Open Letter to Cable One
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Dear Cable One,
I was blazing mad the first time I subscribed to your Internet service and discovered how long it took before regular service was available. In the end it turned out to be impossible to connect from my end; an employee at your end had to rig things up so that the registration was eventually completed (your online registration page was a bad joke!). I was so riled at this unprofessionalism that I immediately canceled the service! Since Qwest in my area can only offer DSL, or low-speed Internet, I was eventually forced to come crawling back, albeit reluctantly, to Cable One.
In the meantime a neighbor told me that he had had the same difficulty when he first signed up to Internet/cable TV with Cable One, and went on to assure me that once the connection was established, Cable One was a solid and reliable ISP (Internet Service Provider), with practically no interruptions in service.
If only it were so! I experience a network disturbance several times a day, every day! By disturbance I mean that the connection is suddenly lost. Just up and lost!! I have never in all my life experienced so much ineptness and unprofessionalism as I have with Cable One - for a comparison one would have to look to Africa, or to certain undeveloped pockets of South America!
It bugs me further that you at Cable One do nothing to alert users of these disturbances - and surely you can observe them, otherwise Cable One is even more amateurish than I imagine it to be! I am therefore thinking of contacting the FCC with a complaint to the effect that Cable One is a bald-faced rip-off, that the company is amateurish and incapable of providing stable Internet service, and that the FCC should therefore take immediate steps to ensure either that Cable One lives up to its public-service obligations or be required to relinquish its Internet and cable TV services in the affected areas (my area is Idaho Falls, Idaho) to a competitor who is deemed capable by the FCC of providing professional service to the public (Qwest being the obvious alternative).
I do not know whether the problem is confined to a very local portion of Idaho Falls, or whether it includes the entire city, the entire area, or perhaps all of Eastern Idaho if not all of the network of Internet and TV cables under the ownership/supervision of Cable One. In the meantime I intend to try and locate blog sites where other Cable One users may be experiencing the same problem and who each may be under the mistaken impression that their respective problem is a strictly localized phenomenon. I hope to thus encourage every disgruntled Cable One user to come to the fore and, realizing that they are not alone with the problem, take action in the form of an official complaint to the FCC in the matter, just as I myself intend to do.
I could be wrong, but I believe in my bones that the FCC will agree with me that the public need not accept third-rate service from any “utility” - public or private - and that in the special case of ISPs, where only a limited number of such service licenses are issued, there rests a particularly heavy burden of responsibility on the ISP to live up to its public-service obligations, since disenchanted users of the service may not have the option of simply going elsewhere (in other words, this is a regulated industry).
Respectfully,
Walter Grundon
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Comments
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0 
0 Wow! I guess I feel lucky. After two years of service with Cable-One, I haven’t had any problems to speak of.
Also, as someone who has dealt with the FCC for over 15 years, as a radio station manager, I can almost guarantee that your complaint won’t be regarded as actionable. You have to have concrete, verifiable evidence of wrong-doing. Poor customer service doesn’t cut it.
What part of IF do you live in? Let’s explore the geographical angle. I live in the city limits on the SE side of town. Anybody else with significant problems, also indicate where you live. There just might be a connection…
Another aspect may have to do with your level of service. For instance, I have the “small business” package. Are they perhaps dissing their “basic” subscribers in favor of the more expensive accounts? If so, that’s no way to run a railroad.
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0 0 I’ve been using CableOne for about a year and a half now and have had no problems whatsoever with either the cable or my highspeed internet service. I’m with Ace on this one…..it could be your location.
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0 0 I have been using Cableone high speed internet since before Cableone bought the regional cable companies, back in the AT&T days. It was roughly 3 months after Pocatello received cable internet that I signed up. I live in Idaho Falls once again and my experience has been awesome. Sure, there have been days where service was disrupted, but Cableone has usually let me know when this would happen. Hang in there Walter, if you are living in a relatively new neighborhood, your disruption could be just a side effect of adding new nodes to the hub in your area.
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0 0 i also have never had problems with Cableone, used them also since it was AT&T providing broadband, and only a few minor bumps in the road along the way.
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0 0 I use CableOne for internet and have had few problems since the first day when I did have great problems getting connected. Since then its been smooth sailing.
