Frontier is really ticking me off!! :(

[lparsons21]

A couple weeks ago I noticed that my internet access seemed a bit twitchy, but not bad enough to really check things out. But it got worse. Ran speedtest.net and it showed hellacious spiking of both uploads and downloads. I usually get 10Mbps steady as a rock, now it spikes down to as low a 1Mbps and even sometimes just halts and you can see it on the graph that speedtest shows. Uploads are the same though when it spikes down it always just stops. Sometimes to the point the test won't complete.

So I call Frontier tech support. Tech had me look at a few things and then told me the central office was getting slammed because of some equipment issues, but that there was no indication of when or if they would fix it. Reluctantly I let it go.

But things just got to the point that I can't watch streaming video which is the prime reason I have the service level I have at the premium price I'm paying. So I called customer service to bitch. That was a waste of time as after a few moments she transferred me to tech support.

This tech had me run some tests and then wanted to use logmein rescue to run some tests remotely, which I allowed and won't ever again (more on that later). He saw the same thing and swore that the central office wasn't the issue, but didn't know what was. After hemming and hawing a bit he said the Netgear 7550 DSLmodem/router couldn't handle but 8 devices. I informed him that the gear had been at my house happilly running the 15 devices I had for about 3 years with no problem and didn't agree with him. Ended up he couldn't do anything nor did he offer suggestions.

Still screwed up!! Next week I'm calling again to see if they want to cancel my contract with no ETF or actually fix something because one of the two WILL happen.

Now to the logmein rescue. I have no clue what the hell the tech did for sure, but when he got off the phone, my network was totally hosed! I have my Apple router doing the actual wireless routing and it is set up to bridge but the netgear is doling out the IPs. Found he had turned the DHCP server back on in the Airport Extreme which gave a dual-nat issue. Unfortunately I didn't catch that at first. I ended up completely redoing the Airport network to get things back to normal.

 

[Teehar]

Sounds like a terrible company.Just keep hounding them all you can, sounds like they need to roll a truck to me.

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[mike123abc]

One way to know for sure is to plug directly into the modem and see if the problem persists or if it is something on your network.

 

[lparsons21]

I have done that and it doesn't change. So it is either the modem, wire or at their headend. The first tech said it was a central office issue, but after the second one ducked and dodged as he did I'm pretty sure that is the issue.

And I will stay on them. Frankly the next call will be a truck roll or I will make a few suggestions as to exactly where they can put the modem...

Sent from my Surface with Windows 8 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[lparsons21]

Called their ridiculous tech support again. They assured me a truck roll, and I made it very plain that the minimum acceptable was one that had the tech actually talk to me when the truck rolled. They assured me that would happen before 5PM on Thursday. So much for assurances, they not only didn't roll the truck and 'rescheduled' (which is BSspeak for we didn't do anything), they didn't bother telling me they had done it until I asked. Then the story was they didn't need to get into my house.

Now we're set for a tech here today that will talk to me and show me what he sees and whatever he thinks he can fix. Frankly I doubt the tech will show up.

Here's a few things I've observed:
1. For a communications company, they sure don't communicate well. Not to the customer, not to the field techs.
2. The 'tech support' seems pretty good until you have a problem they can't fix, then they dummy up quickly and follow the company line.
3. From reading around the 'net, seems the ETFs are not prorated and you pay the full boat. Of course that is hogwash and not legal. So if it gets to this, I'll pay the damned ETF and then file a complaint with as many agencies as I can find including the states attorney general. Might even sue them though that isn't likely. What will happen for sure is a mail campaign with the CEO's office based on the 'squeaky wheel' theory...

Assuming that the tech doesn't show, or is unable to actually fix anything I guess I'll switch though I'm not looking forward to it. The only other choice here is Mediacom. Price is fine with them at $35/month/12 months, then $45/month/next 12 months, 2-year contract for 15/1 service. Unfortunately they have datacaps which Frontier doesn't. For the service I'm looking at the 250Gb/month datacap looks liveable with even if not the ideal.

