CenturyLink

I have had DSL at my address for the past 3 years. I started out with CenturyTel. CenturTel was bought out by CenturyLink (CL). Since the acquisition, I have had nothing but problems. We have had somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen calls in to tech support over the past two years. It's getting completely and totally out of hand and ridiculous. The speeds with CenturyTel were consistently 1.5 Mb. The one instance when I did have an issue, CenturyTel sent someone out right away to examine things and work their magic. Service was great afterward.

Enter CL. Service started out ok at best. There seemed to be a lot of fluctuation in DL speeds. The situation worsened to the point where a simple web page like Gmail was taking 5-10 minutes to open. I checked everything over on my end, ran a couple of speed tests, and reluctantly called tech support. My fear was that since I own my modem, I was going to be fed the line "It's not our equipment, so you're on your own." I was not given that line. I was directed to complete a couple of speedtests and modem checks, then put on hold. The result was that a tech would be out to check things out.

Now, we're getting to the part that I absolutely love. I am given a window of time when the tech will arrive. I take off of work to be there. I am told that the tech will call prior to showing up. Three full hours after the eight hour window had come and gone, and as we leaving the house to go have dinner, guess who pulls into the driveway? Mr. CL tech, sans courtesy phone call. We reservedly cancel our dinner plans.

The tech replicates the issues that I was experiencing earlier. He says he needs to call in to the corporate office for further corrective actions. Then, he leaves. I assume that things are being handled. For the next week, the service is ok. Not quite what I was sold (1.5 Mb), but ok (1.2 Mb). Everything is downhill from here...

I assume that CL sold a couple of my neighbors on the service as the quality and consistency has been steadily declining for two years. My most recent call into tech support resulted in CL sending out a tech. The tech stood in my house, and showed me that he was getting the same results. He traveled to the end of the road where the "device", as he referred to it, was located and performed further testing. The tech returned and, again standing in my house, told me that the results he got at the end of the road were the same as at the house and unacceptable. He then proceeded to tell me that he would have to put in a call to have the "device" at the end of the road repaired. After all this, he left.

A week goes by and nothing seems to have changed with the slow speeds (200-400 kb). So, I called CL to check on the status of the ticket. The person on the other end of the phone says, and I'm quoting him directly here, "Everything looks good on our end, so we went ahead and closed the ticket." He said this as though eh was doing me some sort of personal favor.

What?!? Do you think that I called because I enjoy donating my time to your teleprompt system? I ask about the ticket. He says that the tech who was at my house had in his notes that everything looked fine. After two years of being jerked around over this, being upsold to service that apparently is unavailable here, and now being flat out lied to in my own house, I went nuclear on this poor kid. "Are you kidding me? You or your technician are lying to me. Perhaps both. Completely and totally unacceptable."

I was told that CL would send someone out right away to take care of the issue. It's been two months. I think that at this point, simply as a matter of personal satisfaction, litigation will ensue. Someone there needs to be held responsible, as I get the impression that corporate protocol is to pass the responsibility like some sort of hot potato.

If someone from CL is reading this, please do feel free to explain yourself. I simply do not understand how a company gets to be that large and still operate in an envelope of complete and utter incompetence in one of their areas of core competence. It simply makes no sense.

Oh, and if you're so inclined, could you please tell me when lying to a customer is the best policy? I must have glazed over that subject in college.

On March 16th (2011)I called CenturyLink to find out how we could lower my monthly bill. I spoke with Sierra regarding our options. After eliminating all of my phone extras (voicemail, caller i.d., 3 way calling) she then went on to discuss our television options. Sierra fraudulently sold me a package that does not exist. She also counseled me to NOT contact my current provider (contracted through CenturyLink 1 year ago) until after DirectTV was able to come out & install their satellite. She explained I wouldn't have interruption of service. This resulted in me having to pay over $400 in fees. Including the break in contract with DishNetwork, plus a satellite receiver from DirectTV. Sierra stated they needed a credit card number & that the fees charged would be applied to my first bill. This was also fraudulent. DirectTV is charging me for their boxes. Sierra stated 2 boxes would cost $6/month, 3 boxes were $10 month. This is also false information. I have spoke with all parties concerned. I have asked for a recording of the conversation. I have called twice, but to no avail. Any advice for finding a resolution would be appreciated.

