I had Astound internet and cable service i 2023 and 24 and the service was good but the price increased from around $240 to $385 and I could not pay that anymore and decided to switch providers.I returned all their equipment to their site in Chicago via Fed Ex with receipt and they sent me a bill for 183.00 for unreturned equipment. When I called customer service , a young girl answered with a baby crying in the background and said someone would call in a week, no one ever called. Now they sent a notice from a collection agency 10 months later! Terrible customer service, stay away! (NO STARS) read more

Truly an awful experience. Originally had WOW and the Internet was reliable, the bill was predictable, the customer service was good and online UI was easy to access. I was just charged for two months of service on a single bill when there were no written policy changes. I spent over an hour on the phone trying to figure out why I was paying for an additional month of service on an April bill, just to get the run around. I was told conflicting information (bill is charged a month late, now all of the sudden a month early?) and decided to cancel right then. The price has only increased over time, and for the same mbps down, other companies charge less than half my bill amount, and offer a comprehensive account view on their website with options to change, upgrade, etc. Never ever try this provider unless you have no choice. read more

It was been so incredible dropping Comcast and switching to RCN. Talking to kind, real humans when I call customer service. No dark patterns, no mistaken charges caused by the horrifying Comcast UI. Astound has been incredible, responsive, and GREAT INTERNET for cheap. My mom is a senior on a fixed-income, and we were able to get her a mobile phone and better Internet for only $10/month. read more

Really really slow internet with fees wherever they can sneak them in. Very poor customer service - it's impossible to get any one to help or clarify what their policies are. read more

If I could give astound RCN a negative rate, I would have. They are simply scammers. I have my own equipments, set up auto payments, Yet, these people would find ways to charge you charges they can't even explain you call them. I just use their basic service However, got a bill over $120 each month. See the attached for yourself and save your money and energy. Nothing on this statement is true. Take them to court if you have to. read more

Astound - Chicago - These are their bills for a basic interest - Internet Service Providers Near Me - Chicago, Illinois

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Called today to get a quote for a 6 unit building, and separately our home. The woman I spoke with took 15 minutes just to figure out how to handle the call because 1 is a business, and 1 is a home. After 15 minutes of holding a couple times, her fumbling around, me telling her I would need to leave for work soon, she said she was transferring me, then either disconnected me or hung up on me. Business lost for them, I'm not calling back. read more

Update: So after years of service, I turn in the cable modem and Astound/RCN tells me they have no record of me having it and the modem I should have is missing. Now what's clear is it IS an RCN modem because the serial number tracks. Here's the problem; over the years I've had many service appointments and their techs always have 3 -4 modems on them. They only audit these devices once the serial number has been installed on the network. The problem is if they're troubleshooting with multiple devices and installing, ALL OF THOSE MODEMS INSTALL ON YOUR ACCOUNT. Why is this bad? Because those modems don't automatically come off and it means at the end of your serivce you could be stuck with HUNDREDS of dollars in fees for "missing" equipment. Here's my adivce. BUY YOUR OWN CABLE MODEM. Don't ever let RCN convince you that you need theirs. BUY YOUR OWN. You can't be billed for something you never accept. read more

Astound started me off at $79 monthly rate and raised it to $214 over the course of 3 years with no changes to my package. I had it set to autopay and was never notified of the increase in monthly rate. Very disappointing & will be changing vendors. read more

Astound service is absolutely atrocious. Their service goes out multiple times per day and I've had to listen to my family complain about it ever since we switched from Charter. Just cancelled service as what sealed the deal is when my credit card was hacked and I had to order a new one, Astound sent out an autopay reminder which I updated on the same day to my new credit card. The next day they still processed the old card and then charged me $85 on top of regular service charges! This comes across to me as a scam since they made sure to send out their reminder without enough time for it to be corrected so they can charge those insane fees. When I called about it they would only refund $45 and said they couldn't do anything about the $40 declined payment fee. Really? $40 for a declined payment fee? No thanks, I'm out and would recommend anyone considering signing up with them to run. read more

