[RTC List] Suddenlink Service Outage

[Andrew Jones]

> This is undoubtedly the worst customer service
> I have ever encountered.

This reminds me of spotty service when I worked at a dial-up Internet 
service provider 'back in the day' as a college student. When service 
is down, all you can tell people is what they already know. Yep, it's 
down. No, we don't know when service will be restored. Your e-mail 
will be waiting for you when things are fixed, perhaps delayed a few 
hours afterward.

Instead of calling your ISP, call a neighbor to confirm your shared 
plight, then sit back and wait. (It's so very likely dozens or 
hundreds of other people have already reported the outage.) If you 
have downtown equaling a full day, request a prorated bill. It 
wouldn't hurt to put that bug in Suddenlink's ear. We prorated a few 
times, even though it meant a significant amount of in-house 
programming to adjust our homebrew billing system. 

The most powerful message to send an ISP is to switch to its 
competitor. It was that singular issue that made us improve 
reliability, in order to improve customer retention and attract new 
customers. It was a word-of-mouth business in the mid-1990s, and to 
some degree people still ask friends, "Should I use DSL or cable?"