This is a copy of a letter I'm sending to CenturyLink. Sorry about the length, but given what I went through, it's necessary.

After the experience I just went through in trying to get my CenturyLink service modified, I feel it’s necessary to relay the details to anyone who will listen. The level of service I received (mostly over the phone) is completely unacceptable, and something needs to be done in order to make sure other customers don’t suffer the same problems. Someone who can actually do something about it needs to hear an account of the kind of customer service that the majority of your employees seem to think is acceptable, and then they need to examine what’s going on at the phone-helpdesk and the local level and make some serious changes.

In November of 2010, I ordered the Prism IPTV service. Let me state for the record that I was thrilled at the prospect dumping Comcast completely – this is something I really wanted to do. I’ll spare most of the technical details, other than to say that the service is not ready for primetime. The DVR is garbage, plain and simple. It doesn’t work correctly, which is no surprise – why in the world you’d go with a Microsoft solution is extremely puzzling. I spent hours troubleshooting…emails, phone calls, tech visits, equipment switch-outs…it was verified that everything is good at the house signal-wise, so, it’s not us. For the record, my DSL had always operated flawlessly.

Cut to March 2011, we’ve decided enough is enough and just want to get rid of the Prism service, as it is simply unusable. The following is a day-to-day account of what I’ve spent that last two weeks dealing with:

• Saturday, March 19th: I called CenturyLink customer service to explain to them what I’m looking to do. I need to have a tech come out to the house to disconnect my Prism service, but to hook up the old DSL modem so I can keep the DSL service. Getting the Prism service installed required the technician to come onto the premises to rewire some jacks (the NIB is inside of the house), and I assumed that removing the Prism service would require a tech to come back and undo what they did in the first place. I spent about an hour on the phone. I was tossed around from Prism support to regular support and back several times, because no one could decide whether this was a Prism issue or a DSL issue. I finally got someone who scheduled an appointment, or so I thought. She told me someone local would be calling me the following Monday, March 21, to confirm exactly when the work would be done.

• Monday, March 21st: I never received the follow-up phone call I was promised.
 
• Tuesday, March 22nd: I call CenturyLink. I’m told an appointment had been scheduled for this coming Thursday. I never approved this and I never confirmed this. I told them it needed to be on Friday, since Prism support doesn’t do weekends. They rescheduled it and again, I’m told someone local will call me to confirm.

• Thursday, March 24th: I call again to confirm for Friday, because again, no phone call from the CenturyLink local office. I’m told someone will be out between 8am and 12pm to rewire things and pick up the old equipment.

• Friday, March 25th:
o It’s 11am, and no one has showed up, so I start to get worried. I call, and find out the appointment has been pushed back to 12-5. I was never told this. I reluctantly told them this was ok, and continued to wait.
o It’s now 4:30pm. I call, and I’m told, “we were already out there.” I had been sitting in my office all day – no one’s been out here, at least no one has knocked on my door. Next, I spent 90 minutes on the phone with them, half of it spent explaining to them that not only did someone need to do work to the outside of the house, but that I believed someone also needed to come into the house to rewire the jacks before the old DSL modem will work because that’s where the NIB is. Had they looked at the account of the original work done, they would have seen this. I had already tried to get the old 660 modem working, and it simply was not working. At this point, they can’t get anyone out here the same day. I’m told my case is being escalated, and that someone will be calling me on Monday the 28th to sort it out and get someone out here. I took a day off from work, spent the entire day waiting after being told repeatedly over the week that someone would be here, only for no one to show up, and then have to deal with a bunch of support people who honestly didn’t seem to care at all about the situation.

• Monday, March 28th:
o Late morning, no one has called me yet. I call customer service, and I’m told the case has been sent to a local supervisor, someone by the name of Avery (sp), who will be calling me. I never received a phone call from him/her. The best part is, I was told that they have no way of calling this person and/or put me in touch with him/her, because they don’t have a direct line to him/her or anyone local for that matter. The fact that employees at a telecommunications giant have no way of contacting their own co-workers by phone is the ultimate of ironies, and it’s beyond me how you all operate this way. All the person I talked to could do was email this person and wait for a response.