 

[KE4EST]

Frontier seems to be that way every where I go and everywhere I talk to people that has it. I know a couple of techs that work there in this area, and they told me since it's the company heads. There is no organization much to this company. Seems everyone I know that has Frontier hates it. Things were a lot better, when it was run by Verizon.

 

[mike123abc]

Since they know they do not have a lot of competition it is about saving costs any way possible to maximize the profit. If a few customers get bad service it is the cost of doing business, they calculate how much they would have to spend to slow churn and spend just enough.

 

[KE4EST]

That is exactly what was going through my mind.

 

[lparsons21]

they can be damned irritating.

Truck(s) showed up and 2 techs. they spent an hour and have determined that it isn't at this end at all. They spent lots of time and tried lots of things after not actually believing what I was telling them. But the proof was in the pudding as they say. They saw the spikes, they saw the timed out pings, they scratched their head mightily!!

They spent a heck of a lot of time on the phone with somewhere up the line. Now they are going to the switch end and connect a modem to my port and see if it works the same way there. I suspect it will and that it is a bad port. They have assured me they will call me to tell me the results. Since it is the local main tech that I've dealt with successfully before, I believe they will do just what they said they will.

I'll know in a bit.

As to how/why Frontier does what they do, who the hell knows but some of you all's conjecture is probably spot on. Our local tech crew is pretty good, but they can only be as good as the support they get and I get the feeling that is not really all that good.

 

[KE4EST]

Yeah the two locals techs here are great, I even went to school with them, but it is stuff over their head and out of their hands that is bad. I have had them come out here before and spend hours chasing a problem down. I wish all techs were like that.

 

[ncted]

I tried Frontier out earlier this year, in attempt to ditch TWC. When it worked, it was great, but my service was out about 10% of the time -- way too much for me as I often have to work from home. The local techs were good. The problem seems to be the techs elsewhere. I didn't have to pay any ETF, just for the few weeks of service I received. My parents are considering switching to Frontier/Dish triple play, but I am not sure they should. The Dish part is fine, but the rest would probably be a nightmare.

 

[lparsons21]

OK, final followup. They went to the office and tested a modem on my port and saw the exact same thing there, so they've switched me to a different card/port and I'm getting rock solid 10/1 as I was a month ago. The only way to go faster with them would be to use bonded DSL which they did offer to do. I told them I was perfectly happy with a solid 10 as I'm getting. So kudos to the local team.

The sad part is that this crap started a month ago and it took 5 calls of ever increasing pressure on my part to get a tech to not only come to the house, but actually come inside and see exactly what was going on. Even today the tech was resistive as Frontier figures in the house generates a bill. Once he could see what was going on, he also was smart enough to know that his theories he was yammering about were all for naught as they weren't correct. Mostly because he couldn't really picture what I was describing, it didn't make sense to him. I can understand that as I've never seen these spikes like that in my long career in electronics and networking.

My experience with Frontier up until this incident has been excellent with nary a problem of more than a short time and all from up the line quite a way.

 

[mike123abc]

Well you are not alone. When my internet went out all together with TWC a couple years ago it took them 10 days before they even had an appointment available to come out and diagnose. The line had been cut by contractors putting in new gas lines down the easement (I was the only one on the branch at the time).

 

[lparsons21]

Yeah, I now I'm not alone unfortunately

I'm glad they finally got it done, but if I hadn't insisted today that the tech come in and see what was happening that it would have been another few phone calls if I had wanted it fixed. Because if he hadn't entered the house and actually looked, there would really only have been 2 more calls made. One to Mediacomm to install cablemodem and one to Frontier with some spicy recommendations as to what they could do with their service and equipment!

 

[TheForce]

We don't have Frontier service around here. About a year ago I bought stock in it. Not one of my smarter moves. Lost money when I dumped it. It is what we call a poorly run company. I find your user reports coincide with the financials.

