Service so terrible it made me create a Yelp account.
My parents use their television service, but as I'm not a baby boomer, I have little interest in old media. Most people my age don't care about TV.
That being said, my parents have also had absolutely horrible service for television as well. Price hikes, forced hardware upgrades, losing channels. Paying more for less.
But as part of the internet generations(a millennial, we're old people, now). This is internet so disgustingly horrid it would make even the infamous Comcast blush. My choice of career is Twitch streamer and content creator, an increasingly common path. And I have to often go weeks without streaming and find ways to make offline content, because highest tier prices, which are just barely enough upload speed to be a streamer at all, are constantly going down.
The internet has gone down for me hundreds of times over the years. Either for as much as days at a time, or in multiple short bursts over hours. Usually, during streaming. Needless to say, it becomes absolutely impossible to even consider ever doing something like a subathon with an ISP as unreliable as this.
This is not a "my internet from my house" thing. I use Ethernet cables exclusively. I have to constantly unplug and replug my modem and router. Flushing DNS does nothing. Calling customer service, they simply ask you to do all of the obvious things like unplugging and replugging your modem. Which after having done for the umpteenth time to make them happy and move forward with the conversation, and time spend of doing everything else, they may deign to send out a technician. Of which will take multiple days usually for a technician to be available, and you have to be available to take a phone call, if you don't, they skip over you and you have to start the customer service process all over again from the beginning. So you'd better hope they call when you're available.
And this process, one of waiting and struggling to finally actually get a technician like you needed in the first place, has to be done multiple times per year. Sometimes multiple times per month. The internet they provide is simply not stable or reliable at all. But they will charge you top dollar for that privilege, with top plan internet required for bare minimum speeds from a decade ago.
And that's if you're lucky, if you complain to them about any of this, you may be told "take it or leave it" like my Dad was. Why would someone be told that when being charged an outrageous price for a horrible service? Because they are under no obligation to try. You get to pay medical bill prices for worthless internet, or have no internet at all. They care not. They are the only option, and they bank on that. Their strategy is for you to be defeated and desperate.
We've called every other potential ISP, ones that have advertised to us. Every possible alternative. Every single one has responded by saying "we're not yet available in your area". Which is unsatisfying. If you're ask further, and they're pressed on it, they'll tell you that it's illegal to sell in your residential district. Resort TV will say the same thing under the right circumstances. They are a monopoly.
They don't have business by offering anything decent, they have business by being the local internet mafia. They want you to eat garbage and like it. They're just as happy for you to fear them as like them. They're giving you an offer you can't refuse. If I don't yet make myself clear: they're bullies. There is no free market, no competition, no supply and demand. They win, and you lose.
This is a dirtbag dial up company in the Zoom call and Twitch stream era. And they strongarmed their way to being here.
It is downright evil and a failure of the system that they were not bankrupt long ago. read more
