Frontier - Citizens Communications - Commonwealth Telephone - CTCO - Epix ripoff DSL ISP Pennsylvania scam Stamford Connecticut

We signed up with Commonwealth Telephone (CTCO) during or around October 2006. We had trouble right from the start obtaining the DSL modem and the filters we were told we needed for the DSL. In addition, we were told it would be 2 weeks until we could get a 2nd line as the pole was not setup for a 2nd line initially. It took approximately 6 months for that 2nd line to actually be installed and become available to us.

We experienced some stability issues throughout our time with CTCO but nothing serious to warrant a consumer complaint. We realized due to our rural location we might not get a perfect DSL connection. For the most part though, we did get the 1.5mbit (~ 160 Kilobytes/s) speeds we were paying for and were promised and I don't ever recall a time when the DSL service was totally unavailable.

In March, CTCO was bought out by Frontier AKA Citizens Communications and thus we became Frontier customers.

Approximately 4 weeks ago (May 2007), our DSL went down completely. We took the dog for a walk and noticed there was a Frontier worker on the pole so we inquired as to what he was doing. He replied: "I'm upgrading your DSL." Well we thought that was great and so we left him to his work and quietly dealt with the downtime. For the next few days we had almost no DSL but we figured they were still working on it. The DSL did return but we immediately noticed it was slower - we were now getting 1.1mbit (~ 120 Kilobytes/s) instead of the 1.5mbit we had before. We also started experiencing some stability issues, causing us to get disconnected fairly often. We tried contacting Frontier both via phone and via their online chat but no one was ever available on either.

Last week, the week of June 11, 2007, the problem became unbearable. Not only did speeds drop a little lower - to about 1mbit (~ 110 Kilobytes/s) - but we could barely stay connected at all. At times we were totally without service for 2-8 hours at a time. I called tech support again and this time I finally got someone.

Tech support said our Signal to Noise ratio should be around 18 and ours was a 6. He said all of our numbers were "really bad" and he was "surprised we could connect at all." He stated that it looked "like a line problem" and he would probably need a "cable splice." In layman's terms, there was a problem with the line causing our speed and stability issues. I exited the conversation feeling somewhat satisfied that they admitted to the problem and promised to repair it ASAP. I was given a next day service appointment.

The next day I waited and waited and the serviceman never showed. I called at 4:45pm and they told me he "had been in the area" and determined the problem would "require a line crew." It would have been nice had he called me to tell me this since my wife and I stayed home all day waiting for him. This led me to take my issues to the business office.

Well the problem only got worse from there. We gave them a couple days and then I called to see if I could get an update on the repair situation. They said there was no news. Later we contacted tech support again and got a seeminlgly helpful fellow named Roger who said he would get on this right away. He said to call him back when we were in front of the PC. We called him back a short time later and he informed us he had downgraded us to 640 kilobit in an attempt to troubleshoot the stability issues. We were not happy about this but he promised us he would set it back by Monday once we could tell him if it helped or not. Well Monday is today and it did not help. The connection is more unstable than ever. We called to get our account set back to the 1.5mbit we signed up for and paid for and were told "once an account is downgraded, our policy is to never upgrade it again." They said "you can live with it or we can cancel your account." Well we don't have a choice of phone companies or ISPs here - they are the only game in town and they know it.

So now our connection is set to less than half the speed we were promised and paid for. The DSL is extremely unstable and slow and they have refused to do anything about it. The only one who is even making any attempt to hep us is Diane at the business office and she has our thanks for her efforts.

This company is a ripoff and I encourage anyone interested in a class action lawsuit to contact me. I plan on following up this report with complaints to my congressman, the Attorney General's Office of Consumer Affairs and the Better Business Bureau.

Here are 2 other domains that belong to these thieves:
my.epix.net
czn.com

Erik
Bangor, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.