Astound

Garbage service and terrible customer service. They are dishonest and shady. Tiny bit better than Comcast but barely.

Lost service on Tuesday. Scheduled for Thursday 2 – 4 to come fix. Nobody showed up. Called at 4:15 to get an ETA. Told 4:45. Nobody showed up at 5pm. Said the guy came by and left a note on the door. Complete lies as proven by the security camera that nobody came by. They wanted reschedule for another day but given that I stayed home from work to do this I couldn’t miss another day. Offered a hilarious $ 20 for my trouble.
Told them I wanted to cancel and they wanted to schedule a time to come pick it up the cable box. I’m not staying home again for them to do that. Bounced me around on the phone for over an hour with no resolution.
Completely not worth your time. Worse than Comcast now

Been there since RCN days but now with Wave it’s gotten too expensive and hold times on calls are unacceptable. Bye Astound (Grrrr Wave) — it was nice while it lasted.

Price increase, after price increase, forced me to abandon Astound. Service also become spotty and challenged. Reps show no willingness to keep me as the customer. Seems they were trained along the lines take it or leave it. Well I’ve left it…

Astound was great until got purchased by Wave.
Dealt with 7 tech on site visits. Over 20 phone calls of good times average of 1 – 2 hours. Them blaming one thing to another. Why not be honest rather than this dodgy behavior.
Even paid for their top tier service for short time.
Simply put the content is throttled. Meaning a poor delivery, long ping, and smaller than purchased pipe.
I consistently get only ½ is what purchase contract amounts. 50 down and 5 up means my average is ²⁰⁄₂. Worse when I use too much data as it aggressive throttles.
Do yourselves a favor and Google wave throttling.
Here is just 1 out of many

Very poor service and incompetent customer care. It went down every week in prime San Francisco area

Customer service is the worst. They have no clue what is going on. Every time the network is down (which is very frequent) they try to blame things outside their control.
They really need to hire some competent customer reps

For the Asian male agent (we did not get his name) who help us cancel our service today, I give him 5 star for not hussling with us and he did try his best to see if he can help us lower our bills which he was not able to because their new POS system with WAVE does not give them enough ability to modify the accounts.
Overall it is a 3 Star for the service because they don’t know how to take care of their current customers who where there since they were still RCN. Our bill this month went up from $ 190 to $ 250 for cable & internet, the best they can offer us is a $ 15 off. For their cable & internet service we’ve experienced a more than usual service interruptions, there were 3 times that there was no service for more than 5 hours.
So long RCN Astound Wave. We are back with Comcast for $ 140 for way better service.

Still seeking an alternative to the Comcast Cartel but this ain’t it. The broadband is excruciatingly slow when it’s working — which is 75% of the time on the best day. There is no customer service. Full stop. Period. End of story. If you call when your service is down, you’ll get an answering machine that tells you to call back another time. There is no email address to reach them at. Basically if you have problems, they’ll avoid you like a passive-​aggressive friend who knows you’re trying to have a serious discussion with them.

Astound/​wave is a horrible service. Never get any broadband service from them. The quality is bad and the customer service is terrible. We cancelled our service since we were moving from San Francisco to Berkeley and they told us that we had 2 choices: either drop it off at their office or they would pick it up. We decided to have them pick it up since our drop-​off locations were either Daly City or San Mateo. They were supposed to pick it up the day of our move. They did not give us any specific time frame but, said they would come some time during the day. Despite having someone wait all day through the stress of the move, no one showed up! We were wondering what to do and forgot about it with the move. We then got a bill for $ 250 for un-​returned equipment. We called about it and we were told that if we don’t return the box they will send a collection agency! We were again given the two choices for returning it. By now, we had already moved and were not going to hang outside our old home all day for someone to show up! They also were not okay with us leaving it with one of our old neighbors! A totally bad customer service!!!
We finally talked to a manager who listened to my first recorded conversation regarding the termination and he realized that they were at fault. So, he asked to mail it which was great but, in the meantime, a collection agency kept calling us and leaving messages!!! Someone needs to work on their PR or maybe it’s a racket and they get money from unreturned boxes even though they don’t send someone to pick the up!