I should point out, throughout this entire ordeal, I asked repeatedly, “please, can I please talk to someone local. Can I talk to a tech, an engineer, someone who will understand me so I can tell them what was already done and what I need to have done, so perhaps the right people can come out here.” From what I was told, they can’t do that.
o Late afternoon, no one has called me (see a pattern here?). I call back, and finally someone is able to get “Avery” on IM, and I’m told a Saturday morning (April 2) appointment has been approved, since I can’t afford to take another day off of work to sit around here and wait for a tech. The person I spoke to on the phone gave me her extension/operator ID (not sure which it is), 62774, in case I should need to call her on Saturday. I was told, “simply ask for this extension and they’ll get you to me.” I’m also told that despite what I was told originally, now I need to drive over to CenturyLink to drop off the Prism equipment, because the techs can’t take it with them, which makes no kind of sense considering they brought it here to begin with.

• Tuesday, March 29th: A local supervisor, Dan Rodriguez actually does call me. I relay what’s happened to him. He said he will make sure someone comes out on Saturday morning, as scheduled, and will monitor the case.

• Saturday, April 2nd:
o It’s 10:30, and no one has showed up yet. Again, getting nervous. I call the number the operator from Monday gave me. I call several times, but keep getting an automated message that the office is closed, despite that your web site shows your Saturday hours as starting at 9AM local time. I tried calling Dan the area supervisor, but he’s unreachable. Finally, an hour later, I get through to customer service. I get transferred to several different operators, none of which can connect me to #62774. They say it’s not possible, and they can’t tell from the case notes who it was I talked to on Monday the 28th. Since talking to her obviously wasn’t going to happen, I talk to another rep. She says, “I see you have an appointment scheduled today, slated for between 12pm-4pm.” They changed my appointment without telling me. Again. I was able to get the operator to call dispatch and arrange for someone to come over before noon, as promised.
o It’s now 3:00. The technician just left, and things still aren’t working 100% (he has something to do back at the office to get things fully functional). He was here for over three hours, due to no fault of his own. Before I go on, I have to commend the tech, Ed, who was incredibly helpful and seemed to be the only person at CenturyLink I dealt with through this whole ordeal who actually got it. I doubt things would have gotten fixed today if it had not been for him. He’s the only CenturyLink employee who dealt directly with this case who was of any real help. He understands that the customer comes first, and that the people we spent several hours on the phone with should have just did what they needed to do to fix the issue at hand.
It turned out that despite everything I had been told, the prerequisite work that should have been done originally had not been done. The Prism service had not been removed from my account (had been told at least two times that it had been). I was still getting billed for bits and pieces of it, and as far as the wiring, they showed me as still being wired up for it. To make matters worse, the change order that had been put in specified that I wanted to ultimately end up with 3.0 megabit Internet, when I had specified, over and over and over, that I wanted to keep the 10.0 megabit Internet that I had had even prior to adding the Prism service. Getting them to keep it at the correct price was also an ordeal. It didn’t matter how many people I had previously spoken to, how many hours I had spent on the phone for the prior two weeks, how many “confirmations” I received…even after all that, they still managed to get the order completely wrong.

So, after the provisioning people finally got the modem functional at 3.0 megabits, Ed had to spend another hour-and-a-half-plus trying to get them to convert it to 10.0 megabit, which again, I never wanted to downgrade in the first place. They could have simply just done it, but it turned into a mess of red tape and orders, closing out this order, opening that order; meanwhile the customer is sitting here (and the tech for that matter) for three hours just wanting to get the service working correctly. While on the topic of getting the modem provisioned, I feel the need to call out one employee in particular named Ellen, whose information you can probably find on case notes from today (she worked in the department that does provisioning I believe). She was downright nasty to those of us on the phone call, despite being told about the situation and being aware that not only had a tech been here for three hours trying to fix the issue, but that the customer was also on the line listening to all this. This person should be fired on the spot as far as I’m concerned – all she did was make a bad situation even worse.

