Cox to become Suddenlink

[elmstreet]

follow up: Never did find the information I needed (what port to use when 25 is blocked) Suddenlink went to great detail explaining why they block it, but for suggestions on which to use there was the inevitable "call phone support". I gave up and am now using my mac.com server to sent outgoing mail. I've been away from home for several months so I'm mainly using this account remotely. If it persists maybe it will be time to get another ISP.(shrug)

[fed up in greenville ms]

I feel your pain sam. every since suddenlink took over for cox the internet speeds have been going down hill fast. my account is set up for an 8meg connection and i only get at best 12% of what i'm paying for. i have had several techs come out and check everything and i have called the suddenlink customer support number twice a week for four months. the only straight answer i have gotten from them is that they have been in negotiations with a thrird party provider for some hardware equipment to resolve the internet speed issue. the only problem with that is that it may take another 60 days to get this all complete. so far with all of my complaining to them i have been able to get almost all of my internet service charges removed from my bill for the past three months, but it takes on the average of an hour and a half on the phone to do it. i wished a real cable company would come in and take over the mess that suddenlink has made and turn it into a real cable service provider. i've been checking once a week on dsl service for my home, but so far it is still not avalible to me.

[Yancy In New Iberia]

I have been a customer of STAR Cable/Cebridge/Suddenlink in New Iberia, Louisiana, for several years, not by choice but because they are the only "high speed service" in the area. Recently, the services and speeds have been going down hill DRASTICALLY! It started about 5 months ago when my internet would go out every night at 9:00 without fail, and it would come back on every time I called for a technician so they would say nothing was wrong. After several weeks of this, and demanding a new modem several times, I went out and bought a new one with my own money,$70. This fixed the problem, for a few weeks. Next time it started happening, I was told by a Suddenlink employee who didn't know his @$$ from third base that it was my computer (sound familiar?)! Guess what, I've just purchased a brand new modem, router and COMPUTER and the problem is still there! I am giving Suddenlink another week to give me a free month service (AT LEAST) before I begin writing to every newspaper and radio and television station in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, West Virginia and every other state Suddenlink has a business in, and I PROMISE they will not appreciate the publicity this will bring. I urge all of you to do the same! Bring this to the public and make sure Suddenlink runs their business in a proper manner! THIS IS OUTRAGE AND WE NEED TO STOP THIS COMPANY FROM STEALING MONEY FROM PEOPLE! They do not deserve $1 a month, much less $40!!! TAKE A STAND!

[Mar]

Suddenlink has no technical service. All they do is say, "sorry for the problem" and then never fix it.

[Dana]

I've had good experience with Suddenlink -- price seems to be OK, speed is much better than it used to be, but we have a new Mac so that may be the reason, customer service has been courteous and I always got things resolved. Things I don't like: long hold time to talk to a tech, and having to call in the first place for really basic information. their website is really really bad. Whoever designed it should be fired. Navigation between webmail, manage accounts, etc. is not intuitive in the slightest. You have to cut through layers of ads for services you probably already have. There is a library of tech support that is almost a parody of inefficiency.See
http://www.suddenlink.com/support/information...
For an example for what passes for helpful information. Do they really have so many different smtp servers that it's not possible to actually list them? The email settings are byzantine compared to other ISPs I've had, would it be too much to ask to show a jpg of example settings for each of the common programs (outlook, mac mail, etc.)? Then I wouldn't have to call tech support for this info and waste their time and mine.

[Obbop]

SuddenLink is the cruddiest ISP I have ever dealt with.

From 1996 and dial-up to today's high-speed cable I have used several ISPs.

Cox was the best.

Suddenlink is the HIGHEST priced sub-par bunch of losers I have encountered.

Constant loss of service. Support is negligible and dealing with the various voices on the phone has taken up many HOURS of my time.

HORRID!!!!!!!!!!

If only there was another cable ISP provider to compete with SuddenLink.

I paid 45 percent less for Cox services and their offerings and service were excellent!!!!!!

I despise SuddenLink and may even give up high-speed Internet just so they can not get their greedy clammy paws on my money.

[Dave]

I have the 2meg service with suddenlink. I just found out thay cap thare users. I noticed if I download large files over 100MB my bandwidth drops from 2meg down to 200kbps. So I called customer service thay told me thay have a program that monitors the system if My download hits over the limit size the program will slow down the user for 1 hour thay told me to wait an hour and I should be back to the original speed.

I thank it is outrages to be capped for downloading over 100 megabites. That dosent even let me watch a movie or on demand shows, I watch a show 20 minutes later the show will cut out.

[F-N-Anonymous]

Little things that customers should know/Consider before using ANY ISP, or ANY VOIP Phone Service.

This isn't an attempt to defend Suddenlink or any other ISP/Phone provider. These are things to help CUSTOMER'S make well educated and informed decisions.

