Here comes my sad story. Are you ready?
I was an Adelphia Powerlink customer in 2001-2002 in Carroll County, MD and for the most part the system ran OK. I had occational outages that might last a couple of days and often the speed and ping times would be lousy during peak hours 5PM-10PM, but would speed up outside of those times. In April of 2002 my service went out and never came back. After about 10 hours on the phone and about 6 service visits they determined that they needed to do a road bore to run a new line from the box across the street to my house. They told me my service would be out for two months while I waited for them to run this new line. After much complaining and trying to improve the date they gave me I quit the service, got a dial-up account and DirecTV. Sometime in the summer of 2002 Adelphia ran a new line to my house, but never did a road bore.
After receiving promotional flyers from Adelphia every week and getting tired of the dial-up connection speed I decided to try Adelphia again in September of 2003, this time just for broadband because I love my DirecTV and it never goes out.
I was pained over this decision because my only choices for broadband are satellite (which is expensive and has latency issues), or cable broadband. DSL is not available in my area due to distance limitations. I signed up for service and setup a date for them to come out to hook up the connection (which already existed from the last time I had the service). I was home, but no one arrived. I walked outside and saw that they ground cable was hooked up to the line into the house which runs directly to the cable modem. I went in the house, turned everything on and I could not get the modem to go online so it was obvious that the installer just hooked up the cable and left, but never put a modem on the connection. After 3 missed appointments and several hours on the phone to Buffalo and the Powerlink call center they suggested that I go into the local office. The local office hours are 9-5 M-F and 8-12 two Saturdays a month. Those Saturdays had passed so I needed to take a day off of work to do this. I went and asked to speak to a manager. The manager was not available to talk to me, so I told the receptionist what I'd been through and she said that they would send someone right out. The guy came out and verified that he couldn't get a signal at the modem. He then tried running a cable from the box above ground to the house and the signal wouldn't sync with the modem. He was a contractor and told me that he couldn't fix the problem, it was in the box which only Adelphia could work on. I went back to the local office after five days went by with no calls or action. I asked to speak to the manager who again was busy. The receptionist asked if she could help me and I told her that I needed to talk to the manager. She told me that the manager would call me later in the day. I asked if there was a number I could get so I could call the manager. She told me that they cannot give out those numbers. Two days later, the manager still hadn't called me and the service was still out. I went back into the office a third time and asked to speak to the manager. I was told that the manager wasn't available. I totally lost my cool and started screaming at the receptionist that all I want is my service to work and tell me why no one in this place can finish an install. When she started crying, the manager came out and told me to calm down. I told her I want my install completed. Two days later she sent out an Adelphia crew that replaced a part (I'm not sure which) in the box outside and the system now worked fine. It turns out that this part is what was wrong with the system back in 2002.
What is sad is that the story isn't over yet. The service was incredible, fast, and pretty much up 24/7 until March of this year when the local electric company was digging and cut the cable in my yard. Adelphia fixed it two days after I called it in.
The next trouble happened in May after some thunderstorms knocked out power in the area. My power came back on but the cable was out. It took two weeks for them to get someone out to look at the problem. It turned out to be something that person couldn't fix, but it was an Adelphia problem further down the line. They finally fixed it after 2 1/2 weeks.
Fast forward to July 6th. The service goes out (there really weren't any bad storms at the time) and we call to have someone look at it. The usually restart the modem, unplug and restart doesn't change anything. They tell me that they can get someone out on July 31st to look at it. After getting referred to Powerlink's 2nd tier they moved the date to July 20th, but they tell me that this is the best they can do.
Since I've had Adelphia I've wasted seven vacation days, countless hours on the phone, and had to make a receiptionist cry to get an install completed. Now my service is out again. I pay my $54.95 a month on time. I try to be a nice guy on the phone since I do computer support for a living. Here are my questions:
What, if anything can I do to get better service?
Adelphia states in their terms of use that they will provide industry standard support. Is 3 weeks before a service call can be made "industry standard"?
Should I just take off of work again and go down to the local office and scream?
I'm about ready to go Michael Moore on this company. Any thoughts?