CenturyLink’s performance during this entire ordeal was appalling, and it is something you should be completely ashamed of. You don’t keep appointments, your employees throughout various departments don’t/won’t/can’t communicate with each other, your customer service helpdesk people are completely incompetent – one hand never knows what the other is doing at any given time, and in some cases, they’re downright rude. The level of communication between the people who work the phones and the people who are local needs to be vastly improved. There is something really wrong with the fact that it’s that difficult for a helpdesk person to get a local engineer on the phone to assist with a problem. This whole thing could have been dealt with really quickly, and without a premise visit, had the correct people been involved in the first place.
Up until today, I had always talked very highly about CenturyLink, even defending you when people at my office would say negative things (for the record, I work in IT). To me, you were always what I thought Comcast should strive to be like, and in one fell swoop, you completely changed my mind.

Feel free to pass this letter on to whomever you see fit – hopefully it gets into the hands of someone who can assess the situation and possibly take some corrective actions.

A couple of months ago I was about to dump Centurylink over billing issues. I'd given up trying to get the issue resolved. Joey (Centurylink) responded to my complaint here and I contacted him directly with the details. Within a week he managed to resolve the issue, which as it turned out was caused by my fatfingering in the account number when I set up payment through my online bill pay service. That wrong number (off by one digit) had been in place for at least a year with no problems. My guess is that it finally caused a problem after Centurylink change their billing system. I thank Joey for taking the time to track down the problem and let me know how to fix it. No one else had bothered to do that, but just repeatedly sent the account issue to be manually reconciled month after month without contacting me the root of the problem. I thank Joey for working with me and tracking this down, but it occurs to me that Centurylink has some work to do on their account management processes. I'll take the hit for inputting the wrong information initially, but there was no feedback process in place to let me know about it even when dealing with customer service monthly by phone.

I do not pay for long distance service from Centurylink. I only have local calls only. Last fall a long distance call came in on my bill. I called to complain because NO long distance call are ever made using CenturyLink from my home. I have 2 other methods of doing that. The man removed the charge. I removed the auto-pay feature so I would watch my bill more carefully. Months pass and things are fine. I reinstall the auto pay feature. Coincidence or not the second month there is another long distance call on my bill. I Googled the number. It belongs to DirecTv. I do use DirecTv but I always call them using their toll-free number. Even if I did call them long distance I wouldn't use CenturyLink. I have only had CenturyLink 9 months and it has been one thing after another with them. I asked the lady when my contract was up. She told me I didn't have a contract. She said she would place my long distance call complaint up for investigation. I hung up, made a couple of calls to arrange alternate service and called back to cancel my CenturyLink service. Now they tell me I do have a contract and it will cost $99 to break it. The contract is up July 1st. Even if I have to use 2 cans and some string I will cancel these guys on that day. I have again removed them from auto-pay. I'll wager there are no more overcharges.

increased my internet speed to 1.50mbps yet when I go to the global broardband speed test I am always getting a much lower speed, Last speed test shows .092mbps for my speed, yet centurylink modem test says I am getting 1.72mbps which I no I am not.

We set up for century link to install prisim tv in our home. We already have internet and home phone provided to us by century link. An installer came out a day prior to installing prisim, but instead we no longer had home phone or internet. 2 days went by so I called to find out what was going on. They told me do to thier BAD phone lines we could not get prisim. They had no idea they knocked out our home phone or internet. So Great a company (ha ha) they give a great credit of $25.00. I pay almost $200.00 per month and our phone has problems all the time.They are the worst company to deal with. FALSE advertisment

I had been having problems with my Centurylink internet for some time. It was randomly dropping and technicians had been unable to diagnose the issue. The problem was finally identified by a technician that my DSL rates were too fast for the line I was on. I was on a 10 MB/s plan, but he determined the line could only handle around 5 mb/s. So he reduces my speed and tells me to call Centurylink to make sure I was only being charged for the 5 mb/s plan since that was the max speed I could receive. I called Centurylink, I believe it was in late October or early November, and the customer service rep said he reduced my plan. He never once mentioned anything about a new contract. When I went to pay my bill later that next month, I noticed that it was now for an amount that was quite a bit higher than it had been when I had the 10 mb/s plan. When I ran through the charges, I was now being charged for unlimited long distance, call waiting, call forwarding, and a whole slate of calling services. I need to mention that prior to this I had the most basic phone service for local calls only, as most of our calling was done on our cell phones. I didn't even have a long distance plan on my phone prior to this change. In addition, my internet plan had not been reduced to 5 mb/s as was agreed, but to 3 mb/s.

