Cablevision/Optimum Internet DOWN 8 days SO FAR THIS MONTH

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Cablevision/Optimum Internet DOWN 8 days SO FAR THIS MONTH

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notsayin
getting it
Joined: May '10
Posts: 115

After a five-day outage two weekends ago, our Optimum Online internet has been out again since Saturday AM. I've called and harassed them about five times this weekend (last outage ate up two days of a three-day weekend chasing the service guys, helping them get access to backyards on my block, etc). To be fair, the service techs were great - the stayed at it and worked their butts off until it was fixed (which took five days).

Last night the phone tech support told me this outage was affecting 2,000 people in Crown Heights/Prospect Heights, and admitted that, "yeah, they probably AREN'T really working on it since it's Sunday" (despite the automated phone message every 3 hours assuring me "our technicians continue to work on the problem").

A different CSR on Saturday had chalked it up to "all the rain" we've been getting lately". Well it's f@cking Spring...it rains...it's not Hurricane Katrina. When it rains, I don't lose my electric, phone, gas or water service - and all that infrastructure is older than cable TV. AND I pay Cablevision more for service than all the others combined. Spend some of my $200/month and FIX YOUR SH!T so it stays dry in the rain. And don't get me started about the DVR that was designed in 2003 and the two keystrokes it takes to slowly get to the channel guide.

Is it just me, or if this were Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope, it would have been fixed in a few hours? Does Cablevision care about mixed-income and low-income neighborhoods?

This is what happens when there's only one service provider. (again, to be fair, our downstairs neighbor just got FioS installed and is getting 33KB downloads. AOL dial-up all over again).

Oh yeah, nobody can read this since their Internet is down...

# Posted 1 yr ago
whynot_31
Former Lurker
Joined: Mar '06
Posts: 16,033

Actually, I think this board has consistently reached consensus Cablevision just sucks no matter where you live.

Which I think is very telling, because (in my experience) the members of this board agree so rarely, and on so little. Below, I present biased anecdotal evidence which (in my mind) confirm the hypothesis I set out to prove: I searched the terms "cablevision sucks".

As expected, the terms returned pages and pages of results, all of which say similar things: Cablevision sucks.

Yes, the message is united no matter where a poster has posted from. The message does not seem to vary based on neighborhood, or income, or racial demographics.

Leading me to believe:

-If Cablevision served East New York, they would do it in a manner that sucked.

-If cablevision served the Upper East Side, they would do it in a manner that sucked.

-If Cablevision served an area that had an income and racial distribution that somehow EXACTLY MATCHED the results of the New York City census, they would do it in a manner that sucked.

http://brooklynian.com/forum/search-results.php?cx=partner-pub-1040068503971974%3A3di5qsnhyev&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=+cablevision+suck&sa=%C2%A0SEARCH%C2%A0»&siteurl=brooklynian.com%2Fforum%2Fcrown-heights-and-prospect-lefferts-gardens%2Fcablevisionoptimum-internet-down-8-days-so-far-this-month-1%23post-731553

...but, of course, maybe people just don't post about cablevision service when it is reliably working.

For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor.

# Posted 1 yr ago
WhyFi
I'm Urban - recognize!
Joined: Jul '05
Posts: 5,268

This has been discussed ad nauseum on these boards, and I've probably been one of the biggest contributors (at one point, I registered a domain name [optoffline.com] and requested that frustrated users document the ups and downs of their bandwidth. Despite a lot of complaining, there was virtually no participation). In any event, what I was able to discern was that "normal" (non-Boost customers) were being served on very overloaded servers and that the brown-outs (and black-outs) mirrored the predictable pattern of peak usage times, the worst being the evening when most people get home from work and settle in for the evening.

As far as speculation on whether or not Cablevision puts as much of a priority on the service provided to low- and middle-income 'hoods - I don't know. What I do know is that they certainly treat their higher paying customers better. Because I needed to host a server at home, I switched over to the Boost plan. I noticed instant (not overnight - instant) gains in UL/DL speeds and, more importantly, I haven't had a single outage in... well, more than a year.

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

# Posted 1 yr ago
ntfool
above average
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 483

There are other options. We've lived in the neightborhood for nearly a decade, and the whole time we've had DirecTV in place of cable and Verizon internet/phone services. Is DirecTV great? Heck no, but it beats the hell out of Cablevision. Also have had some pretty sh*tty service through Verizon with the interwebs, but I believe it to be more reliable than optimum.

If you're happy, you're not paying attention.

spurn Productions, Inc.

# Posted 1 yr ago
PragmaticGuy
above average
Joined: Apr '11
Posts: 391

My office is on St. Johns and Troy and I have had no problems with phone or internet from Cablevision. Of course, now that I said that things will probably turn to crap.

# Posted 1 yr ago
WhyFi
I'm Urban - recognize!
Joined: Jul '05
Posts: 5,268

PragmaticGuy said:
My office is on St. Johns and Troy and I have had no problems with phone or internet from Cablevision. Of course, now that I said that things will probably turn to crap.

Is this a regular account or a business account?

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

# Posted 1 yr ago
PragmaticGuy
above average
Joined: Apr '11
Posts: 391

Business....when I have a problem they show up pretty quickly. But even still, there have been no outages at all... yet.

# Posted 1 yr ago
WhyFi
I'm Urban - recognize!
Joined: Jul '05
Posts: 5,268

Yeah, that's because they're routed differently - see my above. I'm sure that people on the same block with regular service suffer the same outages as discussed in this thread.

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

# Posted 1 yr ago
whynot_31
Former Lurker
Joined: Mar '06
Posts: 16,033

Giving better service to INDIVIDUALS and BUSINESSES because they pay more for a premium package sounds completely fair to me. When one thinks about it, we have an entire economic system that strives to implement this sense of fairness.

As a result, I continue to believe the hypothesis I set out to prove: All neighborhoods receive equally crappy service from Cablevision.

I also agree with the OP: Some competition would do this industry a world of good.

(If requested, I will cite instances in which competition has improved customer service, yet leave out instances in which it has no effect.)

Given my research methods, I will always prove myself to be correct. I would make an excellent researcher.

For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor.

# Posted 1 yr ago
PragmaticGuy
above average
Joined: Apr '11
Posts: 391

There is competition. It's called Verizon DSL and phone. Where Verizon doesn't really compete is on price. My bill was literally cut in half for the same service, number of lines, etc. That's why people switch to Cablevision to begin with.

# Posted 1 yr ago
eastbloc
comprador bourgeois
Joined: Jul '09
Posts: 902

Verizon is not available in large parts of Crown Heights. Not even DSL is available where I live.

That said, I have Cablevision Ultra, and off-peak it is hands down the fastest internet service available in the USA, twice as fast as the fastest FIOS offering. I get close to 85mbps throughput downstream.

Uptime is reasonable. I haven't had any substantial outages in over a year and a half.

# Posted 1 yr ago
WhyFi
I'm Urban - recognize!
Joined: Jul '05
Posts: 5,268

Oh, by the way, "all the rain," might not be a physical problem with the equipment - it might high demand/usage because people aren't out and about...

...not that there's anything wrong with that.

# Posted 1 yr ago
Boygabriel
M Train Devotee, G Train Appreciator
Joined: Nov '05
Posts: 4,431

The cable monopolies are a cruel joke on us all.

Spend a buck, light a number for one the 400,000 victims in Darfur: darfurwall.org

# Posted 1 yr ago