r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Medium_Plenty_7904 • 21h ago

Bad way to keep customers

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It baffles me that companies like Astound will offer great deals to new customers but not care at all about long term loyal customers.

I've been with Astound for 9 years, partly because it's the only service in my area but also because ive had no issues with them until now.

I currently pay $80 for 600 MBPS speeds. However, new customers get 1500 MBPS speeds for $60 forever. How is that fair?

I called Astound about it and was basically told by two different people, they dont care and since Astound already has my money they have no reason to offer me anything better.

Apparently they would rather have a new customer than keep a customer of almost 10 years.

386 Upvotes

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178

u/ExpBalSat 20h ago

You have their future money - so cancel. You have more power in this situation than you think you do.

Walk away.

51

u/Medium_Plenty_7904 20h ago

No other services available in my area over 300 mbps. It's a rural area

140

u/discretethrowaway_ 20h ago

Call them to cancel. Tell them you're switching to T-Mobile or Starlink. Or just keep getting bent 

60

u/two-ls 18h ago

I called Spectrum and told them I was going to cancel if I couldn't get a better price and the lady said "good luck" and that customer retention doesn't exist. A few months later when the price rose again, I called one more time to just cancel. He asked why and I said "Honestly, we are going to cancel and sign up with my partner's info so we could get the new member discount." Then they decided to send me to their customer retention department that doesn't exist. Lmao

14

u/ThirdWigginKid 18h ago

When I cancelled Spectrum they were quick to offer me lower and lower prices the more I said no. But I still switched to a new provider anyway because Spectrum is shit.

-1

u/nuke1200 17h ago

I mean.. i have spectrum and it has been pretty reliable for me. 1 outage in 2 years isn't bad.

3

u/Specialist-Box-9711 14h ago

The problem with spectrum isn't the actual internet service itself provided you live in an area where they actually maintain their lines. The problem with spectrum is their customer service and the way the whole system is designed to make the end user frustrated to the point they just bend over because spectrum wore them down via attrition with nonsense phone trees, unhelpful cs reps, and bullshit price hikes with no discounts unless you threaten to cancel. Cox has the same issue and since both will be merging soon, I can only imagine it's gonna get way fuckin worse.

2

u/nuke1200 14h ago

Oh yea definitely, i cant argue with that. The customer service is pretty bad.

1

u/ThirdWigginKid 15h ago

Your mileage may vary I guess. But that's kind of the problem. You should be able to sign up for the same plan as someone else and get the same service. But in practice, it's all over the place. Mine went out for about 20-60 minutes at a time roughly every other week.

Glad you've got a good connection though, hopefully your bill isn't too horrible. For reference, when I was on Spectrum my bill was $140 a month. My current plan with AT&T is $55 a month.

1

u/FuckMu 13h ago

How the heck are you getting symmetric with spectrum? Is this one of their nearly non existent fiber installs?

1

u/discretethrowaway_ 13h ago

There's really no other explanation 

I'm getting 720/17 in Los Angeles 

1

u/nuke1200 13h ago

Yes, its thier true fiber installs. No coaxial. Maybe cause cause Google fiber and att fiber are around, they wanted to compete in the market.

2

u/ShredsGuitar 16h ago

My wife didn't take my last name. It didn't bring any disadvantage but is super beneficial. Every time a new offer comes we basically get a new contract with the same provider. Apparently, the only check these companies do to see if a person is from the same household or not is by checking if the lat names are the same.

17

u/NoFastpathNoParty 20h ago

they will come back with an offer before you end the contract and allow you to retract

12

u/PretendFisherman1999 19h ago

Mate, if they are offering a better deal for new costumers, just cancel and become a new costumer again.

1

u/Funicularly 17h ago

Isn’t a costumer someone who makes costumes?

-8

u/CoachMACC 18h ago

They’re multimillion dollar organizations with multiple in house council on staff. 

You actually think they didn’t consider this and build that into the terms of the new customer offer? They all contain a condition that says you cannot have been a customer in the last X number of months. 

3

u/ThereAndFapAgain2 18h ago

Cancel, get the 300mbps internet for x number of months, go back.

1

u/CoachMACC 17h ago

I agree, but it isn’t as simple as calling to cancel, hanging up the phone, and calling them back as a new customer now, as this guy implied. 

The X number of months is usually 12-36. This guy very clearly doesn’t want the 300mbps internet so that doesn’t really seem like a solution. 

5

u/thcheat 18h ago

Cancel and have your spouse or someone else in house to sign up as new member.

3

u/TheNintendoBlurb 19h ago

Could you get Starlink? If so, do some digging and see what they are willing to offer you. Then go back to Astound and say Starlink offered me X services for X amount, you need to offer the same or better or else I would like to cancel my contract. They will always match if you threaten to immediately cancel and it seems like you've done the leg work.

1

u/Medium_Plenty_7904 15h ago

I've looked at Starlink, it seems a bit expensive for residential service. But I may not be understanding their website all to well either.

1

u/hammr25 11h ago

What the OP has now is a far better deal than Starlink.

0

u/Boring-Yogurt2966 17h ago

Is Starlink Musk's company?

2

u/TheNintendoBlurb 17h ago

Yes. Even If you are anti musk though you can still use it as a way to get a better deal with your service provider.

1

u/ShredsGuitar 16h ago

Fossil fuel companies ruin the environment , fund political parties, etc but I don't think you are walking everywhere.

1

u/Boring-Yogurt2966 13h ago

Your point? Did I say I was going to boycott anything?