I do feel they are overpriced on internet and especially overpriced on their television packages where we get a bunch of garbage channels that I never watch. But Tetonwireless is utterly unreliable and has horrible internet service that only works sporadically. Microserv and Keyon can’t get signals to my house. And I don’t have a landline so Qwest isn’t an option. Thus its CableOne or nothing for me.
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0 0 I too have had nothing but great internet service through Cable One. I miss my Directv, but I felt the cable and internet package through Cable One was the best way to go. Plus I enjoy having the local channels available.
Vote:
0 0 oh yes, directv still does not offer local channels, despite promising them for about five years now.
I go with keyon, but have been pretty bummed with their service the last several months. It’s cheap, but who cares about price if I have to reboot the connection 10 times a day?
We canceled our Dish a few months ago, summer tv stinks anyways, but we may sign up with cableone for a package anyways.
Has anyone used cableone’s new phone service? It is just a VOIP, right? Any good?
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0 0 We originally wanted Teton Wireless. When their tech came out to the house and got up on the roof, he said the reception wouldn’t be real good. If we wanted he could hook it up anyway and see what we get. Otherwise, he suggested Cable One. I was impressed with his honesty.
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0 0 I have no real complaints about their high speed internet. I think I must be on a hub by myself, because I’ve clocked my download speeds at over 2MB/s and never below 1MB/s. Upload has been in the 100-300k range.
CableOne has been horrible for digital cable, however. I have never heard of a company that advertises “digital cable” and then brings you about 20 crappy channels that are digital, while the ones you want are grainy converted analog signals. In most places, digital means ALL digital. And only 6 HD channels? They have been promising more for about a year, but I’m not paying for false promises.
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0 0 Digital doesn’t mean “High Defintion”. Cable One only offers 8 channels in HiDef. They claim to have more HD channels than satellite, but that’s not true.
Regardless, I’ve never had a problem with the reception from Cable One. Granted I don’t have an HDTV yet, but it’s not that big a deal to me. I’m not that interested in seeing the individual nose hairs of a particular actor or news reporter at this time. I’ve seen HD in action and the Discovery Ch is great in HiDef, but at the moment I really don’t watch enough tv to warrant spending the extra money.
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0 0 As I understand it, most carriers only carry a handful of HD channels. There’s actually a hole in the market for HD content right now.
It’s even a new business area, could be a gold rush in the next few years, independently producing HD video content and selling them to the big HD networks. The Lab with Leo Laporte was fashioned in that manner, because he saw the dearth of HD programming.
I’ve had an awesome idea for HD content, but the consumer-grade HD camcorders are not up to par yet for producing the quality you need to sell.
Are there any small companies in Idaho that have professional or at least pro-summer HD equipment?
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0 0 Have you contacted them for repair? It may be an issue isolated to you that they could correct were they notified of it.
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0 0 I for one have had CableONE for going on 6 years now. And I cannot say that I have never had any problems as far as the internet goes… But I can say that every time I have called them with problem they tell me if it’s an outage or if it’s something close to my house. And most of the time it is something around my house. Be it a bad splitter or squirrels chewing a wire. No matter what it is they always fix it in a timely manner.
I had a buddy that was kind of doing the same thing you are and just complain and talk about how horrible the service was for how much he pays. After about a week of him complaining I asked him if he has even called them to see what the problem was. He firmly stated he tried once and after waiting on hold for about 2 minutes he hung up. Needless to say once he actually contacted them and they knew there was a problem they fixed it. And he has had no issues since.
So my point is right along with what Duckie stated. Have you even bothered to tell them you are having problems? They do not know if you are having localized problems unless you tell them.
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0 0 I’ve been with Cable One for over three years now and I had the same problems the first few months. I had techs out to the house at least 6 or 7 times, each one telling me everything inside the house was fine. I was directed to call the internet customer service line. What a joke. Some kid reading from a script that won’t listen to the fact that my computer setup is NOT the problem. I then went down to the local office in person and asked to see the service supervisor. I informed him of all the trouble I was having and that numerous techs had failed to find the trouble. I discovered they keep NO troubleshooting logs and the techs never file any sort of report on what was actually done. It’s no wonder they seem so clueless at times - they are! I finally convinced them to do a line check in my neighborhood. They sent out their echo tester unit and quickly found the trouble a few blocks from my house. Since then I’ve been up to max speed most of the time with very few service interruptions.
