CenturyLink High-Speed Internet

I’ve been a Comcast customer for years and we were moving back into Seattle from CO. so I thought I would give Century Link a try. I made the appointment and had everything scheduled 10 days after making it, even got the confirmation email. The day of the appointment I took off work to wait for the guy to come and install our internet service to our apartment. 3pm rolls around and I finally call to see what’s taking so long and of course somehow, someway my order mysteriously was cancelled. Did I mention I took off work? This means I didn’t get paid for that day of not working, which I explained to the representative. This was a Friday and she promptly expedited another order for me for the next Wednesday. Confirmation email again!
Finally, someone is coming and we’ll have internet. Wrong! I wake up that Wednesday morning, again taking off work, and check my email. Century Link sent me an email sometime the night before that they «encountered a delay in provisioning your service order so we are unable to put the service.» I call again and explain the situation. After going back and forth the representative says something like — well, it seems to me that I think someone will be out there today. I ask her if she thinks or she knows? She puts me on hold and after 20 minutes or so of going back and forth she finally sees that Century Link isn’t even set up to put internet in our ENTIRE BUILDING because it’s so new. And then she asks me if she wants me to cancel someone coming out.
At this point all I can do is laugh, though I’m really mad, and say yes please cancel any future oder. I hang up the phone and immediately call Comcast. With Xfinity hotspots we had internet in about 10 minutes.
But it’s not over. I notice that my credit score went down and looked into it, sure enough stupid Century Link did 2 hard credit checks and knocked it down. To sum it up
Century Link:
Cost me money for not working for 2 days!
Dropped my credit score all for nothing!
Completely waisted my time!
And I just got something in the mail regarding «Understanding your first bill». UGH!

I don’t write reviews often, and assume most negative reviews are written by people that like to gripe… but believe the negative reviews you see on this page. My wife and I switched (due to a great promotional deal) from Comcast to Centurylink. Switching the TV and internet was an Ok process, with the usual hassles you get from all companies these days, the fun began when we tried to port our phone over. The list of things that has gone wrong is just staggering — including them setting up service appointments without telling us, canceling appointments with out telling us, getting our phone number ported over from Comcast, then canceling the process and giving the number back… all without our knowledge. And the comments about ridiculously long phone calls — I was on the phone for just shy of 3 hours today and was transferred to 5 different departments. When the call ended all was settled I was told. Then an hour later I got a call from a C Link rep who was trying to decipher the mess of our account. This fellow seemed to know his stuff and after a 20 minute call, told me everything was set and the number would be Re-​ported from Comcast on Friday and to expect a call on Friday or Monday after the porting was done so a new appointment could be scheduled for a technician to come to the house and physically set up the line. Well, I got a robo call a half hour later to say a technician would be at our house sometime tomorrow. They expect you to be home all day to meet the tech, and I was not given the option of selecting the date of the service call, just told by the computer they will be by tomorrow. From my years of dealing with Comcast (until recently the only option in our area) I would take Comcast service any day over Centurylink’s.

I would give them negative stars if that were an option.
Signed up for their service, and it took a couple weeks to get someone out to activate the service. Ok, that’s fine, I get it. They activated the service, but it took another 5 days for the modem to arrive. Not sure why they couldn’t have timed that up better.
Hooked up the modem and it doesn’t work. Long story short, after about a dozen phone calls and online chats, I was told 1. We didn’t actually have an account with them (despite the confirmation letter and the fact I had a modem), 2. We DID have an account, but the activation date of the account was 2025, 3. We HAD an account but it was cancelled, and finally, 4. We have an account, but they couldn’t hook up service and would have to dig a trench underground to connect the wires.
I told them to just cancel everything, as I was just fed up and exhausted at that point. Low and behold, a contractor shows up at my door the next week to connect the wires underground. And, as I could have predicted the entire time, we got a bill for $ 20, despite never having one single day of internet service with them.
Overall, probably the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t recommend CLink to anyone, ever.

