I never had any problems in Ankeny, but they top out at 40 Mbps in my neighborhood and I was going to be paying $55 with their “for life” pricing. Mediacom gave me 100 down for $35 the first year. I consistently get 120 so my neighborhood tap must be completely empty
Mediacom vs. CenturyLink Internet
- Thread starter jeff0514
- Start date
If you check it at a low usage time you could be significantly better than a high usage time.
I haven't had any issues with Century Link in the metro. We get around 30 to 35 mbps. It's not amazing by any means, but I also don't do much beyond Netflix streaming. It's also fairly cheap when bundled with DirecTV. With that said we are considering cutting the cord and just doing Netflix and Playstation Vue so we might switch to Mediacom for internet in that case.
No joke, CenturyLink has the worst customer service. Ever. I'd pay an extra $10 a month to not have to deal with them.
Here's one example of why they are awful. At one point in time they inadvertently split my bill. One part was for their internet service while the other was for DirectTV. Well, the part of the bill that I had already had set up on auto-pay was the internet portion. The TV portion wasn't getting paid. On a random Friday afternoon my service was interrupted. I called to get it fixed and, no kidding, they don't have customer service on the weekends. I had to wait until Monday morning to speak with someone. Not only did they screw up but it went to my credit bureau. They also cancelled my contract and, according to them, I had to start a new one.
I'd love to tell you this kind of thing is rare with CenturyLink but that would be an outright lie.
I'd love to tell you this kind of thing is rare with CenturyLink but that would be an outright lie.
Eh, I remember Mediacon being even worse when I had them, but that was years ago.
Have had CL in Johnston for about 3 years, not many issues to report. We're currently paying $55 for 40 MB 'for life'.
I don't remember if it is CL or MC that has the data limit, I think MC? If it's CL, we've never hit the limit & all we do is stream.
Mediacom and Centurylink have equally bad customer service but I’d rather deal with centurylink. I tried Mediacom had good speeds, I had 60mbps and tv for like 75/mon 5 years ago when I moved to my current area. I got so frustrated with Mediacom always being down so switched to CL with 12mbps for $38. I routinely pull 13-15mbps. My wife and I never have any issues with speed and have no issues streaming 2 Fire sticks and our devices.
Talk around the neighborhood and see what everyone else has. You will find out fast which provider to use. In some areas Mediacom is better, in other areas centurylink is better. In my neighborhood centurylink is better because it is more reliable and never down, even though Mediacom has much faster speeds available. Centurylink does not have a data cap. Mediacom has different data caps depending on your package.
Id go with centurylink for life in your case with 100mbps but ask around and base your decision on that. With Mediacom you’ll always have to call and try to talk them down in price every year.
Talk around the neighborhood and see what everyone else has. You will find out fast which provider to use. In some areas Mediacom is better, in other areas centurylink is better. In my neighborhood centurylink is better because it is more reliable and never down, even though Mediacom has much faster speeds available. Centurylink does not have a data cap. Mediacom has different data caps depending on your package.
Id go with centurylink for life in your case with 100mbps but ask around and base your decision on that. With Mediacom you’ll always have to call and try to talk them down in price every year.
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I agree that Centurylink has horrible customer service; however, when we had a tech come out he said never call in because of the crappy service. He suggested going directly to the store in Ankeny and that they would take care of you. I did just that and haven't had any issues since.
Both terrible customer service, but I never had any problems wit CL in Des Moines/Johnston. CL was able to do 1000 mbps at our house in Johnston right before we moved of course.
MediaCon's non-existant Customer Service, is at and All-time High of craptastic.
Here's our story-
Door to Door Sales Guy offers us BOTH internet and Cable/Tivo for $69.45 a month Total..Wow. We knew 69.45 was only for the first year(2 year contract). We asked him numerous times....only $69.45, right. Yes... 69.45 per month.
First Bill shows up $98.45. Wait what? We paid the first bill, assuming there was a hookup fee or something.
Second Bill, Still $98.45. 3 calls to CustServ, talk to a manager who says, that there is absolutely 110% No way that a Salesman could offer a rate of $69.45. The absolute Lowest they could do is $91.00 a month for the combo........Fine, just do it.
Year #2, expected Rate jump, to $120.00.....kinda what we expected.
Year #3 it Jumps to $148.00.
We paid that rate for a month or two.
Call #1- Finally we call to ask for a lower rate. They have No deals for existing customers, and No contracts to offer, etc....Please...come on.
The CustServ rep, notices that he have Stars, (which we rarely watch). We tell them to drop Stars (that should save us a little).
Next Month the Bill shows up at $164.00....What?
