Optimum — Attraction in Jonesboro

Hello, if you're looking into getting services with Suddenthief, don't. I'll tell you my experience and why you should just use your mobile hotspot through your phone company.

My family and I moved to Jonesboro late October in 2020. The moment we started leasing the house, we began the process of setting up a account with Suddenlink. I didn't know what I was getting into. I was not able to receive services until mid November. Ugh, the amount of phone calls and hoops. This was all because someone who lived in the house before us didn't pay their bills. One representative said we would have to email a picture of mail we received with our last address. Next representative wanted us to do a change of address form. We changed our address online through the USPS website. Then we emailed it to Suddenlink like we were told. Next representative told us that wouldn't work, we would have to have it stamped by the post office and sent in. The postal service said they didn't do that. 👀 Never got the same representative, so it was just one representative saying one thing and another saying something else. You'll experience alot of representatives that have no idea what their talking about. You'll never get a manager either. 👀 I was finally able to get a representative to help me activate an account without the hassle. After selecting the $90 package with the promotional $100 gift card. All that was left was to wait for the technician to come out to set up the equipment. Or so I thought. I would experience connection problems multiple times a day, multiple times a week. My life was calling them, almost every day to fix the problems. Not even a month later I see I have an overdue amount of $10 on my account. Which I thought was odd, since I paid for my services in full the day I activated my account. No one mentioned an extra charge. I would find out I was disqualified for the gift card because of their neglect about this extra charge they put on my account. I mentioned this multiple times to representatives and was assured I would still receive the promotional gift card. It's April now and still no card. Not surprised. 👀Watch out for this trick they pull.. I suggest checking your billing cycle and the due dates both on your overview page and the statement sheet.👀 I mention checking these because it is likely your billing cycle is wrong. Along, with the due date on your overview page could be different than the one on your statement sheet. The one on your statement sheet is probably a day earlier than the one listed on the overview page. Which could mean you're paying your bill a day or so late.

Hell, listen to this. One morning I realized my internet wasn't on but didn't have time to deal with it at that moment. When I got home I called about my internet and was told that I didn't have internet and never had it, just cable. They then told me that a representative/operator went into my account at 4:42 a.m. in the morning on January 5th and disconnected my Internet. This means someone randomly went into my account without my permission and disconnected services that are paid in advanced. What was crazy is my bank card that was connected to my account would have an fraudulent charge not even five hours later.

The monopoly that Suddenlink has in Jonesboro needs to expire, now

I've reported them to the Better Business Bureau and you should voice your concerns to the BBB. Let your experiences be heard, so the people of Jonesboro can...

New name but still the same scumbag company as they were when they called themselves Suddenlink. We endured years of continually getting screwed price wise for unreliable service - things like getting charged for equipment that was never installed and/or returned, and optional insurance that we expressly told them we didn't want and never authorized, and so on, simply because we didn't have any viable practical alternatives until recently. Numerous contacts with customer service trying to get billing changed/corrected were a total waste of time.

Finally good alternate providers have become available, and we left skid marks getting away from Optimum/Suddenlink so fast. The new providers (both home and business accounts) have been great. We have refused to pay our last Optimum bill because they would not correct the billing, which would have resulted in them owing us. So they turned our past due accounts over to a debt collection service, which is fine - easy to tell them you dispute the charge and then ignore any contact after that, and no hits to our credit score (still over 800).

So now even though our recent past account is in collections from our refusal to pay, not to mention a log of MANY customer service contacts complaining of their unethical tactics and improper charges, they send an employee (Stacy Mann) door to door soliciting our business back, leaving giant door tags behind when we didn't answer. I'm sure all the vandals and thieves thank you Stacy for taking the time to flag all the buildings that are safe for them to hit. It's really nice of you to take the time to do that for them even in cases when you know (or should know) that you have absolutely zero chance of doing business again with that location - not to mention adding to the environmental detriment by leaving unwanted litter behind.

So for anyone considering Optimum, do yourself a favor and don't get fooled by any fake low price offers - our many years of experience is they will add unauthorized options/charges, you will spend hrs and hrs dealing with their customer service that will be a total waste, and their service is unreliable. You you will be hounded with constant up sell attempts no matter how hard you try to opt out. For example, we used to have Voip phone service, but dropped it simply because we couldn't get Optimum/Suddenlink to stop the constant upsell attempt robocalls.

One account we switched to RightFiber (Ritter) and the other we switched to T-mobile Home Internet. Both have been great and soooo much better than Optimum - no unexpected charges, no annoying upsell contacts, much more reliable service, and ethical conduct. We literally wouldn't do business with Optimum again even if they offered it to...

I would honestly give less than 1 star if it were possible. I apologize this is going to be long. So we set up the internet service after a representative knocked on our door and offered better service for less than we were already paying. Install went smoothly, service started up without any major issues. We did also start the process of switching phone service to optimum as well. We never actually finished the process of setting up the mobile service (didn't switch phone numbers or transfer our number over). So our issues began when we tried to cancel our internet and mobile service because we got better deals from our current provider. To start off they never explained that we needed to return the equipment for the internet to have things fully canceled, until we had already called multiple times trying to cancel. We were never set up for autopay so our bill didn't grow too terribly before we jumped through their hoops the right way.

The bigger problems we had were with the mobile service. So as mentioned above we started the process to get the mobile service set up. We bought a new Sim card, but never transfered our phone number over, or set up a new number. We have been getting monthly bills from them, even though we NEVER SET UP AUTOPAY. We have called the customer service number multiple times over the last few months trying to get everything canceled so as to quit being charged. Every time we called they would say that everything on their end was canceled and we should not be charged again. Come the next month another charge came through. Repeat the call the customer service, repeat being told everything should now be canceled. THIS WENT ON FOR 5 MONTHS!! So yesterday I call again after yet another charge! Come to find out every time we called they kept sending me to the internet department not the mobile. They then transfer me to the mobile department and we explain our problem. They then explain that they automatically enroll everyone in autopay as part of their "terms and conditions". After explaining that we never actually set up the mobile service they agreed to put in for a refund request. Basically the decision was we are not getting any money back. Because we "knew" about the bill and had been getting emails about the bill. No one cared that we had been trying to cancel things for the last 5 months, but their own customer service idiots kept sending us to the wrong department. My overall point is I will never recommend this company to anyone I know, and will never consider them for my business ever again. Because they think it is OK to bill people for service that we never even...