Slow response to outage is pervasive throughout the cable industry, however. It's one reason among others I maintain a Business account. Only $20/mo more for solid 20Mbits sustained download. I hear consumer account response to repair outage is 3-5 days. With a Comcast Business account, I get same day service. Outage is extremely rare anyway. When it does happen it's been my fault.

 

[lparsons21]

Don, based on my interaction with Frontier they are just like all the phone companies of old we hated and loved. They don't want to come into the house unless a bill is going to be generated, and pretty much don't want the local tech interfacing with the customer unless they can generate a bill. It took a lot of pressure from me to get it done. In my case, had they connected a computer at the dmark(?) and tested the way I would test, they would have seen the issue. The problem was they couldn't picture the issue in their heads, and that I fully understand as what I was seeing was something I've never seen in the long years I worked with wireless and wired networks.

The problem was spiking signals and very random, oft times working just fine for a considerable period and then just going nuts with no internet access though every light on the DSL modem never indicated anything wrong. You could even go into the admin section of the modem/router when it would get to the internet and it would indicate all was good.

In this case, the actual testing they always use wouldn't have shown them an issue at all. In fact, as the tech was talking to the other, it was obvious that all the line testing and so forth hadn't shown any issue whatsoever. You had to connect to the internet via computer and run speedtest and pings, and then the spiking and the results of it, became very apparent.

The biggest issues IMO, is that they do not communicate well within the company. I observed that with the phone calls to tech support in which it felt like every call about the same problem was appearing to them like a new problem and not an ongoing one. And the messages passed to the local tech seem to be of the most minimal type though I didn't actually get to see the message, my observation is from the local techs response when I was trying to get them off the porch and into the house to see what I was seeing. It didn't seem like they had sent anything to him that was very descriptive.

Around here I've been told that Mediacomm's business offerings are as you describe, and that was my experience with their business offerings that they provided one of the companies I worked for. Better response to problems. I will say that when I was with Mediacomm for internet in the home, I seldom had an issue and again as with Frontier, almost all of them were something up the line that was affecting lots of users.

 

[Stargazer]

When Frontier first brought DSL to my area they put me on the wrong port (or had me provisioned wrong) so they got that corrected giving me the correct speed. Then I had some issues with the service and billing and talked to some high ups in the company to get some things accomplished. I even found out later that they have a provisional department and spoke with them. I finally got my problems resolved and then the bonded connection came along and I was one of the first in the area to get it. It worked great with speeds over 20 MB down until after they left then it was not any faster than a single line. Took a month to get it fixed and they figured out that the DSLAM did not have the updated software for bonded modems and problem became fixed kinda then the speeds were not consistent. I found out that they had congestion issues and that they were working on a new fiber ring that the local office was scheduled to get it but it took several months past when they expected that to be done before they finally accomplished that. After the local office was on new fiber ring I have had consistent speeds every single time I run a speed test and have not had many outages at all. The only one I remember was when a squirrel got into the main fiber coming into the community last fall that they had to splice together.

 

[lparsons21]

Frontier's corporate network people wanted the local tech to do bonded with me as they feel that I'm paying for 12 and only getting 10. I had to get on the phone and tell them I was perfectly happy with a nice solid 10 as it accomplished what I wanted and that there was no need to upgrade the house to 2 lines. They agreed to leave it alone. What I didn't tell them was that I already had two lines coming to the house from my days with DirecPC, the old one-way satellite internet, the 2nd line for a 2nd number just for the 'up' modem.

10 gets me rock solid video streams to one device with no problem at all and leaves a bit for the live in to live on Facebook and other social media.

 

[Stargazer]

The benefit of a bonding connection is if one line goes down you still have the second for backup and your upload speed would increase as well. The latency may also improve with the bonded connection.


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[mike123abc]

The benefit of a bonding connection is if one line goes down you still have the second for backup and your upload speed would increase as well. The latency may also improve with the bonded connection.

One would hope that the system was designed that way. But, knowing phone company incompetence one could wonder if it just doubles the chance of failure and it not function if one of the lines does not work.