I guess I should first say, I am posting this tethered to my cell phone, as my previous ISP and I have had a disagreement with what constitutes 'service'.
Now, humorously, the ISP I just parted ways with actually looks really good on paper. They offer 30 down/3 up service, albeit at $80 a month (85 if you lease a modem). Having said that, this is actually the second time I have cancelled my service with them.
Let's travel back in time a couple years. Around 2007 or so, I moved near where I am now and found out the area was serviced by Charter Communications instead of Time Warner, which Charlotte has. Now, I have heard complaints about Time Warner's service in Charlotte, but more or less they have treated me ok, my needs aren't that extreme. Anyhow, Charter comes and hooks up our 10meg by 768k service or whatever the default speed was and we go merrily on our way. Except between 5PM and 10PM, when I found myself either with extremely slow speed (less than one meg down) or no service at all, the modem sitting there blinking it's ready light at me.
I call in and they come check out my line, and tell me how everything is great, but of course it is, they come at 8AM. I am not having issues at 8AM. Fast forward 6 months and about 8 service calls later. They are basically refusing to come to my house unless I agree to pay the 'wiring maintenance fee' or some silliness. I agree to pay the fee if they will actually fix my issue. By some act of the Newborn Baby Jesus, they actually agree to come out after 5PM to see what I see. They even send a specialist. He basically takes a reading and within 5 minutes tells me that the issue amounts to over sateration of the nodes that service my area.
Nice, you would think someone could have told me that 6 months and 8 visits ago, instead of blaming me the whole time and telling me I just can't configure my router/modem/computer/whatever. Even better, there were currently no plans to upgrade said nodes, so there was no fix in site.
I called ATT the next day and set up service, cancelling my Charter the day it got hooked up. The problem? At the time, the only service you could get from ATT without also paying for a home phone line was something silly like 768k down/128k up. I struggled along with that as long as I could, but ended up coming to the realization that I had no choice. I had to go back to Charter.
So, I set up the install and get Charter installed again. I pay extra to get 30 down/3 up hopeing that would mean I could at least stay connected to the internet during the peak times. More or less it worked, so I went on for the next couple of years rewarding Charter for their poor service, not only by being a customer, but by paying extra to do so.
The second issue is why I am where I am now. Fortunantly for me, ATT now offers all of their internet speeds whether you buy phone service as well or not, the unfortunant piece is DSL is so rediculously slow compared to what you can get from cable.
But back to why I am tethered to my cellphone. I called Charter for service, my $80 a month 30meg by 3meg line is behaving worse than usual. I haven't gotten a down speed higher than 3.5meg in about 3 days, and pulling up a typical site would sometimes take 30-45 seconds, so there was some serious packet loss going on. The tech comes out and tells me a recent storm caused some issues and I could expect service to be restored to normal in a couple weeks. Really? Then he went so far as to tell me 'if you are lucky and fixing something else fixes your issue, it might be back in as soon as a week!'
Now, I could see if this was 1990 or so, but we live in the future. We work from home, we bank from home, the internet isn't really a luxury item to most people anymore. You don't have your internet and you start to struggle. I called Charter to ask to talk to a supervisor and was placed on hold, and shortly after that, straight out hung up on. This humorously happened four times. Four times I asked to talk to a supervisor and four times I was humg up on. Do you realize the ramifications of that? That would make it seem as though they are actually training people to do that, it couldn't have been a fluke at those odds. I went online and did the live chat. I asked the tech what my options were to escalate a customer service issue and was told there was no path to do that, there was noone to call, noone to contact.
The next day, my internet went out totally. I called back in, and I am sure by this time they have enough notes in my account that noone really wants to talk to me. I ask to have a technician sent out as I no longer have service at all and I want someone out the next day (I called on a Friday). The technician assures me I will have someone out between 9 and 11 am. Things are looking up, maybe I can at least have internet again. I get up semi excited the next day and wait around. And wait. And wait. I call in at 10:50 as their service said I would get a call 30 minutes before their arrival, and 11:00 minus 10:50 is less than 30 minutes.
The nice operator on the line then drops the final bomb. Oh, your service isn't set up for today, it is set up for Monday.
Shortly after that I was talking to the insistant lady in the cancellation department, who was valiantly trying to pitch me a story I didn't want to hear. I just wanted my service cancelled so I could move on.
I sure hope, as I sit here tied to cellphone that ATT loves me more than Charter does. Tell me again why we sell off areas to ISPs and don't let any competition in? It sure isn't in an attempt to improve the customer's experience...
<edit>Humourously, I called back in on 8-2 (I cancelled on 7-24) because I couldn't see any indication on my account management that I had cancelled, and the nice lady said my account wasn't cancelled and that the agent I talked to on the 24th reported that she had 'lost the call' with me. A good indicator that not giving them my business anymore was the right move. Too bad there really aren't any other options.</edit>