If you’re still having problems, speak to the supervisor. It’s the only way to make any progress with their amateurish way of doing business. They really need to get up to speed with proper record keeping. There’s no excuse for this kind of runaround. They waste far too much time chasing the same problems repeatedly because they don’t talk to each other or keep logs.
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0 0 I just got notice that Cable One is raising my internet bill a few dollars a month. While the internet service I get from there is good I don’t feel its worth how much more it costs than what I’ve seen others get from Microserv and such. Unfortunately because of where I live I’m captive to Cable One because its the only high speed available to me without a phone line.
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0 0 Guest, how long have you been with CableOne? Or more importantly, how long have you had internet service with them? The same thing happened to me, but there is a reason behind it. When you first sign up for internet access with CableOne, they give you a special price for the first 6 months. After that 6 months is up, the price goes up a few bucks to their regular price. And what many people don’t know is, the download speed goes up at that time as well. (that is if you purchased the 1MB speed) After 6 months, your speed also increased to 1.5MB, so it kind of averages out I think.
Plus I still think CableOne offers the best internet service around here. It may not be the cheapest, but it’s been the most reliable and the most consistant. (at least for me it has) Until more competition is available in the high speed internet market, I don’t see them changing their rates anytime soon. Personally, I think their prices are pretty close to the norm with that of services offered around the country. Of course it will be slightly cheaper in larger cities, but for Idaho Falls, you can’t beat it.
Plus, they make it affordable for almost everyone by offering different speeds at different prices.
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0 0 Cableone is doubling their speeds thus the few dollars bill increase, dont belive me ask them yourself. In the process of increasing right now
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0 0 I’ve had Cableone for years so the increase isn’t the six month thing.
And increased speed? Whoop de doo. Its more than fast enough as is for what I use it for. Heck, if it was half as slow as it is it would still be fast enough. I’d rather keep the extra few bucks.
To me this is just another cable one gouging like when they raised cable bills a few dollars a month for the privilege of getting some new spanish channels (I don’t speak spanish)and some home shopping channels (I don’t shop via TV).
And CableOne won’t reduce your speed to save you money. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’m on a bundle deal with cable and internet combined. It gives me the faster option on internet and basic cable and is cheaper than if they were seperate. I’ve tried several times to get the lesser internet speed in the bundle to save a few dollars and they won’t do it.
If I had other options I’d drop CableOne in a second. The service is fine, I can’t complain about that. Its just extremely overpriced for the value. But I’m a cell phone only person so any phone line options are out and the wireless companies around IF can’t get a signal to my house (there seems to be a black hole in my part of town as even cellular companies struggle here).
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0 0 Yes cable one does suck, mainly becuase its open network witch you SHARE your connection with multipal other people in your neihbor hood. Leaving you open to NUMEROUS Potentitonal problems and vurneralbilitys. I wouldnt be so quick to judge with qwest. I have had them for 3 or 4 years now and i have also worked for them here in Idaho Falls and in there Phoenix Offices. I can tell you while yes… In theroy they are a bit slower than cabel one however i doubt much can be seen in this because of the fact your sharing your speed with everyone else where as with Qwest your DSL line is dedicated to you making the same speed and its your line.
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0 0 Does Qwest around here offer naked internet services yet? No thats not a porn reference. Its slang lingo meaning do they offer internet to people who don’t have and don’t want to get a phone line?
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0 0 The guy you don’t like:: you’re sharing the line, but not the network per se’. Other people can’t log into your system or piggyback on your network, unless you leave your router open and unsecure. and even though you’re “sharing speed” with the rest of the people in your neighborhood, it’s not a signifigant loss. And until we get a “real” phone company in this neck of the woods that can offer true DSL service that’s reliable, CableOne is the best service available in this area. I’ve been using them for 2 years now and am completely happy with the service, speed & reliability. Sure, their customer service leaves a little to be desired, but if you think about it….customer service EVERYWHERE at EVERY company sucks these days.
don’t bash them just because you’re a disgruntled former employee.
