CenturyLink Qwest I LOST HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS TRYING CENTURYLINK’S “RISK-FREE” “NO OBLIGATION” HIGH SPEED INTERNET TRIAL Denver Nationwide

I LOST HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS TRYING CENTURYLINK’S “RISK-FREE” “NO OBLIGATION” HIGH SPEED INTERNET TRIAL

I’m a long-time CenturyLink customer with multiple residential AND business accounts/lines.  I also use CenturyLink for internet access and to get my DirectTV.  So I pay CenturyLink quite a bit each month.

Recently, CenturyLink sold me the new 1-Gig high-speed internet service.  It isn’t cheap, but 1-Gig/second might be worth the price.  Yet such speeds can be hard to achieve, and CenturyLink is clear about this in its related technical materials and High Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement.  So I was hesitant to buy.  But the sales agent said, "I can actually have you put down to try that service for 30 days after it is installed risk-free at no obligation to you to keep it…"  This is quoted directly from my full transcript of the order, which was done via CenturyLink’s chat service.  Based on this assurance, I agreed to the “risk-free” trial.

The actual upload speed for me was only about 20 Meg/second and I couldn’t fix the problem after discussing the issue with the installation technician, nor after slogging through CenturyLink’s various trouble-shooting suggestions.

When I noticed that I was billed around $225 for the “risk-free” / “no obligation” trial, I emailed CenturyLink on the 29th day after installation and directed them to cancel the 1-Gig service/trial.  To this day I’ve received no reply.  So on the 30th day after installation, I spent 4 hours in chat/IM and on the phone with CenturyLink whereby they were finally able to cancel the 1-Gig plan/trial and place an order to restore my prior speed.

Here’s the most frustrating and horrible part of this consumer experience:  Ultimately, CenturyLink is refusing to remove the $225 of fees for the “risk-free” / “no obligation” trial, and has threatened to send my account to collections if I don’t pay!

CenturyLink’s agents and supervisors gave me various explanations, which all seem to be based on irrelevant/invalid semantics.  Here are the explanations I can remember:

• CenturyLink said that the 30-day risk-free trial is only good if the customer cancels ALL of his CenturyLink services. But this was absolutely not clearly represented to me when agreeing to the order, nor does it fit with the context of the order for a trial to “try” an optional service upgrade.  [I mean, why would anyone do a trial of a new optional service upgrade if unsatisfactory results meant that ALL services would need to be cancelled?  Also noteworthy is that the associated High Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement defines “service” to mean “the specific service being described”.]

• CenturyLink was ready and willing to cancel ALL of my service, but nonetheless still intended to collect the $225 for the “risk-free” trial.

• The CenturyLink agent did not allow my 29^th day email to be considered because she said it was lodged on the 30^th day. [But this is irrelevant because it’s still within the 30-day trial].  She also rejected the email notification because she said that service changes can’t be made via email.

• CenturyLink is disqualifying me from the “risk-free” trial benefits because CenturyLink asserts that my chat and telephone requests for cancellation request were lodged on the 31^st day after service installation, even though they were actually lodged on the 30^th day [still within the 30-day trial].

• CenturyLink said that they could “do a lot more for me” if I had called them before the 30^th day and that I should have cancelled the service sooner.

• The CenturyLink agent and her supervisors said “risk-free” just means that I’m under no contractual obligation to keep the service.

When I asked for CenturyLink’s formal written definition of “risk-free”, no one was able to provide such a definition.  Instead, the agent said that CenturyLink decides the meaning of “risk-free” via her as the service agent, and via her supervisors.

I’m just a regular guy and certainly no match for the power, strength, and legal counsel of a juggernaut like CenturyLink.  But as far as I can see, CenturyLink doesn’t seem to be abiding by its apparent misrepresentations sold to me during the ordering process, nor in the related High Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement.

On top of this, a similar misrepresentation happened previously when CenturyLink promised us that DirectTV’s $200 Visa gift card offer was good when adding DirectTV through CenturyLink.  But later CenturyLink reneged on that too.  My wife was depending on that for groceries.

So in total I’ve lost $425 through my recent experiences with CenturyLink.

It also seems that the FTC has similar concerns about such things.  For example the FTC said, “…some… businesses make it tough to cancel, hiding the terms and conditions of their [“risk-free”] offers in teensy type…and putting conditions on returns and cancellations that are so strict it could be next to impossible to stop the deliveries and the billing...”  Here’s the FTC’s source article: .consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0101-free-trial-offers

I guess I’ll need to start the complaint process recommended by the FTC, followed by the arduous process (ugh) of finding another service provider for my residential and business accounts.

I also feel the need to share my experience via social and other media outlets in order to help other consumers avoid this kind of experience.  CENTURYLINK BUYERS BEWARE!!