Comcast

Back in 2012, I decided to switch from AT&T Phone and DSL to Comcast Cable Internet and VoIP.  While the transition was smooth and the pricing was good, the service was mostly OK.  When the service worked, and it worked 90% of the time, it was good.  Speed was excellent and the phone was clear.

This year, and mostly this year only, we had some service issues.  On two occasions we had a complete outage.  On the first one, we called and they wanted to send a technician out.  The outage was technically a massive slowdown to no response.  We were connected according to the modem, but pages weren't loading at all or the page loads were slow.  Our neighborhood has a Facebook page and many other Comcast subscribers were reporting the same issue.  Finally, Comcast picked up on the issue, either through all of the calls or through their own health checks, and fixed the issue.

When my contract ended this year, I called and negotiated a new rate.  I believe I got the 'new customer rate' and somehow that meant that my phone number would get disconnected so that they could reconnect it.  Further, in order to get the rate, I had to add a $2.50 or $3.50 a month protection plan.  Overall, the new rate was cheaper by $30 than the expired contract rate so I okay'ed it.

I didn't have much trouble disconnecting.  They didn't try to keep me as a customer too much.  That's just fine with me.  When I cancelled, I already had the Uverse equipment so I wasn't going to bend to their temptations.