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0 0 Qwest has offered “naked” or standalone High Speed internet for quite some time. In fact, JD Power recently ranked Qwest as the #1 Internet Service Provider in the western region. 2nd time in a row. I’ve had a 7M connection for 2 years and never had any trouble.
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0 0 I work for cable one. I am a Tech-ops Manager. There are often times problems with servers and what not but theese are not god-made they are man-made. Guess what nothing is perfect. What i can tell you is this. I have been working for this company for over 10 years. They do strive to bring the best service available. We try to be quick. We have a same day service guarantee. All you have to do is CALL. Some people rely on rumors as well please dont pay any attention to these people. A good example is …..
The Guy Who you DONT like Says:
September 19th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Yes cable one does suck, mainly becuase its open network witch you SHARE your connection with multipal other people in your neihbor hood. Leaving you open to NUMEROUS Potentitonal problems and vurneralbilitys. I wouldnt be so quick to judge with qwest. I have had them for 3 or 4 years now and i have also worked for them here in Idaho Falls and in there Phoenix Offices. I can tell you while yes… In theroy they are a bit slower than cabel one however i doubt much can be seen in this because of the fact your sharing your speed with everyone else where as with Qwest your DSL line is dedicated to you making the same speed and its your line.
YES We use OC3, OC1, and other type of circuits to run local networks. We also have free overhead. When a curcuit hits 60% utilizition we imediately order a circuit upgrade or even add more circuits. No you are not affected by the amount of users in your block or area. As for problems i can assure you Cable One does not ignore issues. If they are reported they are taken care of. The biggest problems we run into in our system are Customers who believe they are Cableguys. We have few outages. We have 4 hour battery backups on power suplies. We just added a 9000 watt UPS to our headend. I mean if a drunk knocks a pole down or someone digs up fiber what do ya do. What i can suggest is CALL if there is a problem. I would like to think the people who have our service and are loyal customers. As for the rate increase. We have not had an increase on our internet since it was launched. Unfortunately every year the cost of doing business with our venders goes up. And like other businesses we are not here to loose money.
A wise man ones said. “It is hard to make everyone happy, However you can sure easily make them all mad in a hurry.” Me.
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0 0 Mr Tech Ops manager, I’m afraid you’re incorrect in stating that cable broadband subscribers do not share bandwidth. Of course you don’t want your average consumer to know this, you’d lose a lot of business. If you don’t think we “share bandwidth” using a cable modem, then why does my speed drop dramatically during peak hours? I’ve used a number of different cable and DSL service providers over the years in different parts of the country and I’ve always had the same problem with cable. During the times of around 4pm till 9 pm, my speed drops tremendously. Early in the mornings, mid day or late at night is when I get my fastest speeds with cable.
For those of you that are a little less familiar with broadband access, here is a nice link that explains the differences between cable and DSL. http://www.high-speed-internet-access-guide.com/dsl-vs-cable.html
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0 0 I know this is a Cable One - but I have to vent about Teton Wireless/Digital Bridge. I moved here a year ago, hooked up with TW…was frustrated for nearly 9 months (I am a patient person), would complain and be told “improvements are in the works, hang in there”. It started to become like a bad marriage - promise of improvements, promise of “not having these problems anymore”, just hang in there.
Finally, I had enough. In July, I cancelled my service and moved to Cable One. I have been completely pleased there…good RELIABLE service, good customer service/technical support (although I’ve rarely called).
Unfortunately, it was not so easy to end my relationship with Teton Wireless. They did not come and pick up their hardware on the scheduled date. Soon, I got a bill for the month of August - after I had cancelled my service in July. I wrote that on the invoice and returned it. Then I got a bill for September with past due charges from August. I called customer service - was told they made the adjustment to throw away the bill, it was taken care of. I reminded them they have still not picked up their hardware. They claimed to have it rescheduled in early September. Today I got a bill for the month of October with past due charges for August and September and a threat of being turned in to collections.
Obviously I have reached the end of my rope… I called customer service and insisted that I speak to someone who can put a stop to this immediately. She was very nice - but I’m skeptical - I got the same song and dance as last month - confirmation that the account says I should not get statements, the balance is zeroed, throw away the invoice, and yes they know that I still have their hardware.