Had their internet for about three months now, and the speed has always been fine. HOWEVER, I initially asked for the new customer deal plan at $35/month for 600mbps. My bill was $80 for the past three months and I finally got the chance to log in to my account. In actuality, I was signed up for the $55/month (+ $25 in fees/etc) for 1000mbps plan against my knowledge and wishes. I tried contacting customer support telling them that I was wrongfully signed up for a much higher plan. Their response? If I wanted to downgrade, it was going to cost me DOUBLE what I'm paying now because I'm no longer a new customer. Essentially, they scammed me into paying $80/month and refuse to fix the mistake they made. I'll be canceling and finding a new provider. read more

Attn Jackie or helpme@rcn is a joke. It is an unmonitored email address that nobody respond too, but is just used for posts in social media to let other people think Astound cares. Jackie - please don't even make the hallow offer to this review. You do not respond. Just accept the fact you are either understaffed to respond to the litany of complaints and that the 1 star average is most deserving. To anyone looking for Internet, phone or cable services, do not be fooled by the low price offer - you get what you pay for. Unreliable services with poor customer service. If you work from home, your video calls will be degraded. If you like to watch TV, just know that at least once a week, durring your favorite show or the big game, your set-top-box will reboot and take 5 minutes to reconnect. And when you call into customer service, expect a 20-30 minute waitt and multiple blind transfers. Save your self from their errors. If you are on automatic payments, and they make a mistake, or they raise your prices without telling you, WHICH THEY WILL DO, they automatically take out the new amount. This is not a set it and forget it. Lastly, if a CSR tells you, they will call you back, they are lying. They can not make outbound calls. They can not email you information. They are just trying to get you off the call. If you get bad service, know this. They can not hang up first, they are dinged in their reporting if they hang up on a customer. They will sit for eternity before they hang up or they will send you to another automated attendant just not to have it flagged as the CSR hung up first. Last week, I left RCN for Xfinity. I am so much happier with my speed, my channel line up and the reliability of the equipment. And saving $185 a month, bonus. read more

Inadequate response to my question - online chat even hung up on me when I insisted they answer my question.

My building has an exclusive contract with RCN, internet and cable tv. My annoyance began before I moved in. I had to pay $70 for someone to come out to plug modems into the wall for me. Self-install wasn't an option. I wasn't left with any of the info for how to access and control my wifi network, I had to call for it. But it didn't really matter because the website wasn't compatible with Safari or iOS. What year is it again? My cable is absolutely ridiculous. The menu isn't customizable, I can't even identify many of the channels because they have nonsensical abbreviations. Channel logo? No chance. I feel like I'm in junior high school, when digital cable first came out. Despite having everything but the premium channels, I'm constantly clicking on random channels that I don't have. WHY are you here? And why can't I make you go away? I have XFinity at my other apartment, and fortunately their app looks like a tv menu. My tv has chrome cast and AirPlay 2 built into it, so I just stream it because I can't pay to bring my own service over. I've never had internet that goes out as often as RCN does. These are long enough outages that they update their social media accounts about it. Their website is super helpful if you want to read press release's from 2018. I've never been able to login to the RCN mail. Everything about this company is terrible. read more

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If I could give zero stars I would. I am moving and need to disconnect my service however Astound only allows for disconnection at the end of a billing cycle. There is lack of transparency and terrible customer service. I would not recommend to anyone. read more

Since Wow become Astound Broadband everything chage. Service interruptions and worst customer service ever with increasing prices covered with "your promotional periot expire after 6 years and 8 monts". :)) Just nonsense... When I cancel the service after 7 years.. in the middle of the month they were not able to prorated the bill for the last month. Shame on you Astound.. you are very good example of failing company read more

DO NOT get service from this company. Whatever they tell you, your bill would be you can probably expect double. whenever you have issues and you speak to their customer support, they will assure you things will get resolved and that your billing will be accurate next time around... It won't. It will probably go up even more. I have been trying to cancel for over a month and they continue to try and bill me outrageous amounts for just internet. My bill was originally $50 per month, it has risen to over $80 per month, yet my actually monthly bill ranges from $150 - $220+ One term that I assure you will hear from their support is, "I'm sorry to hear that." Truth is they do not care. SCAM read more

They are having a constant hidden fee and adding "one time charges" and surcharges. For every price you see in the commercial, add at least $25 for your comparison. I got a 600MB internet and $50 and they have added a monthly $25 on top of that for a "maintenance fee" in addition to that you have rental fee (acceptable) and taxes. In short, the internet itself is ok (not great) but the company's ethics is terrible - I'm not recommending. read more