This review is for Century Link in general. Horrible company, pathetic and incompetent employees.
1÷16÷16− Called to set up new internet service. I was told a service tech will come out the following week for an install. Provided both cell and home number, never received a call or message.
1÷23÷16− Called again for an update on why my service hasn’t been set up yet. Provided my name, number, and SSN and couldn’t find a record of me ever calling them. Okay… so I went through the process again of setting up everything. Was given a confirmation # and was told that their tech would «turn on the switch» for my home and I can install the modem myself. Okay… no problem.
2÷1÷16− Called again and service rep told me my order was in but not «pushed». Waited from 1÷23÷16−2÷1÷16, no modem shows up for me. On hold for 35 mins total to reach her the additional hold times she put me on. She puts me on hold again and that she will transfer me to another line to expedite my service. Puts me on hold and I get disconnected from their line. No way am I going to call back and explain myself to another rep again. This time I got mad.
Looked into my phone and a total of 1 hour and 43 mins I have spent during my 3 calls to Century Link just trying to set up basic internet services and every single time this company has failed me.
What is difficult? Call, provide my information and to have a tech come out and set up my internet, then I pay my monthly bills? What’s so complicated here?
Anyway, I will gladly pay more for Xfinity/​Comcast. Bad CS but they actually provide service.

Not good at all:
I signed up for Centurylink service in December 2014. When I signed up, I asked the rep about bundling and one bill. She told me to get my DTV account all set up and call back. A few weeks later I called back. The next rep told me I would get bundled service/​billing from there on out.
Then I got a few notices saying I was late with my payment so I’d log in and pay my bill although it wasn’t past due. I didn’t notice that the past due notice was for a different phone number. Several months later Centurylink turned me in to collections for a month’s or partial month’s billing.
On August 4, 2015 I called to try to figure out what was going on, I spoke with Rebecca in Financial. Turns out, I was set up as a new customer twice. Rebecca said they would send my information on to her manager who would submit a credit and a statement to the credit company saying they reported my account in error. That was August 2015.
I called on September 4, 2015 and spoke to Nick in Financial who said it had not yet gone through the process, they were very behind to call back in a month.
Thinking this had all been resolved by now, I took a look at my credit report expecting to see a correction. No correction from Centurylink.
January 26, 2016 — The first two representatives I spoke with hung up on me (one was Shaniqua) and the third, Wayne, transferred me to from Billing to Tia in the Credit Financial Team. Tia told me there was a balance of $ 300.17 on the account and there was nothing she could do for me and transferred me back to billing. However, it wasn’t billing I was transferred to. I was transferred to Luna in Customer Loyalty (after being on hold and transferred around a total of an hour and a half) Luna said he couldn’t do anything for me and transferred me back to the credit department. From there I got got David in Financial who told me that a credit was rejected for an early termination fee twice back in August 2015 for being set up twice for service. I never received a notice or a phone call about this from Centurylink.
David put me on hold to get to the department that rejected my credit. Thankfully this was a short hold. Got on the line with Sharon in financial and after explaining the situation, said she would credit the early termination fee but I still had a balance due. The original Rebecca I spoke to in August 2015 said if I paid for the router, she would submit a credit for all other fees and charges to be credited.
To put an end to this while on the phone with Sharon, I paid the balance on the now defunct account.
I asked Sharon what would be done to clear this mess off my credit report which I take very seriously. Remember, back in August 2015 Rebecca told me Centurylink could issue a statement to the credit company that this information had been submitted in error.
Sharon she said I’d have to call the collections company. I told her the collections company said I’d have to call Centurylink. Sharon then promised me she’d send an email to collections to get this cleared up. I asked her to promise.
On 1÷28÷16 I viewed my credit card statement and Centurylink billed two times the amount to my credit card that Sharon said they would on 1÷26÷16.
On 1÷28÷16 I called Centurylink. and got David in Financial. I explained the situation and he told me I had a $ 100 balance due and he had to transfer me to billing.
I’ll update this in one month to let you know if this has all been resolved.

If you have a choice of another provider run as fast as you can. Absolute worst provider I have ever dealt with and I have dealt with many of them all across the country. All I can say is that if you keep calling sometimes you can get someone in the US that is a bit better. But still the bills are unclear, the original agreement when you sign up has been changed, the obscure charges are constant, I don’t like this company.