This is ridiculous. Whether Teton Wireless/Digital Bridge has improvements in the works or not, I will never consider them for a provider again.
Not only can I not end this bad marriage but it appears that I now have a stocker….
Caution to all Teton Wireless customers….it might seem to be going good now - just wait until you try to move to another provider…watch your back…
Vote:
0 0 I’ve recently switched to CableOne and am very happy.
I started with Qwest DSL, who only provided half of my paid 1.5mb speed, even admitting they should not have sold it to me. Their equipment and connection was always slow and prone to drop-outs. Closing out the account was even more difficult because they kept saying they were sending the modem rental return package, but never did and instead kept charging me rental fees. Qwest’s customer service phone lines were the worst.
I switched to Keyon, and it was just about as lousy as Qwest. Keyon was great the first few months when apparently I was a new customer in this area. It was obvious when the connection dropped to nothing in the evenings that they had everyone on a shared connection at some point. They were nice and tried to help, replacing all the equipment eventually, and their reps were friendly, but I just think their technology is a little young right now. They finally even agreed to let me out of the contract because they could not provide the service.
It was obvious that Keyon was the source of the slowdown problem. I tested it with different browsers, different XP computers (both fully patched, and I even reformatted one of them), different FTP clients, and using two different online host companies.
Keyon’s connection dropped out twenty or thirty times a day, and CableOne’s has been steady since I plugged it in a four weeks ago. I imagine CableOne will rear their evil corporate hassles someday, but for now I think they are doing the best of any provider in Idaho Falls.
So my experience is that Keyon is the cheapest (especially with no equipment rental costs), but you get what you pay for: unreliable access.
I’ve experienced that Qwest is expensive and there are many cost penalties if you try to extricate yourself from their bundles, and their service quality depends on the neighborhood you live in (if they have primary equipment nearby).
And finally I’ve experienced nothing but super fast and completely reliable access from CableOne, although admittedly I’m still in the honeymoon period. It costs more, but reliability is worth paying for in my view.
Also, with CableOne, they only offered the option to rent their cable modem at $6 forever rent (no buy option). I purchased their exact same Motorola “Surfboard” SB5100 at Wal-Mart for $60. It pays to shop around, the same models were $70 at Circuit city and Best Buy.
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0 0 Another aspect of this is the technical support. Qwest tech support was always Malaysians who could not communicate very well and were not very helpful. Keyon had business-hours tech support so nights and weekends were very frustrating because that is when the service dropped the most. I also do not know why they say to leave a message because they never returned calls.
My first weekend with CableOne, on Sunday night at midnight, my connection chocked a minute because I had to do the sign-up process a 2nd time. Their tech support was immediately available and clearly an English-speaker.
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0 0 The English speaking help is very important to me. I am not as computer savvy as many, and when I have trouble understanding, it makes for a very frustrating experience. I have been using MicroServ, and am quite pleased with their service and their help. I had nothing but problems when I was using Teton Wireless. After several visits to my home, Teton Wireless told me it was my computer. So, I purchased a new computer only to have the same problems as before. When I called them back, no apology, no credit on my bill, or anything. That’s when I switched to MicroServ. The only drawback that I have seen so far, is that I had to sign a 3 year contract. I recently had to change from Teton Wireless TV to Cable One, and would probably have also done their computer service, if I had not been in this contract. I absolutely refuse to use Dish (another story entirely), which I probably would have had to do if I had stayed with Teton. So far, no regrets anywhere.
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0 0 3 year contract with MicroServ?!?! Holy cow, that is ridiculously long! Broadband technologies could change a lot in three years! I think one year is asking too much, but three!?!
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0 0 I have wasted countless hours emailing and calling Cable One tech support and spoken to the local support manager about my slow internet speed problem and have been given nothing but the run around. They keep denying there is a problem and claim “it must be your modem”. I just happened to run across the REAL story while doing research on nationwide service issues. It appears I have been lied to from the start and all Cable One internet customers are now intentionally being ripped off.
