I never thought anyone could beat the nightmare service of Time Warner (now Spectrum), who we left for WOWs greener shores about 6 years ago, the day they became available in our area, finally breaking the monopoly Spectrum held. WOW was pretty solid - not as big as a Spectrum, so less money in advertising, but the service was always good and they were always quick to fix an issue.
Fast forward to 2021, when Breezeline took over WOW. The same day we were transferred from WOW to Breezeline, our WiFi completely disappeared. With WOW, we had WiFi in our entire (very small) cottage, and the whole stretch of our property. With Breezeline, there was no WiFi signal, unless you stood in front of the router, which kind of defeats the purpose of WiFi, no? Our speeds dropped dramatically - we have a 1000 mbps plan bc I work from home. We went from an average of 800 Mbps Down/500 Mbps Up with WOW, to never more than 50 Mbps D/20 Mbps Up with Breezeline (& those were on good days). Then the dropping started - oh my god, every 15 minutes, we were down for 20 minutes.
We had changed NOTHING about our set up. Same equipment, same location. We went through the endless cycle of 2 hour hold times, only to get connected to an outsourced CSR who passed the buck- transitional hiccups, give us 2 weeks, call back if it's not improved. Two weeks later, no improvement, but they declined to send a tech out bc they said it was still about transitional hiccups. Finally, after two months of insanity, they promised to escalate the tech ticket and have someone out that day at 4pm. I cancelled my plans for the evening, waited for the rep to call when they were close, and... Crickets. He showed up three weeks later, on a completely different day of the week than originally scheduled, at a completely different time.
Several techs later, and we're variously told it's transitional hiccups (6 MONTHS later?!), that some IP addresses didn't transfer properly and that now they fixed it (nope), that my wiring must be bad (it's perfectly fine, but we paid $250 for an electrician to tell us that- thanks Breezeline), my equipment should really be upgraded to their equipment (thanks, my gateway is on their approved list, cost 3x more than the shitty one they want to lease me, and I'm not paying $20 a month in perpetuity for their stupid Eero knock off, when I could buy it once and be done). So no resolution.
In case the appalling service isn't enough, I should mention that they lost the WOW emails of thousands of customers in what was supposed to be a seamless transition where we just switched the domain name to Breezelines. I didn't even bother, but lots of neighbours said that the new email addresses weren't reliable either. Breezeline also promised not to change pricing until at least autumn- but jacked up rates within the first 30 days. We also couldn't pay the damn bill- every month we had to have some CSR reset the info, bc their system couldn't handle the WOW info we were supposed to be able to log in with. Every MONTH. It's been almost a year and a half, and I still have to either call them to pay (a guaranteed 3 hour affair with hold times), or try to reset it manually online, which involves 20 minutes of sorcery and at least 2 text verifications.
You're probably wondering why I didn't change providers? I would, but aside from Spectrum, Breezeline is our only option - and Spectrum's customer service single-handedly debunked the infinite monkey theorem last time we had them as providers. But we're starting to soften. Interestingly, Breezeline's whole hokey schtick is that they bring internet to underserved communaties without internet service. Which makes for a rather convenient customer base, since they have no one else to switch to. For the first month Breezeline replaced WOW in my neighboring town, customers went literal weeks without internet, phone, or cable, bc WOW admitted they weren't ready for the massive increase in customer base.
If you have other options, jump ship. If you don't, get an Eero. We did in a last ditch effort to make the WiFi work again (after trying range extenders and boosters), and it has helped. Speeds are better, dropping has decreased, and WiFi is almost as broad range as it was before. These are typically not things Eero should do- at best, it's designed to improve dead zones, which we never had until Breezeline. Why Eero has improved their service, I don't know, bc nothing has changed about the set up. But if you have no other options, it might save you some of your sanity to get one. We spent about $160 on ours bc we wanted two Eero routers and the latest model, but you can buy refurbished or older generations for about $40-60, and just add the beacons if you don't need the extra ethernet jacks that come on the Eero routers.
I've included a screenshot of a speed test from the Breezeline website today. This is what a 1000 Mbps plan looks like with Breezeline. read more