Call #2- How did our bill Randomly go up, when we called to lower it, AND drop Stars. They will have a manager call us within 2 days....NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #3- A. why No mger call?, and B. lower our bill. They will have a Manager call with in 24 hours....NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #4- Let me talk to a Manager, they put me on Hold with No hold music, or "beeps", or any sort of verbal message for 15 Mins. Just DEATH AIR ( I assume this is their tactic to make people assume they hung up, and the Caller hangs up). They finally come back. We have sent this to billing review. They will contact you within 2 days......NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #5- Best we can do is drop it to $153 per month. No, At least add Stars back, and give us $148.00.......We can't put you back in you old program. WE NEVER LEFT IT!!! WTF.
We last left it that a Billing Manger would call us within 3 days........NO MANGER CALL.
It has since been 3 weeks, anyone have a good DirectTV contact.?
F- MediaCon (and Kansas too).
Here's our story-
Door to Door Sales Guy offers us BOTH internet and Cable/Tivo for $69.45 a month Total..Wow. We knew 69.45 was only for the first year(2 year contract). We asked him numerous times....only $69.45, right. Yes... 69.45 per month.
First Bill shows up $98.45. Wait what? We paid the first bill, assuming there was a hookup fee or something.
Second Bill, Still $98.45. 3 calls to CustServ, talk to a manager who says, that there is absolutely 110% No way that a Salesman could offer a rate of $69.45. The absolute Lowest they could do is $91.00 a month for the combo........Fine, just do it.
Year #2, expected Rate jump, to $120.00.....kinda what we expected.
Year #3 it Jumps to $148.00.
We paid that rate for a month or two.
Call #1- Finally we call to ask for a lower rate. They have No deals for existing customers, and No contracts to offer, etc....Please...come on.
The CustServ rep, notices that he have Stars, (which we rarely watch). We tell them to drop Stars (that should save us a little).
Next Month the Bill shows up at $164.00....What?
Call #2- How did our bill Randomly go up, when we called to lower it, AND drop Stars. They will have a manager call us within 2 days....NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #3- A. why No mger call?, and B. lower our bill. They will have a Manager call with in 24 hours....NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #4- Let me talk to a Manager, they put me on Hold with No hold music, or "beeps", or any sort of verbal message for 15 Mins. Just DEATH AIR ( I assume this is their tactic to make people assume they hung up, and the Caller hangs up). They finally come back. We have sent this to billing review. They will contact you within 2 days......NO MANAGER CALL.
Call #5- Best we can do is drop it to $153 per month. No, At least add Stars back, and give us $148.00.......We can't put you back in you old program. WE NEVER LEFT IT!!! WTF.
We last left it that a Billing Manger would call us within 3 days........NO MANGER CALL.
It has since been 3 weeks, anyone have a good DirectTV contact.?
F- MediaCon (and Kansas too).
DirecTV is no better when it comes to increasing monthly bills. They'll give you a good deal for a year, then it will double or possibly triple after the promotion ends. They are also really difficult to negotiate since AT&T bought them. A few years ago, if you threatened to cancel, they'd give you the world; now they just offer you a $20 credit and send you on your way. As I mentioned in my previous post, Mediacom offered me a really good deal on internet with no haggling necessary. I just asked to talk to their "customer loyalty" department, and she offered me a deal without me having the threaten to cancel or anything.
Our business contract just ended with Century Link and they seem to think 20Mb up / 1 Mb download and a couple phone lines is worth $300 / month. Lol, I am pretty sure we have fiber optics on the pole outside and will be calling them for some quotes soon.
You may be pretty disappointed if you ever move. For that same price TWC gave me the Internet for 25 of 30 days last month at speeds I could barely stream video with.
Yeah, I've read horror stories about internet providers in other areas. Cox, Warner, XfIinity all have pretty bad reputations, from what I've heard. We all complain about Mediacom here, but it could be a lot worse.
I had to dump Century Link because they refuse to upgrade the service in our area because they are too busy laying fiber in new developments. I was capped out at 12Mbps and I was luck to pull 6. I switched to mediacom and haven't had any issues other than dumping their crappy crappy equipment and buying my own modem and router.
Our business in CR just switched form Century Link to I'm On.
It has taken 60 days to cancel Century Link. Apparently we have 9 separate accounts for various different services (this is phone, internet, etc). We turned in our please cancel and expected to pay another 30 days. It took them about 30 days to "realize" our cancel, and wanted us to pay another 30 days past that.
Our IT gal spent about 40 hours of time over 2 months to cancel our internet - that is not an exaggeration.
It has taken 60 days to cancel Century Link. Apparently we have 9 separate accounts for various different services (this is phone, internet, etc). We turned in our please cancel and expected to pay another 30 days. It took them about 30 days to "realize" our cancel, and wanted us to pay another 30 days past that.
Our IT gal spent about 40 hours of time over 2 months to cancel our internet - that is not an exaggeration.
Curious where you are at in Johnston getting the 40MB service? We have CL but are limited to 25MB. We're up by the library/Camp Dodge area, so perhaps the infrastructure isn't as good.