**********

First VOIP Phone Providers such as Skype, Vonage, Suddenlink etc.

1)Do you have a home alarm system? If so, consider that fact that when the cable goes out, you will be WITHOUT a phone, which WILL set off the alarm and disable it.

2)Do you have a heart/health monitoring system in the home? If so, same as number 1. You will be without phone if the cable signal is not working. You're loved one's lives are more important than saving a few bucks a month. Get a land line. By the way, I too have a heart condition which must be monitored.

3)Do you plan on using a fax machine? If so, it must be able to communicate digitally, if it's an analog, you will need either an adaptor, or you will need a Land Line.

4)Do you plan on using this phone service for an at home business? If so, be reminded that you will not have the same stability of a Land Line in the form of cable outages or internet interference.

Helpful hint #1
VOIP is NOT a land line. Land lines are analog phone services that do NOT run through the internet like Skype, Vonage, and Suddenlink.

Helpful hint #2
Phone Modems that run the Internet for your phone connection require a very strong and stable signal. If you frequently have cable outages, consider how often you will be without phone services. Once again, the safety of your family and loved ones should be a priority here and 911 calls will NOT work through a dead phone line, analog, VOIP, or otherwise.

Part 2 next...

[F-N-Anonymous]

PART 2
**********
Cable Internet Service Providers Tips

Examples of these would be ComCast, Time-Warner/Roadrunner, Suddenlink, etc.

All of the fore-mentioned providers advertise hight speeds yet, only guarantee a smaller portion, depending on the company. The 'Speed' that they offer is the Highest Point or Cap off, not the actual regular speed. Be sure to ask the sales agent how much of it is guaranteed. If he/she tells you the whole thing, you are being LIED TO, and who knows what else they've lied about.

I believe user "Dave from Macon, IL" who posted on Friday, Sept.12 discovered my next tip.
That tip being that there is a cap to how much bandwidth can be used per subscriber, per hour. Let it be known that this is done by ALL ISP's, or at least most that I know of. If you find one that doesn't, PLEASE LET US ALL KNOW.

Email issues

For those of you that use Outlook, MacMail, Windows Mail, Eudora, The BAT, Thunderbird, etc...
These are what is called an Email Client. What does this mean exactly?

Wikipedia had this to say, "An e-mail client, aka Mail User Agent (MUA), aka e-mail reader is a frontend computer program used to manage e-mail."
What this means is that it is NOT your ACTUAL EMAIL. It is a seperate program. A wise old man who is now passed on once told me, "Don't get a bunch of bells and whistles. That just means there's more that can go wrong with it. Keep it simple and you'll do fine." And while he was refering to a washing machine, the same applies here.

It will cause more head ache than it is worth. The only people that should be using it are the people it was originally designed for. People with 3+ BUSINESS emails that are all related and can be intermixed and handled in one fell swoop.
Webmail should work just fine and will save you time, money, and headache.

Examples of Webmail are as follows...
Yahoo.com , hotmail.com , googlemail, msn.com , aol.com and for suddenlink customers, suddenlink.net

These should be easy to use and will be much more user friendly than wondering what ports are blocked/filtered, how to get an old email you accidentaly deleted back, why your outgoing server won't work away from your home, and why exactly you can't send/recieve files with attachments larger than 25megs.

I hope this helps you all, I really do.
I will try to check in on this from time to time to see if there are anymore questions I can help you out with.

Just please keep in mind that I do NOT know everything and I admit this upfront.

I'm just trying to help you, even if it means the companies don't get all the customer's they want to have.

You're families, and your time with them, and your money to provide for them are more important.

"Keep it simple, and you'll do fine."
~Friendly Neighborhood Anonymous~

[spit]

I hate suddenlink!!! The reception is poor and my internet keeps going off! I have called but nothing has worked. I just hope everytime I'm online that it doesn't go out.

[AJ_New Iberia]

I've been with Cebrige/Suddenlink for around 5 years now, and I've never had as much hell with Suddenlink as I have in the past month. When we were recovering from Hurricane Gustav, I understood there was an outage and outages need to be taken care of before residental. So I first set a call out for a tech to come out and assist with the problem on Sept 10th, I waited, called back on several occasions and followed the outage as it was being cleared. I set around 4 tech visits on a "possible visit at some random time" basis until I simply couldn't sit around waiting at home for help getting my internet up, so finally I gave up on Sept 19th and accepted the first time I could have a tech visit 10 days later on Sept 29th, Sept 29th came Monday, guess what? Still no visit and worst of all some techs in support have been trying to push my restoration visit back another 10 days. I have to borrow internet just to handle important affairs so my paperwork gets out on time. What sucks is they monopolize the area so you HAVE TO keep them. If you have any choice about your ISP, DO NOT get Suddenlink, of all the providers you can find, their customer care is the absolute worst.