Mike Backof
mbacko1@yahoo.com
I was an Adelphia Powerlink customer in 2001-2002 in Carroll County, MD and for the most part the system ran OK. I had occational outages that might last a couple of days and often the speed and ping times would be lousy during peak hours 5PM-10PM, but would speed up outside of those times. In April of 2002 my service went out and never came back. After about 10 hours on the phone and about 6 service visits they determined that they needed to do a road bore to run a new line from the box across the street to my house. They told me my service would be out for two months while I waited for them to run this new line. After much complaining and trying to improve the date they gave me I quit the service, got a dial-up account and DirecTV. Sometime in the summer of 2002 Adelphia ran a new line to my house, but never did a road bore.
After receiving promotional flyers from Adelphia every week and getting tired of the dial-up connection speed I decided to try Adelphia again in September of 2003, this time just for broadband because I love my DirecTV and it never goes out.
I was pained over this decision because my only choices for broadband are satellite (which is expensive and has latency issues), or cable broadband. DSL is not available in my area due to distance limitations. I signed up for service and setup a date for them to come out to hook up the connection (which already existed from the last time I had the service). I was home, but no one arrived. I walked outside and saw that they ground cable was hooked up to the line into the house which runs directly to the cable modem. I went in the house, turned everything on and I could not get the modem to go online so it was obvious that the installer just hooked up the cable and left, but never put a modem on the connection. After 3 missed appointments and several hours on the phone to Buffalo and the Powerlink call center they suggested that I go into the local office. The local office hours are 9-5 M-F and 8-12 two Saturdays a month. Those Saturdays had passed so I needed to take a day off of work to do this. I went and asked to speak to a manager. The manager was not available to talk to me, so I told the receptionist what I'd been through and she said that they would send someone right out. The guy came out and verified that he couldn't get a signal at the modem. He then tried running a cable from the box above ground to the house and the signal wouldn't sync with the modem. He was a contractor and told me that he couldn't fix the problem, it was in the box which only Adelphia could work on. I went back to the local office after five days went by with no calls or action. I asked to speak to the manager who again was busy. The receptionist asked if she could help me and I told her that I needed to talk to the manager. She told me that the manager would call me later in the day. I asked if there was a number I could get so I could call the manager. She told me that they cannot give out those numbers. Two days later, the manager still hadn't called me and the service was still out. I went back into the office a third time and asked to speak to the manager. I was told that the manager wasn't available. I totally lost my cool and started screaming at the receptionist that all I want is my service to work and tell me why no one in this place can finish an install. When she started crying, the manager came out and told me to calm down. I told her I want my install completed. Two days later she sent out an Adelphia crew that replaced a part (I'm not sure which) in the box outside and the system now worked fine. It turns out that this part is what was wrong with the system back in 2002.
What is sad is that the story isn't over yet. The service was incredible, fast, and pretty much up 24/7 until March of this year when the local electric company was digging and cut the cable in my yard. Adelphia fixed it two days after I called it in.
The next trouble happened in May after some thunderstorms knocked out power in the area. My power came back on but the cable was out. It took two weeks for them to get someone out to look at the problem. It turned out to be something that person couldn't fix, but it was an Adelphia problem further down the line. They finally fixed it after 2 1/2 weeks.
Fast forward to July 6th. The service goes out (there really weren't any bad storms at the time) and we call to have someone look at it. The usually restart the modem, unplug and restart doesn't change anything. They tell me that they can get someone out on July 31st to look at it. After getting referred to Powerlink's 2nd tier they moved the date to July 20th, but they tell me that this is the best they can do.
Since I've had Adelphia I've wasted seven vacation days, countless hours on the phone, and had to make a receiptionist cry to get an install completed. Now my service is out again. I pay my $54.95 a month on time. I try to be a nice guy on the phone since I do computer support for a living. Here are my questions:
What, if anything can I do to get better service?
Adelphia states in their terms of use that they will provide industry standard support. Is 3 weeks before a service call can be made "industry standard"?
Should I just take off of work again and go down to the local office and scream?
I'm about ready to go Michael Moore on this company. Any thoughts?
Mike Backof
mbacko1@yahoo.com
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