I recently moved to Georgetown. Unfortunately, Spectrum doesn't serve the area east of the university, so I had to sign up for Suddenlink.
I called to verify that my area was covered, and that I could get the services needed: Cable TV and internet.
Their sales people push some magic "Altice ONE!!!11!" box. They don't know if you can connect an ethernet cable to it, and wave off any concerns that you might want to wire a desktop and other devices to it. Pshaw! No one uses WIRED ethernet these days! Everyone uses WiFi!
Yeah, but, streaming Netflix/Amazon, desktops that don't have WiFi adapters, an Xbox, all of that's gonna swamp out the channel, and I have 5 neighbors...
It'll be fine!
Um, I'm a wireless engineer, and, no, it won't. I can tell already that my neighbors are saturating the spectrum.
Well, we don't do wired ethernet, so, WiFi it is! Now, do you want the super channel package, or the sports monster package? Telephone? Security Cameras?
A call to their pre-sales tech support yielded some better results. They do have cable modems, and they support CableCard (Tivo). They don't provide a service to wire your house for ethernet, but if you can manage that on your own, fine.
Their office is off of Williams drive. Hint: It's hidden behind the McDonald's. Get a sandwich and a drink, you're gonna be there a long while. With 5 people in front of me, and 3 customer service reps (each with a customer), it was a 90 minute wait before I sat with someone. Most of the people were leaving the office very frustrated, and with their issue not fixed.
When I finally sat with a rep, I was told, again, that it's the all-in-one Altice ONE!1!! box, or nothing, and too bad if that's not convenient for you. After trying to configure a CableCard on the account, which is somehow not compatible with Altice ONE!!!11!!, she relented and gave me what I asked for: A high def tuner box, a cable card, and a cable modem. That process took nearly 45 minutes.
The cable modem worked, pretty quickly, but the hi-def tuner did not, and neither did the CableCard.
Calling into their tech support is a nightmare. You can plan on spending 10 minutes or more while their automated tech support "Sends a signal to your box", then makes you wait, continually prompting you to admit your issue is fixed, before a really condescending sequence of "We need to reset the box." wait. "We'll try and do it remotely." wait. "Press star if it's ok to reset your box." wait. "ok, this may take a few minutes." Wait some more, and then, the automated time-waster admits that it couldn't accomplish that task, and then, over a few minutes, carefully guides you through the apparently brain-surgery level task of unplugging a power cord and plugging it back in.
...and waiting some more, before it gets around to transferring you to someone completely clueless, and not able to do anything more than what the automated system attempted to do. More time wasted unplugging and rebooting and resetting and re-signalling, before offering an appointment for someone to come out.
... Sometime between 8 am and next Thursday. They are not on time, and blew their 4 hour service window by an hour before getting the "Hey, the tech is on his way!" call. "He'll be there in the next 20 minutes" actually means he'll be there in 90 minutes. However, they seemed to be a little more technically adept than their call center staff.
The Tivo never registered the card properly. Went through the whole insulting process to unplug, reboot, re-register everything, only to spend another 90 minutes on the phone with someone who barely speaks English, and has no knowledge of cablecards and/or Tivos.
A week later, and the hi-def tuner stops getting channels. Or, we notice it a week later, because we watch most TV via streaming (Netflix/Prime).
We don't call, for a week, because it's so much hell to deal with their support. When I finally do call, the person has no idea what a cable card is, and keeps trying to replace the cable MODEM, which is the only service that I'm paying for that *is* working. She can't look up my call history, nor my equipment. It's another half hour of frustration before I tell her that she needs to send a tech out to troubleshoot.
Now I know why so many of my neighbor's houses have a DISH antenna on them. From my friends' experience, I know that Dish sucks, but for most of them, it was that or nothing. How bad does the local cable have to be to warrant that kind of take rate in a neighborhood?
If there were any other service in my neighborhood, I'd have told SuddenStink / Altice goodbye, or never signed with them in the first place. Their support and customer service are absolutely horrible, on a level of old Southwestern Bell's arrogance and incompetence.
FWIW: The promised "gift card" has never materialized, but at this point, they should cash it in themselves and buy their tech support staff a clue. read more