Cable One just had a drastic change in their internet service that they appear to be denying to customers even though it is published on their website (deeply buried in an obscure location). They now throttle back bandwidth to HALF of the advertised speed you are paying for from 12 noon to midnight! In fact, my connection is more realistically about one third of what I pay for.
The link is here:
http://www.cableone.net/internet/limits.htm
This is blatant FRAUD as far as I’m concerned. They advertise, and charge for, the full rated speeds:
http://www.cableone.net/internet/plans.asp
I’m currently gathering information to forward to the Idaho Attorney General’s office for a complaint. If you want to check your own speed to see how much you’re being shorted, check out the following speed test links:
http://myaccount.cableone.net
Go to My Plan, then My Speed Test. It will do a local area and main internet test.
http://speakeasy.net/speedtest
Run Seattle, San Francisco, LA and NY.
http://www.dslreports.com/stest
Click on Flash 8 speed test. Run San Francisco and Palo Alto tests.
http://www.speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test
Click the world map to test any location on the planet.
All internet customers need to flood Cable One lines with calls on this issue to let them know well will NOT be ripped off like this. They can either give us back the legitimate bandwidth we pay for or a drastic reduction in rates. Or they can deal with a class action lawsuit.
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0 0 CableONE SUCKS! I bought the service yesterday, they left, and the internet doesn’t work. I spent an hour with tech support trying to fix it only for a “senior technician” to tell me my computer is broken. Despite the fact that it worked fine the day before on Comcast’s network. After my boyfriend started trying different things, they turn around and say it’s our router, not our computer. They are idiots! And I don’t think we talked to one person who didn’t act like they were irritated that I even called. I’d cancel the service if I could. But lo and behold there is a termination fee during the first six months, no matter if the service works or not! Ridiculous. This company should be run out of business!
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0 0 I’ve been extremely happy with my CableOne broadband service so far, I’m confused that you say you were on Comcast one day and CableOne the next? Did you move between service areas in that day? The two companies do not overlap service anywhere, do they?
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0 0 Yes, we moved from an area covered by Comcast to an area covered only by CableOne. We weren’t happy about the switch since we were happy with Comcast, but had it installed the day after the move anyway.
I wish they overlapped service because I would have stayed with Comcast. I’m unhappy the internet doesn’t work, but I can work through that if there are compatibility issues. What really got me angry is the rudeness with which I’ve been treated every time I called Tech Support for help.
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0 0 Ashleigh - One mistake I made at first was calling their internet tech support. They aren’t local, they are in Phoenix or someplace and many of them don’t know how to do anything more than read from their script. I finally found one person who seemed knowledgeable and would listen to the problem but he still claimed there was nothing wrong. I’ve had more luck calling the local office and asking to speak with a network/internet specialist, NOT a cable technician because most of the cable techs don’t know much about computers and even less about troubleshooting internet issues. And each time I called the office or had a tech come out I had to start from scratch and explain everything all over again because they don’t appear to keep any kind of useful service logs or talk to each other.
I finally got results AFTER escalating the issue and filing a complaint with the BBB. I was surprised that actually worked. Usually a BBB complaint gets you nothing but more frustration. It evidently got their attention because they stuck with the problem and worked with me to get it resolved. It took 3 or 4 days and some experimenting but they finally found two problems which appeared when they upgraded their system for higher speed - my modem was having error issues and a tech had installed an amplifier that was scrambling the internet signal. I’m now up to the 5 meg speed I’m forced to pay for (but did not ask for). I was upgraded with no advance notice and no other choice but to take it or pay MORE for the slower service I had! What a deal.
There is still the issue of them throttling back speed during prime time hours with their “threshold limits”. This was a sneaky change to their policy and is not displayed on their site where anyone would normally see it. They are constantly coming up with new ways to charge us more while reducing the services provided. I wish we had more options around here.
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0 0 I’ve had Cableone internet & cable service for almost 2 years now and have been very happy. I’ve only had a couple of outages over that 2 year period and both times the outage was very short lived and my service was back up and running quickly. I’ve always had great service when I called as well. There might have been a time or two I had to wait more than a few minutes, but they were always professional and friendly.
I fully support Cableone in this area. At the moment, they’re the most reliable internet service available.
