Astound | Auburn — Local services in Auburn

We did not receive our Wave bill in June. On July 3, (Printed on the statement, but not date we received it) Wave sent us a bill and added higher phone charges than the month before, and raised the bill for non payment. $40. We issued a check to Wave on 7.14. On 7-28 Wave disconnected our service for nonpayment. I called to speak with a customer service representative. After waiting two hours and five minutes, a very young and inexperienced woman told me she was working from home and she could not take a payment over the phone. She offered to put me back in the queue - fat chance I was going to wait another two hours. We pay our bills by return mail and we scan everything. The statement date was 7-3, but we received it substantially later than the date on the statement. Why that check has not cleared is only in the post office's control. The customer service rep sent me to an automated system to make a payment. I paid the bill utilizing a credit card. We scan everything and store no paper. They charged $40 to reconnect the service in addition to raising the phone service charge. I spoke with the customer service rep, but she basically told me she was working from home and she could not take a payment of waive the reconnect fee, that I would need to address that with yet another Customer Service Representative. She told me I could set up an account online and deal with it that way. I could not set up an online account because they turned off my internet and I could not provide an account number, which is on the scan file on a file server. I put it in LastPass now. After finally getting the service back on, I went online as that's what they suggest. There is no way to communicate with Wave except through their chat system. I wrote my explanation and as I hit the submit button, I got a message from them - actually several messages, and I took pics of them - and the first question is "Do you mind elaborating further?" New line - it says "Billing dispute." Under that it says, "We are currently experiencing issues at the moment. Please try to chat with us again later." I have now paid their bill twice - their customer service is abysmal. I have asked that they remove the $40 reconnect fee and put my phone service back to the original cost or terminate it. This is so frustrating. ...

Longform Below - To give a summary, I don't think I should get internet for free or even cheap, I get that its service that costs money. The fact that the whole business model is to catch people napping on their bills and then double to cost of things is absolutely predatory.

This is the conversation I had with the customer service rep today over the phone. My bill more than doubled since I came off of a promotional rate this month

Me - "I saw that my bill more than doubled. Can you help to explain this to me?"

WAVE - "Looks like you came off of our promotional rate."

Me - "Oh, I didnt see a warning or anything - I just happened to catch that had changed without warning. Do you usually send a reminder, some sort of letter, text or email?"

WAVE - "Yeah, we dont send reminders. Comcast and ATT dont either."

Me - "Doesnt that seem like you are trying to catch customers forgetting and then charging them a higher rate without noticing?"

WAVE - "I'm not saying that we shouldn't, I am just saying that we don't"

Me - "Regardless, what can we do about my bill?"

WAVE - "I can put you on a promotional rate of 53 dollars a month. You will have to call in 12 months from now and do this all over again or you can go on our retail rate of 69.95 per month and not have to call in."

Me - "So my two options are either have to go through this whole process again in 12 months, have you put me on hold while you 'research' what promo you can put me on, come back and offer me some random, no explanation cost or pay 16 dollars per month but not have to do this again?"

WAVE - "Yep."

Me - "Why is that? Can you set a reminder to send me a warning in 12 months when this 'promo' rate will cancel again?

WAVE - "Sorry, thats up to the customer to do. We dont do that."

Absolutely dumbfounded that a business can be run this way. I am happy paying for services that I need. I am not happy when the company's goal is catch people forgetting what they are paying and then jacking the...

These guys bit off more than they could chew, service-wise I think. There is a certain nostalgic value here though, brings me back to the days of dial up internet. "Busy hours" you will notice a sharp decline in your service speed. You will also notice frequent lapses in internet coverage and drastic slowdowns day-round at random. To the point where, for example, Alexa has been completely untrustworthy when it comes to basic things like.. timers. Yup, the internet is so shoddy Alexa will either be unable to set one, or unable to turn it off. She is all but useless, even unable to play music for longer than several minutes (no wave, it's not a problem with her) I honestly didn't know that was a thing, though it can be funny to witness. The company is aware of these slowdowns. They are aware of them to the point where you can reset the service via phone call on an automated system. You know how dial 1 for English or Spanish is a usual option? Well here dial 1 will reset their signal. Now this might fix it for 20 minutes, or a couple hours, or not at all. There is no consistency. Calling tech support will result in someone coming, fairly quickly to their credit. But, after three technicians, with different explanations as to why it's failing, (I noticed none said it was on their end) why the other guy was wrong ( including "he doesn't know what he's doing") and what you can do about it, (including make sure your modem is on, or buy a new one, or buy a new router) I gotta say, not impressed. Seems like y'all are guessing, or ya know and can't actually fix it so you're distracting us for a while until we give up. Currently looking to get someone else. Hard in this area outside of cell providers. Sad day when you miss Comcast.

Awaiting a generic " we are sorry to hear.. please contact blah blah so we can better resolve your...