I would select a lower rating if it was at all possible. I went to cancel my service due to rate increases for worse service that I had been dealing with for months. I switched to another provider on May 27th but my billing was set up to autopay on May 25th. My billing period is May 27th- June 26th, so essentially I'll be paying for a service that I won't be using. I called twice and asked the question if this would at all be a prorated bill for the service of one day and was told that they don't do prorations. My fault for keeping this terrible service for so long but this business is not an ethical one and I will never be back with them no matter what the world comes to. Terrible service, Terrible customer experience, Terrible everything. I am ASTOUNDED at the level of unethical business practices. Hope this helps others before they make a mistake that you will soon regret! read more

Expensive, bad service, and no loyalty. They doubled by bill in 3 years, from 80/mo to 170/mo, mostly because of equipment rental fees. Do yourself a favor and go with AT&T which does not charge you equipment rental fees. read more

Since they reworked my building a few months ago the WIFI is not good. Next, one of my remotes quit working. On 9/11 I called to request a new remote. on 9/23 I had not yet received the new remote. I called and was on hold about 1/2 hour. I explained my problem to the very nice service rep. I was told the remote had not yet shipped. She explained why but it made no sense to me. I must use Astound because I live in a condo building and Astound is our only choice. The service reps are nice. The service is below average. Shame on you Astound! read more

Just canceled Astound. Last year they bought out WOW and service went to garbage. Slow internet, flaky TV signals, and spotty WiFi. Last weekend spent without TV. He found a bad filter on the cable hub outside. With it removed TV and internet got better. Lost internet yesterday. multiple calls, multiple lies. Beware, If you call them for a service call they now charge $79 just to see what is wrong. Just hooked up with another service. better tv quality, much faster internet, better WiFi, and I am saving over $100 a month! It is a shame that we had WOW for 8 years with awesome service and in less than 8 moths these fools at Astound trashed the service. read more

Frequent issues with no internet. It is always down until I call and the issue ends up being the modem needing to be rebooted.

I have encountered same exact issues as other customers Dimitra P. (7/2/24); Belinda E. (7/10/24); Mic S. (7/12/24); Robb I. (8/5/24); Veronica S. (8/25/24); Noah C. (9/4/24). I want to give them 0 star for constant buffering, customer service, reliability, price increases, etc. WOW was a 110% better. Lo H. read more

Worst internet company in the country, avoid if you can. If you're moving into a new building and they only have Astound/RCN, move into a different building instead. read more

If you live in the Chicago area you can forget anything that resembles service. Astound doesn't even have an equipment swap center. Astound wants you to box up and ship your defective equipment. read more

I would stay away from this company. We cannot use our landline to call local phone numbers. RCN customer service tells us that's because Comcast owns the lines and we need to call Comcast to be able to use RCN to call locally. WE NEED TO CALL NOT RCN! Stay away from this company. read more

The local representative and RCN tech were great unfortunately the Astound cross-country customer support is terrible. I called about an issue with being overcharged for service in my area, the first rep hung up on me. The second rep put me on hold and then told me "Tough luck, you shouldn't have signed up at a worse rate". I said I'd cancel the service if they didn't honor the advertised rate and I was put on a second hold. After the hold I was told my service had been immediately cancelled and disconnected. Would have appreciated an hour to set up a second provider. read more

No professionalism with their customer service, waited for an hour before I finally spoke to someone and they put me on hold for another 10 minutes only to inform me that they were transferring me to another department and waited another 20 minutes before I spoke to another person who had no aptitude for my issue. They then put me on hold for another 15 minutes and then I spoke to someone who then said I had to speak to technical support, another 15 minutes later I was told that they needed to send a technician to my house, they put me on hold for another 15 minutes to give me a date that was a week away, in the meantime I had no internet. I was so frustrated read more

I have just spent over 4 hours total dealing with multiple customer service agents on multiple platforms regarding a 50% increase to my bill with no warning. I started my service 5 years ago with RCN, and it was reasonably priced, reliable, and the customer service was fantastic. Since Astound has taken over the service is not as reliable, and the customer service gets worse and worse year over year. I have had to call each year to negotiate my pricing spending at least an hour on the phone each time. I understand that promotions run out, but charging your existing loyal customers 4x's the amount for the same or less service than new customers is ridiculous. Charging mid year price increases with no warning is bad business. I am so disappointed to have to cancel my service over this, but finding a new internet provider is less of a hassle than having to constantly monitor my account to make sure I am not being billed for some random price increase each month. read more

I have been without service 10 separate times in the first three months of being a customer. This is an awful company. Stay away!

