Call them and complain. Demand a refund, and if they don't provide it, report them to the FTC. That's the advice I got from a charter cable technician after he replaced all the cable wiring in my house and my Internet speeds were slower when he finished. The cable company was oversubscribed at the node and by the time the rewire was done the evening Netflix crunch had started.
Ask to speak to a manager or you're going to cancel your service. Then explain the issue to the manager. Make sure the manager understands failure to fix the problem will result in termination of your service. Also make sure to ask for their name or extension in case no progress is made.
If no progress is made - call a competitor. Explain your scenario and see if they'll:
a) Pay to terminate your contract (if you're on one), usually in the form of a credit onto your account and b) free installation (usually a given anyways)
Then call the manager back (this is why you asked for their name/extension) and cancel your service. Switch to the other provider.
I've gone from getting 20mbps and paying for 50mbps to getting 140mbps and paying for 50mbps. Without switching providers.
If switching providers doesn't sound nice (because paying for a tv/net/phone bundle or something) don't worry. They typically cave in after you threaten to leave and you can skip the whole "call a competitor" backup plan and you don't actually have to cancel if the plan fails. But it sure helps you sound more authentic when you actually consider cancelling and take appropriate action as if you were going to cancel.
This can also be used to get your phone upgrade earlier than your contract states. You just have to sound authentic about cancelling their service. A similar tactic can be used against branched/franchised entities by threatening to call corporate.
The managers will typically bend over backwards to retain you as a customer. Especially if you have history with them. No way in hell they want to lose a customer of the past 4-5 years because of some internet speed issues. They'll usually bump you up an entire tier without charge (and keep an eye on any price increase after 6/12 months...then call them out on it if it occurs).
Unfortunately I have a lot of experience in this area. As I refuse to let a company take advantage of me simply because others are complacent with letting the company take advantage of them.
Threaten to file a complaint to the FTC, as previously mentioned.
In general there is always someone you can complain to.
Also often times there are local mom&pop places that are resellers and pay to piggyback on the line. Except they tend to actually provide the advertised speeds. Only problem is they also tend to be a bit more expensive. Although if you only have the one provider, I don't know if the resellers are even a thing...
One of their employees spit on me once. They never acknowledged it.
They promised me free service for a year (separate issue). Never applied it.
I mentioned I was a shareholder to try to up the game. Nothing.
Service is quite stable, though, so I'm not too pissy. Oddly enough, I live in Minnesota, and we have three — count them THREE residential gigabit providers...
Claiming you're a shareholder or "know people" is weak man. You wouldn't be talking to the customer service drone if you had other avenues, and they know this. If anything it'll make them want to spite you even more.
It's not enough that Comcast has provisioned your cable modem to give you 250 mbps down. In order for you to get that performance, you need the entire end-to-end path to support it. Much of which is not under Comcast's control.
On the flip side, if I have a router (in this case Comcast's Business Class modem + pfSense with GigE ports, and a CPU load of under 10%), and I'm connecting to comcast.speedtest.net and my 150mbps connection is only getting 80mbps... that -is- absolutely under their control.
I have moved on from Comcast almost an year ago and I couldn't have been happier to with my current ISP, frontier. The pain I endured while paying Comcast my top dollars make me wish that they face a similar demise like Blockbuster, B&N and others.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] threadIf no progress is made - call a competitor. Explain your scenario and see if they'll:
a) Pay to terminate your contract (if you're on one), usually in the form of a credit onto your account and b) free installation (usually a given anyways)
Then call the manager back (this is why you asked for their name/extension) and cancel your service. Switch to the other provider.
I've gone from getting 20mbps and paying for 50mbps to getting 140mbps and paying for 50mbps. Without switching providers.
If switching providers doesn't sound nice (because paying for a tv/net/phone bundle or something) don't worry. They typically cave in after you threaten to leave and you can skip the whole "call a competitor" backup plan and you don't actually have to cancel if the plan fails. But it sure helps you sound more authentic when you actually consider cancelling and take appropriate action as if you were going to cancel.
This can also be used to get your phone upgrade earlier than your contract states. You just have to sound authentic about cancelling their service. A similar tactic can be used against branched/franchised entities by threatening to call corporate.
The managers will typically bend over backwards to retain you as a customer. Especially if you have history with them. No way in hell they want to lose a customer of the past 4-5 years because of some internet speed issues. They'll usually bump you up an entire tier without charge (and keep an eye on any price increase after 6/12 months...then call them out on it if it occurs).
Unfortunately I have a lot of experience in this area. As I refuse to let a company take advantage of me simply because others are complacent with letting the company take advantage of them.
A lot of us don't.
In general there is always someone you can complain to.
Also often times there are local mom&pop places that are resellers and pay to piggyback on the line. Except they tend to actually provide the advertised speeds. Only problem is they also tend to be a bit more expensive. Although if you only have the one provider, I don't know if the resellers are even a thing...
They promised me free service for a year (separate issue). Never applied it.
I mentioned I was a shareholder to try to up the game. Nothing.
Service is quite stable, though, so I'm not too pissy. Oddly enough, I live in Minnesota, and we have three — count them THREE residential gigabit providers...
On the flip side, if I have a router (in this case Comcast's Business Class modem + pfSense with GigE ports, and a CPU load of under 10%), and I'm connecting to comcast.speedtest.net and my 150mbps connection is only getting 80mbps... that -is- absolutely under their control.