CenturyLink vs. Spectrum Internet Providers Compared

They made a mistake on my autopay, then charged me $18 for a late payment and a $3.50 fee to pay the bill. It was clearly their mistake. I tried to contact them but it is impossible. Frequent, long outages.

Century Link has been our internet provider for over 15 years. They have been consistently reliable and adequate for our needs.

Customer service was terrible tech service terrible on my phone all day yesterday trying to schedule a service request that never happened so I disconnected last night.

While service has been moderately stable, it requires periodic resets of the router and dropouts in service at random times. It is 140MB service on DSL delivered over the two POTS lines coming into my home; therefore, it cannot be increased beyond 140. The price has only increased from $40 (for 70MBJ to $65 for 140MB, and it is about to be raised to $70/mo now in 2026. There has been no improvement in service or support to warrant such an increase.

They are canceling all broadband dsl internet in my neighborhood, no more landline or internet. There are no other fiber, dsl or broadband opportunities in my neighborhood.

Failed to transfer my service from Santa Monica, took 1 month to get services connected in Baldwin Hills, tried to tell me I had no prior service to transfer though had for 2 yrs. 3 mo. and talked to them about the transfer for months and followed every direction (also horrible service in SM, similar to here in Baldwin Hills), later admitted they lied. Inside cabling replaced 3 times, inside splitter 3 X, vault completely rebuilt 2X, full of water, equipment submerged, outdoor cables not waterproof. Cable boxes replaced 36X, modem 3X, router 5X but none of this has helped and a lot of it was done during Covid. I'm immunocompromised and Spectrum repeatedly coming into my home put my life at risk.(I don't blame the technicians, who were almost uniformly protective and considerate, I blame the company. The best field supervisors and techs told me they tell Charter/Spectrum all the time that they need to upgrade the infrastructure here but that the response is "We don't want to spend the money," so all the techs can do is try to patch it. Can't use streaming services due to intermittency, weak signal on Spectrum side and upstream and downstream noise on the old cable lines. T3 timeouts and packet loss. Cost for bundled services has gone from $154 a month to almost $225 and they tell me, on my bill, what a great deal I have even though my internet speed is all over the place and never what I'm paying for. They've moved most premium content I'm paying for to streaming, which I've already stated I can't do. When I turn the larger TV on, I get a black screen and "Please Wait" for about 16 " until the service engages, which in the film industry in which I worked is considered a LOT of lag time. Pixelation, particularly on PBS channels and in On Demand.. Guide and On Demand freeze constantly. Boxes don't always update or connect automatically...I was once told by phone tech support, while having multiple problems, that their records showed that box hadn't been used in 2 days and wasn't communicating with Spectrum, though I had used the box both days during that time. Once, the Field Manager, after monitoring my service and comparing it with that of my neighbours and finding nothing, brought out a crane with a sensing device on the end of it and finally found I was getting impedance from a vault nearby but not connected to me, and when they opened that vault it to was full of water to the brim and they had to rebuild it. Fixing that helped, but problems continued. Finally, remote team leaders and supervisors in both Repair and Internet SAW the issues happening in real time while they monitored and, after looking into the massive records of failure in my account, sent emails to my District with screenshots and even a voice recoding attached, documenting the problems that I'd repeatedly been told didn't exist. A Repair team leader and her 2 immediate supervisors took agency over my account and moved, remotely, to fix it, telling the local district what they needed to do. First Repair asked for copies of the emails that had been sent, but these mysteriously "couldn't be found." 5 Repair tickets were opened, but 3 of them were closed with no action and no notice. Repair was telling the local Field Manager that the peripheral cable that controls Guide, On Demand, and advertising placement (which, when initiated, would disconnect the channel, go dark, and then start buffering fragments of commercials or the same commercial repeated several times with dark screen in between. This was the cable box trying to do its job but was a failure of the DAI signal due to weak signal on the Spectrum side not giving the box the signal it needed to complete the process. I'd reported this for well over 2 years. . Repair was investigating the DOCSIS and the nodes when , first, I was told that the local district was impeding them from doing their work, and then the ticket was closed and Spectrum told them to cease and desist. The Team Leader called me and apologized. Then I got a letter from Charter/Spectrum's legal department informing me that I had "abused" and "over-used" their technical support and that IF I had further issues with my service and wanted tech support, I had to WRITE to their legal department in S. Carolina by SNAIL MAIL and request it and IF their monitoring system indicated I needed it ( which can miss the issue when it's intermittent and needs to be investigated while it's happening, not weeks later), they would WRITE ME BACK BY SNAIL MAIL and give approval, but I was warned that they could cancel my service at any time due to "their terms of agreement" and their threat was implied. My service still doesn't work and because Spectrum has the contract for the entire Village Green complex where I live, I have no other option. Their infrastructure here is underground and dates back to al LEAST when Time Warner was called Roadrunner, but the best techs that have been to my home have told me it's even older than that, possibly dating back 40-50 years to the inception of services in Los Angeles. I am starting the complaint process with the FCC and with the LA County District Attorney's Consumer Affairs Department for mediation, where I can bring my logs and the photos I've taken of my screens as evidence. I've been keeping a log for 5 years of the daily problems with dates, times, which box (I have 2), what channel and program, and any associated error codes. Recently I needed help with my Spectrum cell phone and was told that even my cell phone service would require me contacting their legal department, even though I had never asked for any technical support for the phone before. Spectrum is leaking customers rapidly across the nation, fully documented in the press, due to their pricing, slow internet speeds, and arrogant customer interface. My case is a particularly terrible outlier, I'm sure, but it's a good example of their treatment of their customers in general. My advice, if you're considering Spectrum as your provider, is to do your due diligence and go online to read about their reputation and performance before engaging with the company.

It's good but too expensive, they don't match competitors pricing if your not a new customer and it's more than double for established customers which is a ripoff.

Last I knew my internet was 40/month and my phone was 30/month, but back in January they bumped my internet to 70 and my phone to 40, so I went from 70 a month for both to 110 a month. I called them and they said that's the cheapest plan they have. Time to switch!

Terrible internet service, to get what would work from them the lowest payment $80 a month and then it drops out. When I call them “ well mamma you are on a low mp and to get more fast internet you have to pay more” NO

Spectrum, like most other ISPs, give you a great deal in the beginning, but just wait -- it won't take long before they jack up your bill and make it impossible for you to afford it, especially with the economy so bad these days. I will have to cancel my internet for 4 months, before I can go back to Spectrum and get the cheaper pricing again. I'm thinking now that I shouldn't even give them my business any more. In any case, I will have to get my internet from someone else and get it fast, because who can live without internet these days? Not me, that's for sure. I'm in my "golden years" and count on the internet and my smartphone for my social contacts. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm beyond disappointed with Spectrum. Hope I can find something in the future that I can afford!