Product: Spectrum Internet
Type of product: Cable company
Our rating: 2/10
Spectrum as an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is an awful company but is one of only 2 main choices in Lexington at the time of this writing. Windstream being the other company. Spectrum offers a basic 100 Mbps speed to their customers. Calling their support line for technical help, isn’t very effective, as about all they will tell you is to reboot your modem and router. When asked about connectivity issues and why the connection doesn’t work properly, they will say they will do a line check, but invariably will tell you that the line looks good, or clean, i.e. the problem is at your end.
Spectrum has in introductory rate at $44.99 a month. However, after the first year ends they will increase your costs and refuse to acknowledge that they can do anything to lower your bill. If you call in to complain or in the vain hope to get your bill lowered, they will just tell you sorry, but we can’t get you a better rate.
When moving be careful. They will not allow you to set up your own connection because they must run their fiber optic cable into your building or house. The good news is, it’s only a $10 fee to have a technician come out to your place to run the fiber and check to make sure the connection is live. Something that most people don’t know how to do anyway.
Having used Time Warner before Spectrum took them over, I can say that when I called into Time Warner with an issue there was always a qualified technical person to respond, and when the problem was not on my end, they took responsibility for problems happening on their side. When I call into Spectrum, they try to make me feel like the idiot. I will call in and say, “hey I have this issue and I’ve already done these steps to resolve it”. Their inevitable response is to tell me to repeat the steps I’ve already done. I get that they are just trying to do their jobs, but I come from IT and I typically carry out multiple steps to get an issue fixed prior to calling technical support. When there is an outage for their internet, they don’t post anything in their call menus admitting to an outage. Instead, they make you call in to find out when speaking to a representative that they had an outage but don’t yet have any estimated time for fixing it.
Having worked with different ISP’s over the years from QX.net, Windstream, Time Warner, and now Spectrum. I have found that Spectrum is the worst of all in responsiveness to issues that are occurring on their end. I’ve had problems with their technicians not showing up on time to do their job. They will give you a window for when the technician should show up and then they don’t show up at all. Worse yet, they don’t call to confirm or even call to tell you that the technician isn’t coming or will be late.
We do not recommend Spectrum as an ISP if you just need internet. While their internet speeds look promising they will try to get every penny that they can from you while providing some of the worst service in the business. It isn’t worth the price for what you get from them. We would recommend Windstream for home users right now. There is a new comer, Metronet which we think is worth watching. We are waiting for them to get their network up and running here in Lexington. Once the kinks are worked out we think Metronet maybe a promising future ISP for people in Lexington.