I called Centurylink later that day, I believe at this time it was late November or early December, to discuss this issue. The customer service rep said everything could be fixed as I wanted it but I would have to go under a new contract. I had been a Centurylink customer for quite some time and wasn't sure if I was even under contract for anything anymore so I asked him if I was currently under contract. He said no, which I made sure to clarify. I told him at that time since I was not under contract and didn't use my home phone to not make any changes to my account, as I would like to shop around. He said that was fine and we disconnected.

I found a deal later that day from Mediacom for cable internet. They were able to provide internet at a much faster speed for approximately 1/4 of the cost that I was currently paying. Obviously, that was a no-brainer. As I was under the belief that I was not under contract with Centurylink any longer, I had Mediacom install cable internet in my house.

After the new cable internet was up and running in early December, I called Centurylink to completely terminate my service. The customer service rep checked to make sure there wasn't any better deals that Centurylink could provide, but as their best deal was still twice what I was now paying with Mediacom, I declined any offers. I told him that I couldn't turn down that type of savings and he told me he completely understood. I received a confirmation number and considered the matter closed.

Next month I received a letter from Centurylink that I didn't pay much attention to because I was still under the impression that I had no service with them any longer. When the next month I received another letter I opened it to see that I had outstanding charges of over 200 dollars. I was floored.

I called Centurylink later that day and spoke to a customer service rep and explained the situation. She said that not only was I being charged with a contract cancellation fee but that my phone service had never been disconnected. Naturally I was a little upset to hear about all this. She said that she would not be able to handle anything like this over the phone but would have to forward on my information to the conflict resolution department. She took my phone number and told me they would be contacting me soon.

I don't know what the definition of soon is to them, but I still have not received a phone call from any conflict resolution department. Instead, what I have received just today is a notice from a collection agency that apparently contracts with Centurylink stating that I am delinquent with my account. This is beyond frustrating.

I have been a Centurylink customer since Centurytel bought out my local phone service approximately 13 years ago. I have never missed a payment, and for the most part have always been a satisfied customer. I feel as if I have paid my dues as a decent customer and have earned the right to save money with another service if that option arises.

I also feel as if I had settled all issues on my end. If I am told I am not under contract, then I believe that should be able to operate under that impression. In addition, if I am told that my service has been disconnected, then I also believe that I should be confident that this is the case.

If I felt that I owed the money, then I would have paid it. Unfortunately, now that they've sent this issue to collections, I fear that I am going to be fighting an uphill battle as I will be shuffled between two different agencies. This whole situation is ridiculous.

I have been monitoring our speed here. Getting about 20% of what we pay for. I have monitored for two weeks and just today they gave me a $10.00 credit on my bill for those two weeks. Sadly, I had a feeling for months that the speed was low.
Anyway, I call today and am told "out of bandwidth" in my area. After the call I searched that phrase. It seems this not just a known problem with this company, but that it's been a known problem for 2 years at least.
I am going to search for a new solution for the internet AND the phone service. We've just had too many problems. I think I would like a bigger credit than 10 dollars on my bill, for one. The bill, that, by the way, keeps going up.
I would like to see Consumers Union remark on this, so I guess I will email them also.
I'd like to know who else in Ohio has this problem.
Thanks

Even though my 90 year mother's local phone service was turned she continued to receive bill from Qwest. When the service was cancelled via phone call she was not told that she had to contact the long distance provider seperately to cancel the service. When Qwest was contacted about still receiving bills 2-1/2 monthes later, that when we were informed that the Long Distance Provider had to be contacted seperately. We were told to call USBI. However, when USBI was contacted they said they just do the billing and the actual service provider had to be contacted, which turned out to be US Telecom.
So upon calling US Telecom, we were told that Qwest didn't have to tell us that we needed to call them (US Telecom) seperately. That they (US Telecom) wasn not regulated by the government. What a big rip-off scam by Qwest and US Telecom. Qwest contacts out to US Telecom for long distance service for Elderly people; who don't understand their bills; then when service are cancelled US Telecom keeps getting paid until it's discover. No where on the Qwest bill does it say the long distance is being provided by US Telecom or whatever Long Distant provided was selected, nor are there any customer service number for the long distance provider on the Qwest bill. Talk about hidden fees and big rip-offs.

