So, we've had Mediacom as our provider for Cable TV, phone, and internet for the past 15-17 years. Back then, they were mediocre. Not great, not bad. Recently though, they've really been forgeters. Their TV and internet services have been absolute stuff. Here's why.
Television:
From the late 1990's to around 2008, all we had for TV was the basic cable channels (channels 2 - 60ish), and it worked decently. When we switched to digital, we ordered a new cable box, along with a new 58" HDTV. They told us we would get channels 2 - 250, 500-555, and 700 - 900. This sounded very good at the time, because our bill wasn't too bad. Well, we soon found out that the channels we got were really useless. 110 - 130 was unusable research channels, 160 - 215 didn't exist at the time, 500 - 555 ended up being Music Choice which I really don't count as "channels", and 700 - 900 was supposed to be mostly HD channels, but the sly forgets at Mediacom just decided not to give us the HD channels. Also, we didn't receive an HDMI cable with our new, extremely loud and easily overheating cable box. Isn't it nice watching TV on a brand-new HDTV with blurry quality? Nowadays, we've received more channels with a price. Our cable bill is now around $200 a month. Yes, I realize we can cut some of the packages, such as Sports, but I actually watch like 2 of the sports channels, and my mom watches every movie channel from Showtime to HBO. They're also giving us bullstuff late fees such as $10 extra on our bill, even though we're paying on/before time. A lot of the channels they include are useless. We've had the "Government Access Programming" channel forever, and it's never had any signal, what's the point? Lastly, channels tend to go out from time to time, and it gives us the "One Moment Please" crap on the screen which actually freezes the cable box for around 2 minutes.
Phone:
It's okay. They gave us a complimentary waterproof house phone, what am I gonna bring it to the loving beach. It would work great if I were underwater.
Internet:
Here's where the stuff hits the fan. Their internet is
horrendous. Daily, I have to reset my loving router and dilly-dally with the wires and plugs and bells and whistles, until I get a weak signal. You may blame me for using a wireless router connection, but this has happened even with a wired connection. Every day, whenever my router decides to stop working, I have to open the stuffty Netgear application that came with the wireless router. Here's the issue, when it asks for my router password, I enter it. It declines. What the forget, it's not like I'm 6 years old and can't type worth stuff, I'm literally typing it correctly and it rejects it. What doesn't make sense is that around 10 minutes later, the password works. When the password never works, I have to do some really gimmicky push-to-connect stuff where I poke the small as stuff button on the router with a paperclip, it gives me around 2 minutes to run all the way to the living room and press the button on the router. Well, whoopdedoo, my router doesn't seem to have that button on it! Tough luck for me, guess I just have to forget with that password situation for like 100 years. When it works, the internet takes around 5 minutes to actually connect and find a signal. It's bullstuff. I guess I'm ranting more on my router than Mediacom's services, but they're guilty too. After taking a speedtest, it says that my download speed is 10.64 Mbps. This is horsestuff. I get nowhere near that, I don't know why. On average (depends what I'm downloading, let's just say a Steam game), I'll get an astonishing speed of around 600kb per second. How great. Mediacom's internet and my router combined have forgeted me over so much that it's unreal. I have to do that stuffty router reset stuff 2-3 times A DAY. It's very unnecessary.
Customer Service & Lying:
About a year ago, I phoned Mediacom after having issues with my internet speed. This is the conversation:
Me: I'm just calling today to ask why my internet has been having issues, and why it is so slow. Has anything caused this?
Employee: May I have your name?
Me: Will
Employee: Alright.. Will, what seems to be the issue?
Me: I'm just asking if there has been any issues with Mediacom's internet services because my speeds have been extremely slow the past couple of days.
Employee: Well, that can also be caused by a faulty modem or outage in your area.
Me: My router and modem seem to be working fine, but I just called to give some info on how my internet has been running, and I think it should be fixed upon just a bit, just my thoughts.
Employee: Hm, would you like us to just disconnect it entirely?
Me: What?
Employee: You seem to be complaining, and we never like to hear that (sarcasm). We could just disconnect it all since you're obviously not happy with it..
Me: All I'm doing is giving constructive criticism.
Employee: Well, I hope the best for you.
[he hangs up]
What a loving asswipe. Apparently, their company can't handle a little bit of criticism, so they threaten to just take away my services. Mediacom also has really really lousy and "minimalistic" advertising that just points out the benefits you'd have if you want to pay the "ultimate sell your soul premium package". Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAtXktREMshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVk9ctnm3Uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDiAsLjtTQThis Flo knockoff piece of stuff just spews out garbage like a trash disposal. Keep in mind, we pay way more than $5 a month for internet, so we should be getting more than the $5 for 15mb downloads.
In conclusion, you really don't have to give a stuff about what I'm talking about, I'm just rambling on. But before I stop, here's the GLOWING reviews for Mediacom's services.
and yes, I get that people usually write reviews when they're mad at the service.