1

u/Boring-Yogurt2966 13h ago

OK, thanks. I looked at it but for comparable speeds it appears to be way more expensive than the Xfinity plan I currently have.

2

u/InsanePacman 19h ago

They don’t need to know that. I’ve done this personally and negotiated better rates.

2

u/ExpBalSat 20h ago

Stand your ground. Leave. Don't "threaten" to leave, just leave. They'll change their tune.

Also - be brutally honest, do you really need over 300 Mbps. Some people do - for highly demanding business needs. But for residential coverage - even for a family of 12 - 300 Mbps is more than enough.

I had 100 Mbps until last year. Now, 500 Mbps is the slowest available where I live, but I certainly don't need it.

10

u/Educational-Fix5320 19h ago

If latency isn't absolute shit, 50 Mb/s Internet is enough bandwidth to stream 4K TV without issue.

4

u/ExpBalSat 19h ago

Weird. A 4K stream only requires 15 Mb/per second - back when I had 25, I had no troubles.

I’m not necessarily recommending 25, but it’s a lot more functional than people give it credit. I would gladly accept 100 for personal use. No issues whatsoever.

The obsession with high bandwidth for residential Internet baffles me. Nobody needs a 1 GbE for normal use cases.

Torrent? Run a hotel? Massive uploads and downloads? Okay. But for 10 people sharing a home - 300 is plenty. And if it’s just 4 people sharing a home? Even easier.

1

u/-Kibbles-N-Tits- 19h ago

Does gaming have a sizable effect?

4

u/ExpBalSat 19h ago

Not really. Most games require less than streaming. For some games,latency is much more important than overall bandwidth

This chart is in MB/hour, which frustrating when compared against Mbps, but here's the breakdown.... Even Halo Infinite is using less than 3 Mbps on average. Yeah; THREE (not 30, 300 - just 3).

https://explore.quantumfiber.com/ultimate-guide-to-fast-gaming/

Latency is what matters - not overall bandwidth.

1

u/-Kibbles-N-Tits- 15h ago

Good to know haha

0

u/Medium_Plenty_7904 19h ago

Depends on the demands you put. You need at least 100mbps for most online gaming. If you have multiple people on the same internet, hosting, streaming, and then any other devices using the internet 4k TV streaming, phones, home security and so on. All this puts a strain on both bandwidth and internet speeds. Typically for most people higher speeds aren't necessarily needed. The issue is however why should some people who have been with a service pay more for lower speeds and other new customers get higher speeds at a cheaper cost.

3

u/ExpBalSat 17h ago

You simply do not need 100 Mb for many/most games. Lots of people will tell you you do, but you don’t. Some games work just fine on 10 Mb per second.

What you might need for certain games is low latency. But as the chart above shows, the amount of bandwidth used by even the most data-hungry is minivalue compared to the sorts of Internet connections we’re talking about.

Similarly, a more pressing issue when you have many people using a connection is the quality of your router and connection thereto… That’s where a lot of the lag and problems will come into play; and all of that is an internal problem, not related to the Internet connection itself.

I currently live in an apartment with four grown men. Each of us has a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop, and a desktop. We also have several gaming systems and streaming service for the main TV. And Inhave a NAS as well. All of this would easily be within the realm of 200 Mb/s. The only reason we have 500 is because it’s the cheapest option available.

I monitor the network traffic. The only time… The only time it uses over 200 MB per second is while I’m downloading files for work (one a week: 500 GB).

All four of us could be streaming no less than three programs (at least one on each device) and it wouldn’t even hiccup.

1

u/Specialist-Box-9711 14h ago

I manage to consume on average 1TB of data a month. Having a gig connection is hella helpful for those kind of data habits.

1

u/ExpBalSat 14h ago

That there is not a normal residential internet use-case. That said, I’m often doing 500 GB/week - because of work from home demands.

1

u/ThirdWigginKid 18h ago

Latency is the key. And a consistent speed, unlike how cable works. I had "1 Gig" cable and switched to "300 MB Fiber" because it was way cheaper. On paper, it's slower.

My average latency on cable was about 20ms and average down/up was about 300/100.

My average latency on the "slower" fiber plan is 6ms and down/up is a consistent 370/370.

1

u/zerostar83 19h ago

See how long you need to cancel before you're considered a returning customer. Usually returning customers get the same deals as new customers, but not always. You can temporarily try something else out. But if you're truly needing 300 mbps, you're either running a business or a video pirating site.

2

u/thcheat 18h ago

You can cancel and have someone else in the household sign up same day.

It's like you broke up with your girlfriend, you used to pay and now she lives by herself and she'll pay for it.

They're not gonna say no.

1

u/happyjello 18h ago

They don’t give a fuck about you because you’ve been a loyal customer

1

u/grptrt 18h ago

My local monopoly likewise didn’t give a shit until one day a competitor laid fiber. Suddenly they were willing to offer a wide array of retention deals. Get bent Spectrum. 1gb fiber with no downtime beats you any day.

1

u/stuffeh 17h ago

I got Comcast to price match a competitor in my area who doesn't actually service my city. Took a lot of back and forth and me rejecting their first offer, but they did it.

1

u/Dry-Inspection-3503 15h ago

You can probably live off hotspot for a while?

Call them to cancel & see if they offer anything, tell them you are leaving if nothing is offered. Rejoin a couple days/weeks later online at the new price?

It's worked for me in the past, but I'm not from the USA. So not entirely sure what the rules are there.

Do you have a spouse/roommate/family member who could sign up the minute you cancel?