I never had any problems with Embarq but Centurylink is a different story. My problems started when they “lost” a payment in October 2011. Both my bank and I provided proof several times. During this I was informed by 2 managers and a finance rep that I would be contacted about the resolution of the issue – NEVER HAPPENED. I was also told by several customer service reps/mangers that Centurylink will not call a customer. Pretty funny considering the 2-3 calls per month trying to sell me more services but they don’t have the time to call a customer with real issues. Finally, I did receive credit but I wanted an explanation of the delays and poor customer service. I called and talked to a customer service manager and informed him someone needed to call me within 48 hours or I would cancel my service – SURPRISE NO ONE CALLED. I then moved my service to another provider. About 3 week later received my final bill. I only received a partial credit for the time canceled. At the rates claimed, I have overpaid $500 during the past 2 years of Centurylink service. I disputed the bill verbally, through email and fax – the only response was to turn the account over for collection at one month from the original final bill. I then sent a letter to the collection agency disputing the bill. I also sent a letter to the CEO, Glen F. Post III, of Centurylink informing him of the extremely poor customer service and non-responsiveness of the company. Both letters were received over 35 days ago. AGAIN NO RESPONSE.

My advice to anyone considering Centurylink is stay away unless you enjoy poor customer service. They lie, do not follow through with promises, cannot or refuse to address valid issues, have representatives who do not have knowledge or authority to decide anything (call this other number and maybe you can reach someone who can’t help you also), and finally will turn you over to collection agencies without even acknowledging a customers dispute. I have no problem with paying what I owe and have almost spent as much money with the certified letters and significantly more by wasting over 10 hours of my life on a simple issue that could have been solved early with no issues.

I just don't understand it. I called century link when this company was running a special for phone and internet for 49.99 a month when I got my bill it was 107.38 $ I called them and was told all these extra fees was add. To the bills... Why do these company have to lie to the consumers suddenlink cable is the same way they tell you one thing then when the bill come it is as different as night and day. I would tell all the people get a dish with a contract in black and white. Then you are not surprised ever month when the bill comes.

Centurylink is totally incompatent TOTALLY. My DSL went out 3 days ago. We've spent at least 8 hours since then, on the phone, being bounced back and forth to nearly a dozen people and continually being sent back to the same USELESS 800 number. I can't call them Service Reps or Technicians because they understood NOTHING of what I or my wife was telling them. Since I've been though all this with them before, I explained the DSL line power is not there NADA 0 volts. My DSL line is a dedicated to DSL and only to DSL That I had taken ALL my equipment out to the entrance box and installed it directly to their incoming line. with no DSL light and NO connection. Now it will be Monday before I even see any activity out of them and ONLY if they got it right this time. Hasn't happened in 3 days I'm not counting on it.

Live outside Orlando and receive 2 to 3 calls per day varies week in and week out. Usually no one on other end. Have advised them numerous times to stop calling no luck / number that calls is888 313 9904. It just makes me mad enough to take them to small claims court for harassment/ try calling a woman or man for that matter for months on end / see what happens. Good luck

I have been paying for 3Mbps service for over two years. For much of that time, the service has delivered between .7 and 1.3 Mbps as verified by both speedtest.net and speakeasy.com. I have called the Centurylink customer support several times, and each time they want to run me through hours, literally hours, of diagnostics on my computer to try and prove it's my problem. They say, unless I submit to this ridiculousness each time I call, then they are not authorized to forward the problem to engineering. Thing is, I've got two computers, one directly wired and the other on a wireless router, and they both perform at similar speeds. The problem is clearly related to bandwidth exhaust somewhere down the line, but Centurylink insists on running me through their "flow chart" each time I've called about it. Maddening.
Wouldn't be such a problem if their slogan was "Well do the best we can, " but it's insulting when they advertise "Your connection to our network is consistently fast, all day, every day." That is simply a lie.