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0 0 The ONE thing I really don’t like about CableOne, is their homepage. It’s absolutely useless and I really think they need to get with the times and upgrade it to something a little more appealing and functional. Over the years I’ve used a number of different cable and dsl providers around the country and they’ve all provided a very well laid out and useful homepage. In the past I’ve always used that particular providers homepage as my own. Currently I’m using MSN as my homepage & I’ve also used CNN from time to time.
The point is: Take a look at Cableone.net. It’s absolutely useless and why anyone would want to use that as their homepage is beyond me. Now look at Comcast.net or ATT.net (formerly Bellsouth.net) Both of these cable/dsl providers have awesome homepages which are both functional AND appealing.
I’ve sent a couple emails to Cableone since I’ve been with them, regarding their homepage, but never received a response. Hopefully someday they’ll consider upgrading their homepage and actually getting with the times. You can definately tell it’s a small town cable company, but that’s still no excuse.
I hope that if enough internet subscribers voice their concerns about this issue, maybe they’ll do something. I’m sure a better more up to date webpage would dramatically increase business for them, so it would be a win/win situation all around.
I urge those of you that DO have Cableone internet, to go look at those two examples I provided and then look at Cableone’s site as a comparison. The difference is night and day. If you agree with me, take a moment out of your day to let Cableone know.
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0 0 CafeDelSol, I’m with you there. The city we moved into is only covered by CableOne, so they face no competition. It’s a recipe for laziness in which the customer pays the price.
We finally resolved the internet issue, but with no help from the Tech people. Turns out that the router we used had settings that were messing up the Internet connection. My thoughts are that this had to have happened to someone, somewhere before, but they never mentioned settings or gave us appropriate ones to check. Their solution to every problem that can’t be solved with the script: your stuff is broken. Call a computer store. And the manner in which they say it says you are bothering them
If you’ve had great service with CableOne, good for you. The service itself is probably very reliable, but people in customer service are usually taught that a single bad experience with customer service taints a customer’s perception of your company. Either they skipped that class in business school or they just don’t care. Maybe it’s just the area I’m in, but a give two thumbs down to the customer service.
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0 0 CR 67, I agree with you. I had Comcast for years before this, and their site is easy to navigate and very appealing as well. It took me a while to find out how to access e-mail on Cableone, since you have to hunt around the page for the link. It’s not visually appealing. Of course, this is not exactly a deal-breaker issue with me, but it’s something that could use improvement.
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0 0 I subscribe to Cable, Internet, and Phone.
Starting around mid December 2007 till today Tues 22 Jan 2008 I or my wife has had to reset our router at least once a day. Research has shown that this was due to Dirty or Corrupt packets getting “stuck”. Or so one cable one tech support person explained it. So a year into my cable one service i bought a new router. I went throug ha week and a half of resetting that router as well each day. It got returned. Now i understand bad weather and how cold can effect gear. But here is the problem i just dont get.
When the problem is cable one, an i mean service goes out and the modem is flashing and the router is reset, and nothing traines up back to the local office….. Why is it that the internet and the phone are the only services to go out?
What if i need to call 911?
My solution was to become a ham radio opperator. Google term, radio, phone patch. 
About 1-2 times a month. Usually only 1 cable goes out. Rather phone and internet goes out.
After skimming the above posts i think i’ll have my box up the street tested. The modem replaced with new, not referbished gear and get a 2007/2008 router designed to auto correct for the modems corruption of packets. And after taxes, switch to DSL again. At least i had a live human 24/7 even if my service area was listed. and some one usually there with in 48 hours if there was trouble. Not “oh lets see, next week some. How does tues 5 am work for you?” …
Short story?
service goes down regualarly.
customer service SETUP sucks.
customer service people in my town are good.
and the Internet help when you dont need to check on outages and issues are helpfull and well trainied it seemed. HOWEVER. if something is wrong with cable one phone/internet, dont expect to hea[RING: Holy crap i kid you not cable one phone person called me back 24 min after i left a message checking on the outage]
About 10 min ago i started typing this up.
If you a night person, use DSL. Tech guy says the windo of maintainance is 00:00 - 05:00 local time. there is no web page for customers to look up when schedules outages for upgrades are located. DSL/Quest does. Teaton wireless does. Micron does. Why not cable one?