Good company, great internet, amazing speed and prices but technical support is absolute trash which seems to be a given with every company these days. It still stands out. Rarely can anyone actually help you on the phone. Usually, it is a "let's have someone come over and look at the wires." Because, every few months when I have an internet problems from them throttling me, it must be squirrels chewing on wires because this company "doesn't" lower your speed on purpose. Than, they have a very bad automated voice operator, who doesn't understand words like "internet," even though that is option one and I'm saying it slowly, clearly and without an accent. Also, today, they are making me hold and hanging up the phone after a few minutes. Basically worse than worthless since it is a complete waste of my time. So far, it is the best company I've dealt with though, because on occasion, there are polite people who actually answer the phone and do know what's going on. Recently, I upgraded to 800 mbps for 50 bucks ($64 after fees and taxes) a month, which would be amazing if it actually worked and people were able to answer the phone to me up to speed with the upgrade, no pun intended. read more

Astound bought out WOW a few years back and let me just begin by saying STEER CLEAR of this company. Internet connection is absolutely garbage and will go in and out every day making you want to throw your modem at the wall. Customer service calls or text are over an hour long to speak to an agent which just further aggravates the issue. 0/10 would not recommend to anyone. read more

**UPDATE 8/31** The only email/notification that I have received from RCN/Astound is yet another notification for a bill. I was told to yet again go in and show them the receipt that I returned my equipment. THE RECECIPT THAT THEY GAVE ME WHEN I RETURNED MY EQUIPMENT. I have called, they told me to show them the receipt in person. I asked about my case number, they said it was open. I had to chat on Facebook and they are supposedly going to "escalate" my case. Poor provider service - poor customer service. **UPDATE 7/29** I received and email stating that I still had a balance due. I called to inquire about it and it was regarding unreturned equipment. I no longer have the equipment! I returned the router in person and have the receipt. I've chatted online about this, I told the rep that I returned the equipment in person and I was told that they are not allowed to verify over the phone and I need to go to the location and verify the return in person. I went IN PERSON to return the equipment and was handed a receipt BY A PERSON. As stated, numerous times, I do not have any router by RCN/Astound. The quality of internet has gone done, I've opened numerous chats about this and there is still no resolution. I'm not paying this. Also - just for clarification - how do you private message when the company responds to your review on Google? _______________________________________________________________ 7/1/22 I cancelled Astound because after it bought out RCN, the service kept dropping. As someone who works from home, this is incredibly frustrating. I purchased the Ultra Gig internet since I do work from home, stream services as well as have several smart home products. The 5G kept dropping, and after a while I was paying over $100 for slow and disconnected service. I cancelled my wifi with Astound and now I'm dealing with "unreturned equipment" emails. I dropped off the equipment in person, I have the receipt and they're saying I still have equipment that isn't returned. My last service tech took my previous router, and now they're saying I still have it? Let's see if they try to charge me for that. read more

The reason why this company is called Astound is because of its astoundingly horrible service. I'm writing this review on behalf of a friend who has been a Wow/RCN/Astound customer for years. His phone, cable, and internet services were abruptly disconnected last week without notice, citing "old hardware" as the reason, despite the fact everything seemed to be working properly up to that moment. He wasn't home when a service person came to resolve the issue, and was then told the next time a person could come out is over three weeks away! So he is expected to be without phone/cable/internet for another three weeks? There must be one person in a van expected to service all Astound customers in the Chicago area. My friend is an elderly gentleman experiencing memory issues and we're trying to give him a few more comfortable months living in his home of 40+ years before transitioning him to an assisted care facility. He can't be tasked with remembering a new phone number. We're trying to transfer his phone service to another provider, but his phone must first be reactivated by Astound before his number can be transferred to another provider. And of course Astound won't reactivate the line because why would they want to lose a customer? Astound is a soulless and clueless company, lacking in both heart and brains. Other phone/cable companies also get a bad rap, but they're at least large and agile enough to handle customer concerns and make service calls within 24 hours. I expect there will be a bot response to this review with pre-packaged company jargon about how they don't want to lose a customer and to contact for further help, but I have little hope this situation will be resolved quickly. Save yourself the agony of dealing with Astound and just go with another phone/cable provider. read more