It’s sad but true. Crappy comcast service is miles ahead better than astounds/​waves. They don’t greet you and are just plain rude. They will change your account or charges on a whim with no notification.
You need to watch your bill like a hawk. Suddenly it will nearly double and their excuse is, oh, we’ve doubled your Internet speed, so that is why you need to pay more. Even though you never asked for it. They can’t believe that you wouldn’t want double the speed.
Also, they give you a good discount to get you started. You will not know at what point of your discount period you are. True, you might get a couple of months extra, but no notification that your discount period is about to end. Suddenly you are paying triple the amount and again, they will say, oh, your discount period is over and we put you on the highest speed available, which cost way more than the speed you actually signed up for (even at non-​discount prices).
They used to charge $ 5.00 a month for the cable modem. No router and no wireless.
This year suddenly the line item changed from modem to wireless home networking kit and the charge doubled to $ 10. Yet, there was no new modem/​router/​wireless and there was no announcement or any information. After nearly 3 years the $ 70 modem is long paid for and I could even have accepted the doubling if they had provided a new option or, god forbid, even informed and offered to ‘upgrade’ to a newer, better option that would cost $ 10 a month or I could stay with the old one at $ 5.
If I would stay with them longer I would run to Fry’s and buy the $ 70 modem and be done with it, but I will be canceling service with them next month.
So, if you can handle one of the crappiest customer service (or just decide never to contact them) and technical support, are good at negotiating a good discount rate and keep watching your bill diligently, you get some reasonable performance most of the time. Make sure you immediately buy your own modem from Amazon, Best Buy or Fry’s.
BTW. They do block ‘server’ level services, so you can’t run a small simple mail server for testing or other purposes, etc.
Otherwise you are sadly better off with ComCast, Sonic or even ATT

Worst than Comcast.

Nice customer service, pity they overcharge you. If you have big children, then you will pay overage fees. You will not pay less than $ 65 for internet no matter what. And if you try to go for their 34.95 plan then you will pay $ 80 extra in overage fees.

Scumbag scammers flat-​out lied about a cheaper promotion, then overcharged me, then hit me with late fees. You’ve been warned.

Great customer service. There was an error in the bill and the agent waived of as soon as she found that out without any hesitation.
Been with them for over 2 years and had no problem with the Internet.
Keep it up Astound.

Have 5 business lines with them plus internet and all the bells an whistles.
Phone service — unreliable; turns off on its on and customers can not call
Internet service — unreliable; turns of this we can’t access out cloud computing. It’s an ongoing issue with us not having a phone for three days. Keep resenting equipment and nothing else. Customer service is non existent in solving issues. They promised a technician at 2pm and it’s 9pm no one showed up yet. All they say is 2pm was a projected time, keep waiting… Really? Till when? Sorry, but for a business lines not operations it’s an absolute No-​No. Will shop for an alternate provider… Bye Astound.

I have had a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to ISPs no matter where I lived. However astound is awesome. I originally signed up at 59.99 for 30mb/​s and 300gig allotment.
I was worried that this initial «special promo» price would go away after a year and I would be left paying 80 $ a month, or having to switch to Comcast to get another deal.
To my surprise I received and email saying, not only do I get to stay at my current price rate, but my service has been upgraded from 30mb/​s to 110mb/​s and my new allotment is 1TB. Amazing!!! I didn’t expect this and am very happy. Way to go Astound! Excellent service.

To steve m.: It’s true that most people don’t love their Internet provider. My 5-​star review is real. I don’t know anyone who works there and had never heard of the company before I moved to SF.
Astound is only 5-​stars in comparison with the evil empires of Comcast and Verizon.
Probably if the competition was reasonable, I would not love Astound so much. But Astound makes appointments quickly, keeps them, and never once screwed up my bill.
I’ve actually been waiting 12 months for Comcast to hook up a phone line (they keep saying that it will take another 3 – 5 days). Astound looks better all the time.
(Notice how all of the 5-​star reviews mention Comcast.)

I use Astound only for internet. I don’t have phone or TV. I’ve been using their internet for about 3 months and it has been really good. Not one outage yet, not even for a few minutes. I chose Astound as it was one of the very few alternatives to the horrible Comcast doom cloud.
They were prompt getting my installation appointment set up, and the guy they sent was really professional and did a great job. I was pretty stoked with it all.
The price they give you for the first 12 months is pretty good, but then after 12 months you loose the discount and then the cost is pretty pricey. So far though, I think I will be sticking with Astound after the 12 months, unless I can find an alternative that is also NOT Comcast.

Astound is, in fact, astounding (in a great way!). They were the best ISP I’ve ever had and appeared in my life like a shining knight, saving me from the horrific fire-​breathing dragon of incompetence that is Comcast. I am so sad to not be able to use them any more since I moved away from SF.
From start to finish, the experience was a digital blessing on my life. Every time I called them (which I rarely needed to do), I spoke immediately with a live human being who spoke fluent English and could and did answer my question correctly and quickly. The installation was quick and painless. The tech was knowledgeable and helpful. Everything about them was so great, I just can’t say enough positive things about Astound from a customer service perspective.
People in SF probably don’t realize how lucky they are to have options like this. Go Astound!