Qwest Internet: The Biggest Rip-Off.

Anyone who is my friend on Facebook, or who follows me on Twitter may have noticed a lot of posts complaining about my internet being down.  Over and over again, it was the same old story.  It would work for a few minutes, or an hour, and then go down for a few minutes, an hour, or even a day.  It constantly cut in and out, and I was constantly frustrated with it.  I used Comcast a few years back, and NEVER had this problem with them. 

I rebooted the modem on several occasions, tried different wireless routers, and have even power cycled everything over and over to no avail.  The Roommate called them, and after several times being disconnected from their service (whether it was being hung up on, disconnected, or both) the tech finally said they would reset it on their end.  It worked for about a week before it started failing again.

When I worked at the bowling alley in Roy our internet was always down, and I remember good old Bob (the owners dad and our in-house IT) saying "Qwest's slogan should be "We're down more than we're up!" as well as when I lived with Ken and Kristi in Layton our internet (only like 1MB there) constantly crashed or would move slower than cold tar.  Kristi and Ken have since gone with Comcast in their new house, and haven't had hardly any problems with them.

I kind of knew we shouldn't have gone with Qwest, but it was slightly cheaper and we figured since we were in a more populated area this time that it would probably work better. WRONG.

What I didn't expect is to be paying for something I wasn't receiving, let alone something that ISN'T EVEN OFFERED IN MY AREA. 

I'll get back to that in just a moment.

Now this time when we called in to Qwest's technical support to fix the issue the tech ran us through the same old song and dance, and then told us a technician would be coming out to our house Sunday to check the lines.  They also said that if he had to come in the house to check the lines they would assess us a fee of $85.  At that point we decided that if they asked to come in and charge us that, we would cancel and use that $85 to switch to someone else-because we had a good feeling this wasn't an issue that was in any way our fault.  Boy were we RIGHT!

The technician came out and checked all the lines, and then came in and spoke with the roommate about it.  Apparently, while they've been charging us for 7MB, IT ISN'T EVEN OFFERED IN THIS AREA.  That's why it was crashing so often, because the lines couldn't handle them trying to push it to us and it was failing.  The tech called in and got them to switch us down to 5MB, and then 3MB, but both still provided errors on the line when pushed out.  When The Roommate said "Maybe we'll just go with someone else..." The technician replied "I would."

So for about eight and a half months, we've been paying for a service we weren't being provided.  This was not just because of technical difficulties, or user error-IT WAS BECAUSE THEY CAN'T EVEN OFFER WHAT WE WERE PAYING FOR IN OUR AREA.  Of course they knew that before, seeing as they know where they offer stuff and where they don't. 

So tell me, how is this not stealing from us?  They couldn't even push 3MB through our lines over here, they KNOW they don't offer 7MB in our area, so why when we called in to sign up would they let us sign up for 7MB and then proceed to try and send it through the line crashing our internet repeatedly?  Are they completely incompitent and don't know what they're doing?  If so they shouldn't be in the internet business, and if not, THEY'RE CROOKS.  Quite literally.

So we will be calling and canceling our Qwest internet and taking our business elsewhere.  We will also be asking for a refund, not only for the amount they've been overcharging us; but for all the time it's been down and we couldn't use it, and maybe even our modem that they charged us $100 for.  We would never have even gone with their service had we known we would only be getting 1MB.  If they don't refund it, well I think I'll be calling "Get Gephardt" our local TV guy who exposes scams.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.