Review by DJBuzz24 
UPDATED: 150 days ago
member for 1.4 years, 27 visits, last login: 150 days ago
 Charleston,Franklin,AR
 $34 per month
 about 3 days
 "extremely cheap intro rate, competitive monthly rate"
 "90% of the time we get 1/4 subscribed speed, with short, 4 minute bursts of peak speeds"
 "Avoid at all costs! They all sound friendly and caring, but at the end of the day they'll always leave you hanging!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
My problems are well documented throughout the SuddenLink/Cebridge BBR forums, so I'll stick to the basics here. For what it's worth, I've been in the IT/Networking arena for 14yrs this year, working exclusively for ISPs, Telcos, Datacenters, and now a controlling partner in a consulting company that works in the energy industry across 3 states. I need my connection, I resell things that I think will be an asset to my clients, and am the local "computer geek guy" in my rural town of less than 10,000.
1. Pre-order research. 5 calls to sales, 3 of 5 sales reps confirmed 3Mb x 256k availability in my area. 1 said "fastest available", 1 said "1Mb, I think"
2. a couple days later, local installer comes out. Doesn't own a computer, doesn't use the internet, doesn't know what their maximum speeds are. This is a bad sign, but I'm thining for $20/mnt for 6 months, why not? 256k @ install, called tech support, got 3Mb. Connection held for 5 months, only had problems during storms (expected), but always generated calls to tech support to correct speed (not expected)
3. Modem begins reverting to 256k 80% of the time. Calls to tech support are fruitless for a solid month. Cell minutes used dealing with SL tech/cust support: 1200+
4. In touch with local SL techs and management who fix the problem. I'm told to call this tech's cell anytime I have issue and he'll "run up there and fix it".
5. Get tired of bothering Tech. Some problems are after hours and I don't feel comfortable ringing some poor guy's phone @ home. Desperate to find help, I contact Pete Abel and all the regional VPs for my area.
6. Called Billing and offered to pay 1/4 of my bill ($7.50). The billing rep asks me to please hold, returns and lets me know that she issued a $20 credit to my account. I'm not exactly happy (as now I owe them $9.99, still more than I'm willing to pay), but I agree and we hang up.
8. Pete spends a solid week "looking into" my issues. Dispatches local techs to check lines. Tech runs new line from pole to modem, return 3 days later to bury it, allowing for OneCall to mark cables/pipes. Over the course of the week (and *several* exchanged emails with Pete) I'm labeled "an excessive user", made to feel guilty for using something I'm paying for, and told that my 256k speeds are as a result of "being fair to the other users in town". Pete doesn't grasp fact that for 5 months my connection was 3x what it "was supposed to be", and currently 24x slower than it was during those 5 months. I, however, have continued to pay the bill. Promo period is over, bill goes up $10 to $34/mnth.
9. End of the week, July 3rd, Pete calls to tell me that they're not going to be able to help me. Does not agree that it is a capacity issue, does not elaborate on where the issue may be. Says he's "spoken to everyone he can", and we're "simply not made for one another". Claims that 1-2Gb per day download is just too much. Pete recommends I purchase a 3Mb x 512k business account for $139.00/month. I inform Pete that I've learned they only have 4.5Mb total in my area (pays to have friends in high places), which meant that even $140 a month wasn't enough to get something they don't have the capacity to offer.
10. I suggest to Pete that he not attempt selling me 3/4 the town's total bandwidth while coaching me on the virtues of being "fair to other users". I'm still made to feel like I've somehow abused something I'm paying to access, and let Pete know that I will not recommend his company to ANYONE, regardless of region. I spend the afternoon removing SuddenLink from potential providers list for 3 of my new clients.
So on Monday, July 7th, I placed my order for DSL from CenturyTel. My modem came in today and I'll be turned up sometime today or tomorrow, guaranteed to be surfing before 5pm tomorrow. I've checked speedtest.net and confirmed speeds in my area, CenturyTel assures me that 10Mbit is what I'll be on (and say that real-world internet speeds are on average greater than 6-8Mbit), and with any luck I'll be cancelling SuddenLink tomorrow.
The service was FANTASTIC for 5 months. The tech and customer service reps I dealt with were very polite, but not very technically knowledgeable. I've since learned that this is because they've been left in the dark about several network management protocols that have recently been put in place.
Suddenlink could prove to be a really cool company, but unfortunately they've left a sour taste in my mouth by dealing with *customers* instead of *network issues*. Most consumers simply don't have time to deal with the micromanagement SuddenLink is attempting to provide.
I encourage anyone to carefully read the forums here, SuddenLink's Terms of Service and Residential Services Agreement (on their website), and take note of the 55%+ negative reviews posted on this site. I can only expect that percentage to increase if SL continues along their current path.
****UPDATE****
We've been on SinTel's service for about 2 months now with no major issues. We do indeed get random disconnects, sometimes once a day, sometimes once every 2-3 days, sometimes 2-3 times a day. Most of the time the disconnects are so brief that IP traffic simply stalls for a moment, then picks right back up. My usage over the last 60 days has averaged about 75GB up *and* down every month. SinTel has never contacted me, and assures me that my usage is "expected". I average 8Mb/s downloads and have peaked @ 1.1Mb/s uploads. Not bad for a 10x768 account, and SinTel assures me that we'll be upgraded as the service in our area is upgraded, same price, and I won't even have to request the upgrade.