/END RANT!
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0 0 Point of clearification. I’ve had Cable one service for 4 years total now. I rent the modem from them. and have probably had around 45-55 service interuptions that were not the fault of my gear. Thats not counting the estimated once a month down for 2 hours servicing. Service is out for around 2-3 hourse each time its interupted.
And in all those time TV service still stayed up.
Why was the phone and internet down?
Makes me want to switch back to DSL/Quest and Dish Network Sat service. Maybe next month
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0 0 The cable modem you want to use with Cableone is the Motorola Surfboard model SB5101. Walmart has it cheap and it works better with Cableone than the newer “upgraded” model. You can pay for it in less than a year with the savings from not leasing a modem. And firmware upgrades are free since they are sent out by the cable company directly to your modem. You won’t even know it’s being done.
Check the status of your modem by entering this ip address in your browser: http://192.168.100.1/
then go to the Help screen for more info.
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0 0 I’ve been very happy with my surfboard. I compared the same item at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Wal-Mart and I also found Wal-Mart had it cheapest. Simple, cheap, and effective; it’s great when you can get all three.
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0 0 Ok all in all most providers are fine depends on location which is best for you, Internet does not change that often. Been with cable one high-speed 12 years maybe it was AT&T before that. Anyways, the people that have Microserve. I want to switch but not if i cant have the speeds I get with cable one. Can someone that has the wireless service go to http://speedtest.net/. Click on the saltlake city server pyramid and post the Up and down rate you get and the ping. This would be a great help on my decision. I will post my cableone results when I get home if someone is interested
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0 0 my up 3216
my down 304
ping 67ms
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0 0 Using that same speetest.net via the link provided two comments up, using the Salt Lake City pyramid:
my up 3115
my down 313
ping 75ms
This is with CableOne 3mbps service, done at 7:35 pm on a Thursday and I live on the West side of Idaho Falls.
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0 0 I do have to say I’ve had terrible customer service with Cable One lately. The last 3 times I’ve tried to contact someone, it’s taken forever. Their supposed to have 24/7 support, but not so much. The last TWO times I tried contacting them I couldn’t even get through. Most recently was last night while waiting in line to get my taxes done, I needed to transfer my service to a new location as I’m moving in a couple weeks. I would call their number and the automated voice would tell me to hold, and then I would get disconnnected. It’s like somebody kept hanging up the phone and wouldnt take any calls. This happened for almost an hour. I was so pissed off I was going to call them all night if I had to, but I finally gave up. The same thing happened a couple months ago when I tried to contact them. Both times it was around 6pm at night, so it wasn’t like it was 2 in the morning and somebody was trying to sleep on the job. They just kept hanging up on me.
I’m going to write a “friendly” letter to management and tell them whats going on. I would suggest others do the same if you have had the terrible customer service problems like I have. Management won’t know if nobody tells them, so I would urge everyone to take 5 minutes and write a letter.
Other than that, I’m satisfied with the performance. I hate their worthless website & their customer service is the worst I’ve ever encountered, but once you get past all that, the service has always been fairly reliable for me with only 2-3 outages over the course of 2 years. And those didn’t last very long.
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0 0 Thanks for posting that speedtest link. I don’t have cableone–I heard horrow stories about their Customer Service and decided I’d rather stab my hand with an ice pick before signing up with them–so I chose Qwest & have been totally satisfied, amazingly so, since I am not a fan of Qwest. But I digress. Anyway, I checked my connection with speed test last night and this is what I got:
down
6447 kb/s
UP
957 kb/s
Ping 59ms
I am paying extra for their fastest service–my monthly bill is $47. It works for me.
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0 0 Two of my family members have Teton Wireless. The one in Rigby loves their connection, it is always up
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When we lived in Pocatello, we struggled for 2 years of on and off poor service from Cableone. It got to the point I wanted to demand a refund for every day we didn’t get any internet service.
Since coming here, Microserv high speed internet has been great. Although, their customer service line could use some upgrading. Sketchy inernet the last 2 days, at least a recording of why would be helpful instead of “leave a message and we’ll call you” (uh-huh, when?) after trying their phone for over an hour. At a minimum, put me on hold for the next available rep!