Barbara S.

I placed a large bulb order at the end of July. In October, I started communicating with the service department to ask why I had not received the shipment. They claimed that one of the eight items ordered was waiting on the supplier and then needed to be quality-controlled. I sent several more pleas, suggesting that the rest of the order could be shipped, and asking them not to delay until the ground was frozen or the weather too severe. Now, Nov. 20, I am asking them to cancel the order and issue a refund.

When it works, it's great, but sporadic internet service does not make customers happy. My internet speed is supposed to be >100 Mbs, but for days, I could not stream from Netflix in the evening and my browser would not connect for me to even run a speed test. About three times a day, email messages could be accessed, but the images embedded in them would not download. Most of the "customer advocates" who are available at the call center's support phone center follow a very defined script, asking customers to reset their modems and routers. In doing this, they ignore information that points to low signal strength as being the problem. The first "advocate" with whom I spoke this week said that she could detect a signal going to my modem, so she concluded the problem had to be with my router. I bought a new router so that this could not be used as an excuse for the poor internet service. After installing my new router, I called Wowway for technical assistance again. After being on hold for a solid hour, I got a competent tech who was shocked when he checked the speed to my home, and after his adjustments, for that one evening, the speed was >200 Mbs. But the next morning, the ping speed was 29, the download speed was 0.14, and the upload speed was 0; in the afternoon, I couldn't even get to the speedtest web page. So I made two calls this afternoon (on hold for a half hour each time), and had to go through the same reset pattern with the modem and router, because the "advocates" were not willing to check the signal strength to my home, and seemed perplexed when I described the various symptoms and told them that I couldn't even connect to the internet because of the low signal strength. Finally, the second one made an appointment for a technician to come to my house in two days.