A very, very far cry from what SuddenLink was spewing...bandwidth caps, excessive throttling, etc. So far we're much happier, and with the ability to rent/purchase HD content via the 'net, we're reevaluating our need for Satellite TV!
****UPDATE****
Still on CenturyTel DSL. Still same rocking speeds and reliability. Still beating the crap out of SuddenLink.
Hey Petey, I used to see 2-4 of your trucks around town per day...now I see about 1 a week or so. Business slow down here for you guys, or are your techs finally out working instead of troubleshooting problems here? For what it's worth, in the last 6-8 months I've converted about 7 users off SuddenLink and onto CenturyTel DSL.
Followup comments:  Pete Abel
Premium
join:2008-01-15
Saint Louis, MO
 ·Charter Pipeline
1 edit | Facts Please note, for the record, that the people of Suddenlink made a concerted effort to assist this customer, much as we have successfully helped others, in this forum and beyond.
However, this particular customer violated the following clause of our residential service agreement and acknowledged the same in writing:
"The Services provided are solely for Customer’s personal, residential use and Customer shall not use Services for any commercial purpose."
The customer's violation of this clause caused problems for other customers in the area and thus forced us to stand by the terms of the agreement, to protect the interests of our other local customers. | |
|  | DJBuzz24
join:2008-07-01
Fort Smith, AR
·Suddenlink
1 edit | Re: Facts and how much do *they* pay for the service?
Don't blame your customers for you overselling your service. Again, you made a valiant attempt to appease me, but at the end of the day failed to provide what you so aggressively advertised in my mailbox (3 flyers a week before *and* after I signed up).
I appreciate what you've done in understanding that I work from home. A home in a residential area. I don't operate a business here, as permits to do so are not even allowed. The simple fact that I told you and your technicians that I was available to them anytime they wanted to come by and help opened the opportunity for a nice little scapegoat for your failure to provide proper services. As for business services, it took SIX FREAKING WEEKS to get someone to give me a confirmed price...that person was you, a SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT.
Nice of you and your support crew to respond only to reviews, and not so much the customer outcry in the BBR forums  I look forward to seeing you try to help others that are experiencing the same exact issues that I will no longer tolerate.
Of course, again, don't take just my word for it. I mean, if you'd rather live in Pete's world all you have to do is click the "39 Positive" link at the top of this page. That should just about do it.
Let's just not do this, Pete. You guys are in the wrong and we all know it. The users of this forum, the customers that have made their opinions and reviews known...in the end you can help a lot of people, but not until you start acknowledging those issues.
Stop micromanaging customers, start addressing your problems.
I can't wait to cancel....I keep looking at the modem expecting you to do it for me out of spite. If you think I'm pissed here...wait until you see your churn in this area over the next 3 months.
*EDIT*
I logged into the main Cebridge page here to see if there were any new posts and found this in my upper right corner:
* 3.0 Suddenlink 'Avoid at all costs! They all sound friendly and caring, but at the end of the day they'll always leave you hanging!' 2 comment(s)
* 1.8 Suddenlink 'If you can get another service in your area I would' 1 comment(s)
* ?.? Suddenlink 'no real choice in this area for broadband' 7 comment(s)
* 1.5 Suddenlink 'Use something else for business use.' 2 comment(s)
hey Pete, what parts of those generic Service Agreements did those guys violate? | |
| | | DJBuzz24
join:2008-07-01
Fort Smith, AR
·Suddenlink
1 edit | Re: Facts hey Pete, here's my hosts file (I added descriptions for you). You can clearly see that my network consists of mostly entertainment devices, not employee workstations. Your installers can account for as much, as they've seen the media center in the living room, where several of these devices rest. I'm sure when I said "my hosts file has 15 IPs" your head went to spinning. I can assure you that all 15 are not simultaneously online at once (there's certainly not enough bandwidth for 1, much less 15!). I want to make this very clear, as you seem to be the only person that thinks I've violated a clause of your ToS.
192.168.100.1 delinked #Linksys WiFi R00ter
192.168.100.2 awesom-o #Wife's iMac, Awesom-O 4000!
192.168.100.3 360 #xbox 360
192.168.100.4 guest #open
192.168.100.5 ds #Nintendo DS
192.168.100.6 wii #Nintendo Wii
192.168.100.7 micro #my mac mini workstation
192.168.100.8 ibook #work laptop
192.168.100.9 psp #Sony PSP
192.168.100.10 xbox #Xbox 1
192.168.100.11 guest2 #open
192.168.100.12 guest3 #open
192.168.100.13 dadsiphone #my phone
192.168.100.14 momsiphone #Wife's phone
192.168.100.15 DishHD #Dish Network
#Living Room LaserJet 5m
192.168.100.100 printer
Btw, you can blame my wife for *this* post. She said that since I'd blasted the hell out of you guys, I should at least prove to my peers that I'm not doing using my connection for anything out of the ordinary. | |
| 
DJBuzz2422222
@suddenlink.net
| Re: Facts Hey you might want to look at what you wrote again in the forum.
