Astound | Rocklin — Local services in Rocklin

I have been trying to call for days and days to make adjustments to my service and every single time they say they are experiencing unusually high call volumes. I just waited over an hour before finally hanging up because i figured they were probably never going to answer. We moved into a new home inn December and found out that we were not allowed to port over our Comcast services because wave has monopolized the area (granite bay) and because of that Comcast isn't allowed to open service here. First of all, we live in a capitalist society (thank God) for a reason! It allows every single individual to choose whatever thing they want wherever they want and is based on the individual consumer. The fact that wave has somehow monopolized the area by accusing anyone else of trying to do so, goes against that and i am not happy about it at ALL! I am absolutely infuriated that i am not allowed to bring my amazing Comcast services with me to my beautiful new home and instead i am stuck with the worst service provider I've ever experienced in my life! With Comcast, i always knew what to expect on my bills and they always answered my calls immediately! The service is completely unmatched by a long shot, especially with the beyond ancient technology that is offered by wave, to the point where i can't even watch anything on TV because the menu for wave TV doesn't work and they don't even have any channels! I literally purchased every single thing wave has in their TV service, and i can't watch a thing! They still haven't added the final episode to His Dark Materials that aired in December. It is the worst cable I've ever seen! I would rather get another satellite service which i hate then deal with waves cable or TV ever again! I actually loved watching TV with Comcast and btw, wave services are way more expensive than Comcast! We are paying triple what we paid for Comcast, and we are not even able to watch anything because it just doesn't work! I've tried to locate shows and channels in wave and they don't have anything! Do NOT waste your money! In fact we are going to order the Hulu live TV service instead and keep the internet at least. However, i can't even call to get in touch with anyone about it because they never answer the phones so now i have no choice but to go all the way to their office instead. How ironic that they don't even know how to use a phone. I would also like to note that they are the most unprofessional service technicians I've ever seen! The guy that installed our service to begin with, was so rude, so unprofessional and gave me the total creeps being alone around him! The first thing he did when he came over, which he was really late btw, was tell me, NOT ask, that he needed to use the bathroom and that because he's been to my house before he already knows where the bathroom is and that i don't need to show him. Are you freaking kidding me?! I was honestly so shocked that i didn't even have anything to say. On top of that, he was constantly walking around my house into our bedrooms without permission sitting on his phone, then ghetto rigged our main internet line that is split in two, scolded me about asking when Comcast will be inn the area and told me they will never be allowed to service our house and to get over it. He was constantly going in and out of the house to his truck even though it seemed like he wasn't doing anything to setup any of our services, he setup our sonos surround sound system without giving us a remote and then left a bunch of garbage and boxes and told me that he was nice enough to leave the boxes here for us, as if it's a gift or something even though he just didn't want to clean up after himself. He spent a total of 2.5 hours here and at the very end asked me for my phone number, claiming it was ONLY to setup our password to our internet even though he made me input my phone number into his cell phone and made me feel extremely awkward. He acted like a total tool the entire time and i can tell he treats women like garbage and by his actions and responses to...

Wave has reasonable speeds and competitive prices.

Now, if only the service were reliable. I've had problems with speed and latency for over a year. First, Wave's technicians said it was due to the size of my house, so although my then current system was rated at 1,000 sq/ft more than my house size, I purchased a mesh WIFI system capable of covering twice the house's footprint. Next, I was told that it was a problem with WIFI, so I had ethernet installed throughout the house. (Cat 7 cables which are rated at more that 10 gigabits/second.) Next, it was the coaxial cable in my walls. So, I had that replaced. Nothing solved the problem. Now, they are telling me it is a problem with the "carrier," which I assume is one or more of the upstream hubs. But they insist that this problem is only from the last couple of days. (I wonder if it might have been a systemic problem that only now got bad enough that they chose to address it.) At each stage of the process, I would see slowdowns, at one point it got to 10mb/s on a 1,000 mb/s service, and significant problems with stability and latency. I've had days where the internet was active for only 20 minutes at a time.

But as it stands now, I have somewhere between 90,000 to 100,000 uncorrectable errors across all 32 of my downstream channels. I reset the counters to zero 75-90 minutes ago.

In summary, if you manage to reliably get the service you pay for, Wave is a reasonable internet provider. But that has not been my experience. At this point, Wave has become someone I talk to every week or so to share how I’m doing and see if things are ok on their end. I suppose you could call it a strange sort of friendship. Over the past year, they have sent dozens of service calls to my house, so they do "respond." The problem is that none of those calls and the by now expected the escalated calls to supervisors has resolved the issue.

If they ever do resolve the issues, I'll have to find something to do with all those hours I've spent talking on the phone with their operators and conversing with their techs. To be fair, there was one bright spot. On 10/26/2021, I had a glorious day of fast, stable internet. So maybe once they get the carrier fixed, that is what I'll experience all the time.

Of course, then, once the internet is reliable, I'll have to find something to occupy those hours and hours I spent with Wave. Perhaps I can talk to my old...

I called last week to inquire about the sudden increase to my monthly statement from about $80-$125 for 1GB fiber. I waited 40 minutes, was hung up on, called back only to wait another 30 minutes and the customer service representative told me that the only option I had was to decrease my Internet speed, or to bundle my products. I explained to the customer representative that your competitor in the area (Fidium) was providing the same speed and all the hardware for $70 a month all in. She told me that there was nothing that she could do. She also suggested that I deploy my own hardware (router and wifi extender) and when I explained to her that the only reason I was renting those products in the first place was because when I was first installing Astound internet service, the customer representative told me that I would not qualify for after service or issues with my network and that I would have to pay out of pocket for any service related requests ($200-$300 just to have a technician come out-not accounting for the cost of the fix). I opted to use my own hardware. The customer representative said while that is true, I can pay for a protection plan for $5 a month instead. Had I known that, I never would’ve paid $35 a month for the hardware rentals in the first place. I was lied to and taken advantage of as a customer.

I called Fidium, it took 2 minutes to set up an install appointment and there were no hidden fees and the process was incredibly streamlined and straightforward. I called back to cancel my service and waited another 35 minutes; I explained that I wanted to cancel, there was no offer or attempt to provide me with a better price, no questions around why I was leaving.

When Fidium’s technician came out, he told me that the old modem (astound) was a copper line (meaning I had cable). I told him that I was paying for 1gb fiber and he showed me the difference between copper and fiber lines and let me know that I was being scammed. I contacted Astound asking to be reimbursed for the price difference as I was paying for Fiber and receiving cable, and they had labeled my internet package as “gigabit high speed” and said their fiber is “gigabit fiber” and that there was nothing they did wrong.

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE JOKE OF A COMPANY. Trust me, save yourself the hassle, and the money, and avoid their deceptive business practices and blatant lying. Just go...