RCN used to be amazing and I've had them for over 10 years but the last few yrs were abysmal. The price kept going up and I owned my equipment and only had internet. The final straw for me was when my neighbor signed up and was paying 1/3 of the price. They do nothing for loyal customers. I switched to AT&T, it's $50/mo, setup was easy, and works great. The reason I wanted to write this review is to call out that I did receive a bill after I cancelled my account. Once chatting with them, they claim you are paying your statement with a lag. So I cancelled end of Jan but my 1/29 payment was for Jan service. When you look at the Dec statement though it shows Auto payment processed and the dates 1/1-1/31 so it is very confusing. Either way if you are reading this definitely recommend cancelling as soon as you get the itch to. I should've years ago but was too lazy. read more

I have spent over 12 hours of my own time dealing with RCN/Astound in the last 6 weeks, including 3 tech support visits and one no call/no show. Yesterday techs were here for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Imagine 2 men standing in your bedroom whispering while watching the RCN spinning wheels trying to pair your bedroom TV with the main Tivo box. So after they left, the internet went out. The 'supervisor' actually returned my call and said he would run tests and get back to me. That was yesterday afternoon.... This morning I have one bar of internet if I move more that 6-8 feet away from the modem. Imagine, the Chicago Trib will not load on my iPad if move more than 6 feet away. These people are completely incompetent. I'm no fan of Facebook but look at the online banter under the "Astound by RCN" page. I am embarrassed to admit I spend money with these people...oh but I have to because I live in a high rise with no choice. read more

I pay over $3600 per year for cable and Internet, and I have issues with a cable box that continuously causes problems. Techs come out, tap on the boxt, look at the connections and somehow get the box to transmit a signal, they refuse to replace the cable box. Each time a tech comes, they are contractors and not full time RCN employees. Plus certain channels, not hi-def have severe pixelation, you cannot view the program, for all the screen freezes, etc. Not a happy customer at this point. When you call you hang on for at least 20 to 40 minutes. I have written several letters to the local G.M. to no avail. read more

I've had Astound ever since they purchased WOW roughly 3 years ago. I've had a lot of problems with their service being consistent. Most recently, while things had been going well for a while, over the past month it's been slipping. Frequent outages and service disruptions. Calls to customer service typically resulted in a conversation about my router not being adequate and their ability to fix the problem for me if I simply agree to purchase or rent their router. Then in the last week, there have been large blocks of time when I haven't had any service. Calls to arrange service were cancelled at the last minute. I'm writing this at roughly 1:30am local time in Illinois and have to go into my office by 8:00am to give access to my equipment should they need it. This is after I made several arrangements to have technicians come out, one while I was there at my office. The technician was unable to read the name on the office door and missed that i was in the room next door.... Hard to miss, my name is on the door in big black letters. I'm beginning to think these guys are fired regardless how this call turns out. Seems as though I've had to take a position as an employee in order to get them to take my request seriously. I should be submitting them a bill for my time, let alone the amount of money I've lost because their service has been down. I'm not at all happy with this company and its people. read more

Astounding provides subpar internet connectivity which is not consistent. They do not care if you have been a loyal customer for years. They are unwilling to work with existing customers on better/preferred pricing. My bill increased ~50% since a year ago, while service reliability went down. I changed to XFINITY and am receiving much faster service than I ever did with WOW/RCN/ASTOUND. read more

I've been a customer for 7 hours since they transitioned from Wow...and have had 7 hours of outage. No communication on the switch and clearly the my spent all their money on the purchase and forgot to care about the customers. Wow was decently mediocre but a multi-day outage without any communication to customers? Way to ruin WOW, Astound/RCN. You've just proven you don't care about customers. Maybe it's time for another rebranding so you can once again try to hide from the terrible reviews. Unfortunately, your customers aren't stupid. Stop spending money on useless rebranding and pretend you care about your customers. read more

Astound - Chicago - Disappointment. - Internet Service Providers Near Me - Chicago, Illinois