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CenturyLink left 86-year-old woman with no Internet service for a month | After three canceled appointments, service restored one day after Ars emailed ISP.

CenturyLink left 86-year-old woman with no Internet service for a month

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/centurylink-left-86-year-old-woman-with-no-internet-service-for-a-month/

After three canceled appointments, service restored one day after Ars emailed ISP.

CenturyLink left 86-year-old woman with no Internet service for a month | After three canceled appointments, service restored one day after Ars emailed ISP.::After three canceled appointments, service restored one day after Ars emailed ISP.

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Kerfuffle

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CenturyLink is absolute garbage. I rented a DSL modem from them. It got fried by lightning so they had to replace it. They sent me a modem that wasn't compatible with my service. A couple years later, I had another one get zapped. I double checked with not one but two customer service reps to make sure they were sending me a modem that worked with my service. They sent me one that wasn't compatible with my service. Then they took a few weeks to send me one that actually was compatible. When it got here, it either didn't work or something else in the wiring was messed up (probably more likely).

That last part might not have been their fault but I could have known about it 3 weeks sooner. At that point I didn't have much confidence they'd get it fixed while I still have my youth and good looks. Fortunately a smaller fiber company had just started serving the area and I was able to immediate cancel the CenturyLink service. More than 3 times faster and slightly cheaper as well. Also symmetric upload is pretty nice. CenturyLink is in for a rude awakening as competition appears in places where they previously were the only choice.

Potatos_are_not_friends

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I looked at Centurylink's "compatible" modems and they're all rated 3.5 stars and cost $150+ or more.

The next best thing is satellite at $100 for 30Mps, versus 200Mps for $40 for CenturyLink, or Comcast.

I'll give CenturyLink a chance because I really hate Comcast. But God I wish there was more competition.

Lem453

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This exact scenario is what starlink is for

Kerfuffle

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I’ll give CenturyLink a chance because I really hate Comcast.

I can definitely believe that Comcast can manage to be more horrible than CenturyLink. Not an easy task though.

The next best thing is satellite at $100 for 30Mps, versus 200Mps for $40 for CenturyLink, or Comcast.

Don't go with satellite if you care about latency at all. (From what I know, it also tends to have pretty pitiful upload speeds.)

I looked at Centurylink’s “compatible” modems and they’re all rated 3.5 stars and cost $150+ or more.

I had their service for 6-7 years and I have to admit I never had an issue with the modem (and the service was generally reliable with little downtime). Their customer service though...