduled my service to be upgraded to 80/10 on Monday 3/26. I guess we'll see what happens, but Xfinity is available here now, so I'm probably going to wind up moving to them.

I just can't say enough about how terrible the CenturyLink customer service has been. Nothing like it used to be. Many years ago it was awesome.

 

[lman]

I wouldn't complain if I could get those speeds. I'm stuck at 10 Mb/.89 Mb with Centurylink. I started at 3Mb about 10 years ago and got an update to 10 about 5 years ago. It's the only option I have and seems to be pretty stable. I don't foresee any updates in the near future. I guess I must be more rural than you or Centurylink forgot about us.

 

[WM75Guy]

Good luck getting anywhere. They moved their call center to the Philippines a few years back and customer service went from poor to dismal. Best I can get is 4Mb down/.5Mb up. I doubt we will ever see anything faster. The local resources are "exhausted", their term for maxed out. New people moving in get put on a waiting list for a current customer to drop service before they can get service.

Repairs were a 24 hour response time until they went from 10 local service techs to 4. Now repairs take a week to 10 days before they show up. They spend half their day driving as trouble tickets are assigned by when they came in, not geography. My service was out and a repair guy was parked up the street. I stopped and asked if he was coming to my house. He said no, he was finishing a ticket and then driving 20 miles to his next job. My ticket was not yet assigned and he couldn't help me. They were not allowed to plan or alter their work day any more. In the past when they finished a ticket they could look to see if there was one close to them as it might be part of the same problem. No more, just go where the computer sends them.

 

[TractorGuy]

The only time I was pleased with their customer service was when I called to cancel. I began that conversation by asking if I could record it and permission was granted. Prior to that my results never matched what I was told on the phone and they would not allow me to make any changes by email or chat.

 

[dragoneggs]

I surely cannot complain. I recently upgraded my cable internet plan to 250Mbps. No more constipation here. More than I need but just surprised for where I live, the speeds are so very fast!

 

[Michael Aos]

I have 6x cameras streaming to the cloud at around 1Mbit/each.

That overwhelms the new ~5Mbit uplink, which in turn kills the downlink.

I’m hoping the new 80/10 will overcome that. Or maybe I can talk the install tech through the issue and restore my previous service level.

 

[Michael Aos]

They switched me to the 80Mbit down / 10Mbit up plan. Definitely works better for me than the ~5Mbit up plan, but I sure wish I could figure out how to get the service I used to have restored.

 

[kcflhrc]

You must be on fiber to get those speeds. Or possibly bonded. What kind of modem/router did they install?

 

[Michael Aos]

I'm running a NETGEAR D7000.

 

[dragoneggs]

I surely cannot complain. I recently upgraded my cable internet plan to 250Mbps. No more constipation here. More than I need but just surprised for where I live, the speeds are so very fast!

View attachment 545481

You must be on fiber to get those speeds. Or possibly bonded. What kind of modem/router did they install?

I don't know if it is fiber along the main road... my guess is they upgraded the line recently, but I have thirty year old buried cable for almost 1000ft. I purchased Linksys wireless router and cable company provided Arris modem. Note my measured 250Mbps download speed was over my wireless home network!

 

[rustyshakelford]

When we had them it was 1.5mgb download and something equally as slow upload. Couldnt watch Netflix in the evening when everyone was home. Absolutely terrible and at times not useable for anything. Customer service sucked and lied over and over. We were paying like $75 per month. When I called and cancelled they offered be $19 per month and theyd fix everything. I went off and lost my mind that they have been charging me so much all along and they thought that would make me happy. Got a hotspot from att unlimited and love it

Brett