I requested a monthly long distance rate and when I was charged per minute, which ran into the hundreds, I was livid. This was back I believe in August of 2010. Not only was I forced to pay it, but ever since then I have been getting monthly bills for 4dollars and sixteen cents. I have contacted them on numerous occasions and was told I would no longer recieve these bills. I, of course still recieve them every month and am unable to even reach anyone on the phone numbers listed on the bill!I tell everyone Don't use CenturyLink !

I called CenturyLink today to set up dry loop 1.5 mbps DSL service. The price of this service on their website is $39.99 per month. The customer service rep tried said she was searching for the "best deal" and tried to sell it to me for $49.99. Naturally I asked why it wasn't the same price as online. She put me on hold and said she found a "special" and the price would be the advertised $39.99 per month. At this point she has looked twice for the "best deal"- interesting. We do the credit check that requires me SSN, which I am not fond of giving out. Everything checks out, no deposit required. We proceed with ordering, she tries to sell me router- No thank, I have one. The modem though, that was too much. To ship the modem to my house will be $14.99, I responded I was not interested in the modem either then. Put on hold again, ok shipping is free. But there is a $4.99 fee for the modem, PER MONTH! Modems cost around $50, over the life of the product I would pay for it many times over. At this point I decided I needed to shop around a bit for service. The attempt, in my opinion, to up-sale the price of the service, then exorbitant shipping rates, and over priced rate for the modem just seems dishonest to me. It makes me wonder if companies understand it's a privileged to have customers, not a right.

This is the third time that I get billed for individual long distance calls and I pay for unlimited long distance. I call customer service and their automated routing touch tone crap, hangs up.

Begining in November 2010, Centurylink began taking up to 14 calendar days to post web bill payments to my account. Prior to this I would always schedule payments via my bank's web bill pay system (they do electronic transfers, not checks) about 4 or 5 days in advance of the due date. I never had a problem over the several years paying online through my bank. In November I noticed a late charge on my October bill which had been paid in advance of the due date. I dealt with customer service and they eventually corrected the problem and backed out the late fee.
In December 2010, I called them a week after I'd made the payment, only to be told they'd not received it (and the due date was a day or so away). It happened again in January and Feb. 2011. Each time I had to call in to tell them I'd already paid the bill, then fax a copy of my bank's proof of payment information. After each round of phone calls and faxes the account was credited within the following week, long after the due date.
The customer service folks (the only ones I can actually talk to) cannot explain it, but only apologize. I've dealt with supervisors more than once, each one committing to having someone at "Corporate Cash" call me back with an explanation or resolution. I'm still waiting after three weeks for the last promise to be fulfilled.
I called customer service today to check the acct balance. No payment received 13 days after payment. a supervisor admitted that they've had problems since the "changeover to a new billing system in September" and that the accounts receivable folks are far behind in trying to unravel the mess. It has been suggested that I pay my bills earlier. Just how long should it take for an electronic payment to go through? 14 days is clearly insufficient. The representative intimated that it would be faster/more reliable if I paid by credit card over the phone or used Centurylink's own online billpay system. That might be worth considering except for a prior customer rep admitting that they were also having problems processing payments through their own web bill pay system.
Having spent 30+ years in IT, I fully appreciate the disasters that can occur when switching from one information/billing management system to another. My sympathies to Centurylink. However, as a customer, this is not acceptable. No one will call me back as promised and I've had to repeat this scenario every month just to ensure my credit doesn't get a black eye and that I don't have to pay what I don't owe.
I'm ready to fire Centurylink (not for poor service but for anemic customer service and bad accounting) and go with a cable ISP service and VOIP.

First, CenturyLink sold me unlimited domestic long distance and told me it would cost $74 a month all fees and taxes included. I was paying about $69 a month for a bundled local and Internet service.
Second, then CenturyLink billed me $85 for the service. I complained to a supervisor who would not reduce the charge to the quoted price.
Third, I asked for my previous bundle service back but the CenturyLink supervisor told me it was "no longer available."
The company basically got me on a more expensive service quoting me a false price without telling me I wouldn't be able to get my old (less expensive) service back.
I've submitted a complaint to the FCC and will look for ways to cancel my landline altogether.
Hard to believe the company would willingly lose a long-time customer worth hundreds of dollars a year over this.