Need a new ISP

[Morganism]

So, I had a conversation with the Cable company today that went something like this:

Me: Hello,I am unhappy with my service. When I started with your company in Jan. 2013, my bill was $29.99/month. Now it is $59.99 per month. Is there something you can do for me?

Company: No, go find something else.

That's the short version. The long version involved my being on the phone for an hour and half and hanging up very unhappy.

Therefore, I need a new source of internet. I very much like my high speed, and am willing to pay for it. I am not willing to have my bill go up 100% per year. Otherwise, cheap is good.

Suggestions?

[EschewObfuscation]

It is a widely accepted principle that you will have to switch ISPs every 2 years because of that. Isn't it great the market has been (mostly) collapsed into two providers? Thank the FCC for that one.

[Matthew Hart]

Call them back up and tell them you would like to cancel your service.  Most times that will get you transferred over to the customer retention department.  They have a lot more power than the customer service department you talked to earlier.  On the other hand, unless AT&T fiber is available for your house you should be prepared for disappointment.  

[EschewObfuscation]

Yes, that's pretty much your only negotiating tactic, but be prepared to hop over to the other half of the duopoly if necessary. They may smell a bluff.

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 8:46:20 PM UTC-5, Matthew Hart wrote:

Call them back up and tell them you would like to cancel your service....

[Morganism]

I told them I was going to cancel, and got through to retention. Retention told me that since I had gone from $29.99 to only $44.99 there was nothing they could do for me. $44.99 was also a discounted rate. If I had been paying $59.99 for over a year they could drop my rate to $39.99. I said as far as I was concerned, I had been paying the full rate since January of 2014, and I would be a happy customer to pay $39.99. He told me he couldn't do it. I guess I need to call AT&T. I was hoping for an alternative.

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 6:09:01 PM UTC-5, Morganism wrote:

K

[Frank Kallal]

Look Charter internet, as with all other Carriers is to Offer you a very cheap Rate for the First year... You'll get he same with AT&T and others.  then after the First year it goes to standard Rack rates.  that is just the way it works.  If you are willing to sign a Contract it can be longer, but without it's 6 months to a year Tops.

They all avoid Raising rates as much as they can, because Competition is fierce and Churn is a Very high number they want to avoid.

to get a "New User special" you have to not have had the service for more than 6 months, and they will check, Even in Retention.  Sometime Retention can save you alittle off Rack rates, but they generally can't get you onto new user rates without something Going drastically wrong in your Service history.  There can be exceptions, but this is the general Rule

So the Thing is you get what you pay for.  If you like the charter service Suck it up and Pay for it.  If you want to try someone else, your Choice are limited, and none of them Come anywhere near Charter Bandwidth, but they are out there.

Your best Non-charter bet is if you can get Uverse with AT&T,  as that will generally give you the Highest non-charter speeds.

To Qualify my statements, I worked for Charter as a Tier 2 / Tier 3 HSI service tech for 5 years.

Fk

K

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Arch Reactor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to arch-reactor...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to arch-r...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/arch-reactor/06df515c-2fd4-4126-8d33-bd305ffa5338%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[EschewObfuscation]

Well, we once had a lot of competing ISPs, but some regulatory decisions in DC ended that era, so we're now down to basically two. Despite having hundreds of thousands of miles of dark fiber sitting idle in the ground, not used or leased out to anyone. Despite this situation, there remain a few smaller ISPs hanging in there, but they tend to cater to niche, business markets and cost a lot more than uverse or charter. (BTW, people don't realize that fine print in the uverse paperwork imposes a monthly traffic cap far less than what plain dsl can do if kept busy.) But with only two main players in the market, expect more of that stuff in future.

This link shows some interesting effects of the last couple decades of US policy decisions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds

[Frank Kallal]

Other than Dial-up ISP's..  What ISP's died because DC hated them?

On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 5:27 AM, EschewObfuscation <google...@mailfilter.33mail.com> wrote:

Well, we once had a lot of competing ISPs, but some regulatory decisions in DC ended that era, so we're now down to basically two. Despite having hundreds of thousands of miles of dark fiber sitting idle in the ground, not used or leased out to anyone. Despite this situation, there remain a few smaller ISPs hanging in there, but they tend to cater to niche, business markets and cost a lot more than uverse or charter. (BTW, people don't realize that fine print in the uverse paperwork imposes a monthly traffic cap far less than what plain dsl can do if kept busy.) But with only two main players in the market, expect more of that stuff in future.

This link shows some interesting effects of the last couple decades of US policy decisions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Arch Reactor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to arch-reactor...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to arch-r...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/arch-reactor/8716b683-73b5-43e1-988c-0e35d4811e67%40googlegroups.com.

[EschewObfuscation]

Pretty much every ISP offering dsl. Best known example was DirecTv DSL. Remember the commercials "you have reached the end of the internet. Go back. Now." ?

DC issued a ruling that the wholesale rates the telco can charge other ISPs for raw bandwidth can exceed the price the telco charges retail customers for their full service packages. Within days of that ruling, DirecTv sent out a notice they were getting out of the business. (I personally received one of those notices...30 days to make other arrangements.) Smaller operators packed up their tents over the next year or two. Wassname (Colin Powell's son) is the one who issued that ruling, justifying it by arguing the telco was lobbying for even more. IMO it was actually done specifically to condense the ISP business. Quid pro quo for warrantless wiretap access, which was made retroactively legal some years later. It's easier to get cozy arrangements like that with one or two big corps than hundreds of little ones, some of whom believe in the constitution. Especially when it's part of the deal that handed them the market in the first place.

A smaller, local example was an outfit called ValueNet, the ISP I jumped to after DirecTv shut down. Run by a Taiwan national with a rather pugnacious attitude about the 4th amendment. (He approved of it.) One day he just vanished. The business was solid, had a customer base, there was enough money in the bank that the employees were paid for several months, but when it eventually ran out, they finally wandered off. But nobody had a clue what happened to the boss, and no cops came around investigating their missing person reports. I think the feds approached him for (illegal) access, he told em where to go, they yanked his visa and stuffed him on a plane. That corporate collapse wasn't driven by the pricing inversion, but illustrates impact of the warrantless wiretapping program which (IMO) was the motivation for that pricing inversion ruling.

DC didn't hate small ISPs, it just didn't care about them one way or the other, and it wanted something. They were in the way, they were crushed. Nothing personal.

[Chris Weiss]

in case you missed it, ATT just raised rates too, and is still slower
than Charter. $60/month for 100Mbit is really a hell of a value in
this area.

[EschewObfuscation]

I'm inclined to agree, on the face of it. Do you happen to know the fine print parameters: data cap, latency, latency variability of the duopoly? (I don't, with the exception of the 250 gb cap on uverse.)