Spectrum vs. EarthLink Internet Providers Compared

The internet with spectrum was good when the starting price was $30. I have not added any channels or other services. My bill each month is now $94!!! I am a single mom & need it for my children to do homework. I am going to have to get rid of internet because I can't afford it

Like everything else these days, prices are too high.

they creeped up my monthly bill a little bit at a time and before IA KNEW IT MY BILL WAS OVER $80.00 A MONTH AND ON TOP OF THAT I WAS PAYING FOR 400-500 mBPS AND GETTING ONLY 200MBPS WTF ?

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.

Well.... this clowns are a joke. Call to ask if they do service in my area they say yes and I pay for get the equipment ship to my house. 3 days later got the router and installed with the instruction provide and..... nothing. I call the grade F customer service and after and hour back and foward to finally hear in a problem power but the tech are working with it. Nex day I connect and nothing, call again the grade F customer service to find out ( after half and hour ) my area is not coverage and jet send me the router. Pure garbage.

Earthlink (internet provider) had provided horrible customer service ... never activating my account and had sent me two routers. After weeks of trying to get things fixed, I cancelled. They refunded my charges and had me download labels to return the routers (that took a while also). I sent both routers back. Last Tuesday on Feb 17, I received an email threatening me that they would charge me $436.40 if I did not return the router. I already had. And I took photos of both boxes and both receipts from the UPS store. I called earthlink, and their rep confirmed they had received both routers and I should just ignore the email. Today 2/22/2026, Earthlink attempted to charge my debit card for the above amount. Fortunately, it was declined and I was alerted. They have blocked earthlink, and I have reported Earthlink to the BBB.

I ordered Earthlink Fiber service on Oct 27th 2025, with an installation date confirmed for Nov 7th 2025 from 1-5 PM. I stayed home from work waiting for the technician. I received no contact for that span of time. I contacted Earthlink via Web Text Chat on Nov 8th 2025, but got no response. I did not have time to contact them again until Nov 14th 2025. I again tried the Texting Chat and got a very delayed response. I then called the phone number 866.383.3080 on their website and finally got a response. I asked to cancel my service because of nearly complete lack of communication. ( on Nov 12th 2025 they did send a reschedule of my installation). I was told by the Retention department that there was some issue with the installation on the Nov 7th 2025, but they did not communicate this to me at all until Nov 12th 2025. And then rather than ask me when I would be available, they assigned Nov 29th 2025 (which is literally in the middle of the Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend). Earthlink clearly does not have good communication between technicians, customer service, and customers, which is ironic for a company whose product is communication technology. And they are not aware of US American Holidays. To me this says that Earthlink is not competent and I do not want to have to endure this throughout the use of their service. Fortunately they have demonstrated that they do not want my money, before I had to suffer from their poor performance. ---WJL

Service fine not enough and no money in when they get payment have to do without till payment made and no prorated price for service or extension from when payment made

Earthlink is a good company, but they keep raising their price all the time it's too e pensive now.