After living with unbearable costs with Comcast for a couple years, I decided to quit TV and internet for awhile. No TV is fine, but no internet is not fine. I use it a lot for work and entertainment. So after going internetless for 3 months, I signed up for Qwest/CL. I had USI at my gallery that did not work out at all. USI was awful. So I figured anything would be better.
I was wrong. Their customer service is great, don't get me wrong. The price? A lot better than Comcast ($35 a month). The CS people always try and get you to buy services, like phone and dish service. OK really? I haven't had a real phone since I moved out of my parents house in high school.
I become best friends with whomever I'm talking to, because I have to call all the time, and they take forever to answer simple questions. For instance, upon living with horrible download speeds (I could barely clear .5mps download speeds...what is this? !999?) I called and got some guy in Idaho. He proceeded to go on and on about how their network is fine, it's the wireless that is bad, and that they 'oversold' in our area, so from 5-12 every night the network is 'congested.'
I headed to Best Buy and purchased a netgear modem for $140, that supposedly will be better for streaming and such. In order to set up the new modem, I needed my DSL username and password. I couldn't look it up online because I had no internet. I called and after being transferred to 3 different people who all needed my same information (address, phone, last 4 of ss...) I finally got a tech...pretending to be American just like in Outsourced...who blessed me with the simple information I needed. It took 30 minutes.
Finally got the new modem setup, and am on the net now, but very sporadically. It keeps dropping every few minutes, making it impossible to use the net. Next step? Cancelling. But I can't do it until Monday.
I feel for us here in the Twin Cities. We get screwed by a monopoly at the airport, making our airfare 2x higher than anywhere else in the country, and we are now getting screwed by an internet monopoly. You have to choose between paying out the butt for Comcast, or try and save money but have useless internet service with USI and CL. First world problems, to be sure, but annoying none the less.
*Edit: After having had them now for a year, I hate them more every day. I was coming here to write another bad review and forgot about this one I already wrote! Since May, every month they have been claiming I don't pay my bill on time and shut off the service, about a week before the bill is due. Then they charge $25 to reinstate service. Every month I spend hours on the phone trying to resolve this. This month, I tried paying online proactively. My invoice said I owed $112 (WHAT?), but directly under it, it said I had a 0 balance, so I was not able to pay online. I called CS, 3 separate times, and every idiot I talked to said I owed no money. THEN today, I get an email saying my bill is higher because of my 'suspended and reinstated service'! WHAT?? I chatted online with this fella and he couldn't do anything other than retract the $25 fee. OMG no one knows what the hell is happening over there. I hate them so much. USI is installing fiber on my block, and I CAN'T WAIT to drop these fools. I edited their cover FaceBook page for them too...http://i.imgur.com/lqVK5iH.jpg read more