"I've been in the IT/Networking arena for 14yrs this year, working exclusively for ISPs, Telcos, Datacenters, and now a controlling partner in a consulting company that works in the energy industry across 3 states. I need my connection, I resell things that I think will be an asset to my clients, and am the local "computer geek guy" in my rural town of less than 10,000."
Companies are going to charge you for business usage if you max out your bandwidth usage all the time. Suddenlink is not the only company that looks at its usage... TWC and Grande do that same. | |
| | photog5
join:2008-08-25
Hydesville, CA
·Suddenlink
1 edit | Re: Facts PETE your employee ot Tech "roderick.howard@suddenlink.com" wrote me back once and then placed me on the ignore list, hasnt responded to the Trace routes I have posted at
»www.photog5.com/SUDDNL/Suddenlin···nce.html
I was hoping he could use my Trace routes to fix this continuing problem - EVERY EVENING FROM 7PM to 1am I cant get any performance out of my cable connection at all!! I like to get home from work - check a few emails and then procede with some gaming in Counter Strike Source... unfortunatly I cannot because on HIGH latency and Lost packets (40%) the pings are up to 200 to 450 EVERY EVENING AND ON THE WEEKENDS ! This is just LAME LAME LAME - cant you understand what a terrible ISP Suddenlink is being to THOUSANDS of customers - ALL customers here in HUMBOLDT county are getting only a fraction of what we signed up for and are currently paying for? Im paying for the middle package - but man its not making any differance that I choose to pay more for bandwith and are not getting it at all- (between 7 pm and 1am ) and no its not because Of our remoteness - you can clearly see which peerpoint is to blame and its not IN CALIF - please please ring someones bell over there at Suddenlink - Im really really mad about this and am ready to complain to anyone who will listen - so please take responcibliity for the product you put forth and FIX IT UNDO whatever it is you guys did a month and a half ago -cause it was fine then -
photog5 | |
| | DJBuzz24
join:2008-07-01
Fort Smith, AR
·Suddenlink
| hey DJBuzz2422222, nice name!
Too bad you're too afraid to let us know which SuddenStink employee you *really* are. As for ISP's monitoring bandwidth, etc, I'd like to show you this....
# November 2008 (Incoming: 201373 MB / Outgoing: 128161 MB)
That's my usage for November. On November 19th Microsoft and Netflix announced a partnership to stream Netflix movies to the Xbox 360. If I were still on SuddenStink I would have never gotten to use this feature, as after 10-12GB downloaded they would throttle my connection back to 1/3 what I should have had. Not to mention that their maximum speed of 1Mb/s would not allow me to view HD streams.
CenturyTel, on the other hand, has been EXTREMELY stable, reliable, and fast as hell! My 10Mbx768k connection through them beats the living hell out of SuddenStink's 1Mbx256k (and 256kx256k 90% of the time). So much faster and more reliable that I wish I'd never paid for SuddenStink and had just stuck with CenturyTel from the get go. Same price even! Get that...10x the speed, 100% reliability, and no bandwidth caps!
The simple fact is that non-networking companies still don't know how to provide proper network services, while companies like CenturyTel, ATT, Alltel, etc understand their customers and know how to provide *network* services.
SuddenStink is *still* "the little cable company that couldn't". Every customer of theirs I interact with have the same issues, and each and everyone I recommend CenturyTel to.
Keep drinking the koolaid, DJBuzz2422222 and they'll keep printing your paychecks. But don't get on a forum and claim to be "anonymous" while defending shoddy business practices. Real customers know they don't have a viable defense for this crappy little cable co. | |
| | | DJBuzz24
join:2008-07-01
Fort Smith, AR
·Suddenlink
| Re: Facts btw, DJBuzz242222, before spewing the company line you should check out what their customers think...
Reviews:
read 189 reviews (45 positive) (94 negative)
*wow* That leaves 80 neutral reviews. Neither good, nor bad, but didn't care enough to rate. 94 negative? Yikes. I dunno Pete, maybe you should consider another line of work. It's gotta be hell dodging bullets all day.
--
The real DJBuzz24. | |
| | | | Wolf
join:2008-12-13
Jacksonville, AR
| Re: Facts Looks like Suddenlink isn't the only one that watches bandwidth... Hmm, and this is a DSL company too...
AT&T Metered Billing Trial Hits Second Market
Beaumont, Texas users just have all the luck....
10:27AM Monday Dec 01 2008 by Karl Bode
tags: bandwidth · Op/Ed · caps · AT&T Southeast · AT&T Midwest · AT&T Southwest
The Beaumont Enterprise is the first to report that AT&T has extended their trials of metered broadband into the Beaumont, Texas market. AT&T began testing metered billing last month in Reno, where DSL customers now face caps ranging from 20GB to 150GB. Those customers are also being forced to pay $1 for every gigabyte over the cap they travel. Users are given an online usage tool to track their bandwidth consumption, and are sent alerts warning them when they've consumed between 60-80% of their allotted bandwidth.
(it continues) | |
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