I have subscribed to CenturyLink’s «Gigabit» internet service (via fiber), and while the speeds within their network and with proximal networks are nearly as advertised ~850−950 Mbps, the speeds out to other very mainstream networks (e.g.
) are abysmal ~1.5−100 Mbps, particularly during peak hours ~4−10pm. I have yet to find a single download from any site that performs faster than ~100 Mbps, which I was routinely able to accomplish with my previous cable provider that served me ~115 Mbps. I can’t even stream HD video from youtube during peak hours. A friend of mine with standard broadband ~100 Mbps in California is able to routinely download files ~2−4x faster than I can. If CenturyLink is unable to deliver anything over 10% of their advertised speeds to most locations on the internet — mainstream services that most certainly have bandwidth to support my needs — then they are very misleading and show very specific preferences to certain services in the internet.
CenturyLink’s link out to YouTube (see ping/​tracert results) are terrible, which is highlighted when you look at the internet health report speed test, which shows a sluggish 1.9 Mbps from their content provider (Tata). However, links with other internet sites remain fast and responsive. This compares with internet speed tests hosted by separate providers (condointernet) taken within the same time window (~10 min) that show that my connection into CenturyLink and out to certain services remains fast at 850+ Mbps. These test are representative of other tests performed on numerous other days, when CenturyLink has told me that there are no problems with their network.

30 DAY GUARANTEE — Don’t risk it!
There’s a «fine print» procedure needed to truly try Century Link High Speed Internet without a catch. If you try the service and it doesn’t work, you MUST go to
and fill out a Satisfaction Guarantee Form, IN ADDITION to calling in your cancellation, or you’ll be charged a $ 19.99 service fee. If not paid, it looks from other reviews, that this might go to collections and hit your credit report.
Century Link (as of this writing) has cost me time (about four hours,) and if all goes as promised, that’s it.
Mid October — 50+ minutes speaking with friendly door-​to-​door reps (students from from China) offering 30-​days NO RISK. No mention was made of the web-​based Satisfaction Guarantee Form (SGF) procedure needed to cancel the service without cost.
Early November — 45+ minutes on internet chat with customer support who helped me determine that my home is not wired or ready for Century Link service, offered to send technician to rectify. No thanks, I’ll stick with what I’ve got, and followed procedure to return modem. (No mention of SGF procedure.)
Mid November — 25+ minutes on phone to cancel service, was assured that all was good, service stopped, no mention of money owed nor of the SGF.
Early December — 1 hour+ on hold and with rep to try to understand why I’ve received a bill for over $ 89. Was told that all costs could be reversed except for a Service fee of $ 19.99. (What service?) No mention of the SGF website, and the rep forwarded me to the wrong department that couldn’t address the service fee.
January 4 — 25 minute hold time, and 15 minute conversation — While on hold I FOUND the SGF website and filled out the form. When the rep came on, he mentioned that going to the form at
was necessary to eliminate the $ 19.99 service fee.
Giving two stars because all contacts were courteous, if not satisfactory outcomes, and it appears my issue may be solved.
Now, I’ll wait the 60 days to see if I’m either a) sent to collections, or b) account closed; zero balance. Stay tuned.. .

Returned cable box within 30 days of trial but despite 2 phone calls CenturyLink says their system didn’t fully process the closed acct and I started receiving notice from a debt collections agency. Bad news for someone with strong credit and interest in home-​buying.
I called third time, asked to speak to a manager, and mentioned case for a lawsuit. Issue fixed.

If I could leave –100 I would. The customer service is horrible! The wifi is demented! I sit on hold for 45 mins to an hour and the moment a rep gets on the line… THEY FREAKIN HANG UP!!!

My Centurylink Prism TV service went dead in the 3^rd quarter of the Seahawks vs. SF 49’ers game. The game was ironically being played at Centurylink Field. Just signed up a month ago and already the service has been out twice. Why must all providers of this utility suck?

Long story as short as possible… I am a current Centurylink customer, not after this.
I signed up for Directv in 2013 when I moved in to a new house in Southern Oregon. My next call was to Centurylink to obtain internet service. To my surprise the two companies are in business with each other and my sattelite and Internet were already bundled. This was news to me as I did not authorize them to bundle my service and I certainly did not authorize them to share my confidential information such as address, phone number, DOB, and SSN. I immediately asked them to separate the two services and bill me separately for each service, they said they could not because it is a contractual issue (that I obviously did not sign, authorize, or was even aware of at first). I would call and get nowhere fast as the employees at Centurylink enjoy disconnecting the line after you have been on hold for a supervisor. After three months of this back and forth and writing a few direct letters to the district manager, senior manager of operations, and even the CEO, (certified mail of course), I finally got the to «de-​bundle» the Directv and the Centurylink Internet service. I went on somehow with both companies and paid my bills each month separately. I obviously ruffled some feathers… read on.
Today, 11/​20/​2015, I am looking forward to moving my business in to a great new building, very exciting. I am informed by the rental management company that have my credit report shows a negative credit reporting account from Centurylink for $ 839.00. Now, my new business location is put on hold (probably a deal breaker) by the management company & owner of the building because I have a recent delinquent account and it appears that I do not pay my bills. I contact Centurylink immediately. I speak with a representative who tells me that Centrylink has been paying my DirecTV bill for several months back in 2013 and now I am liable to pay CL for the account that I never authorized or asked them to pay (Directv bill). It gets very complex and confusing because it makes no sense whatsoever. CL basically says that I owe them money because they paid my DirecTV bill even though I pay my DirecTV bill and my Centurylink Internet bill every month in full. It made no sense at all.
Here’s where it gets kind of comical, the representative put me through to a manager in billing/​collections that is supposedly going to help me resolve the issue. I wait on hold for 20 minutes and get disconnected. I called back and had to start from the beginning again. I was put on hold waited and was connected to a different manager that told me she had to talk with her manager. I Hold, transfer, start my story over, hold, disconnected again. Call again and start over. I finally asked to speak with the district manager, hoping to connect with anyone who would just put some effort in to the matter, someone who knew what he/​she was doing. No luck and no one who cared enough to speak to me without putting me on hold or just blindly transferring me just to get rid of me, because they obviously didn’t care enough to simply look into the matter. I attempted to connect with a manager from 12 PM to 5 PM on Friday.
Overall, I called seven different times and spoke with 12 different people, was disconnected twice, transferred too many times to count, and here is the very best part. The last time I was placed on hold for an account manager, I was told it would be a 5 – 7 minute wait time. I was making a last ditch effort before business closed for the weekend. I waited on hold for over 90 minutes. I finally hung up after taking a picture of the phone and the hold time which I will include with my review. Terrible, terrible, terrible business. Do yourself a huge favor and stay away from this debacle of a company.
So, I will be sending a certified letter on Monday demanding they remove the erroneous negative credit rating and of course ask them to delete the mystery balance of $ 839.00 within 10 business days or it will be going to small claims court where I will embarrass them if they decide to send a representative.
Thanks Centurylink… for nothing but misery and frustration. I have to go write a review for Directv now for bundling my services with these crooks.
See attached pic for hold time and CL phone number.

My horrible, awful century link saga:
I write this to you from my I-​phone, because I have nothing else better to do since my internet has been freezing all night and I can’t watch Netflix or work.
Here’s how it started:
–Called in to renew service. I had just moved and had previous century link service (no problems previously– however they never sent the shipping label for my old modem and tried to charge me for it– cute)
–Make an appointment for Internet service — what joy? After looking up my address they say I can get 40 mbs for $ 34/​month for 2 yrs! However they were 3 weeks out for an installation, but whatever.
— Installation day arrives (trust me I wrote down confirmation number– and logged everything into my outlook during my initial call) The tech was suppose to arrive between 1−5pm. I told them to call me since I would have to leave work to meet them.
–4pm no call. I called them and waited on hold for 20 minutes before being transferred to someone else which I was on hold for another 25 minutes. Finally get through to someone to get a status. Lady on the phone tells me the rep is there!!! She told me she would have him call me in the next 15 minutes.
–4:40 I race home– no call yet, no installer there.
–6pm still waiting no call. I decide to call again and spend another 30 minutes on hold only for a rep to tell me our local office closed at 5– there won’t be and install today and that they would be there first thing in the morning.
–8am the following morning. No call.
–9:00, still no rep
–9:30 I call again, another 30 minutes on hold. Get through to someone who tells me that my install ACTUALLY was supposed to be today. Funny– that’s not what I had confirmed, no one brought that up the day prior AND the rep was supposedly there yesterday?
ALSO …
I actually wasn’t eligible for the higher Internet and they were planning on installing an substantially slower Internet at $ 75 a month??? Thanks for trying to slip that one by Century Link. I told her I needed it below $ 50– she told me she could get me a better deal with TV for $ 120? Stop wasting my time.
Over the phone the rep wouldn’t let me speak with a manager, couldn’t offer me what they had promised — So I cancelled the install. Pretty fired up at this point.
A day later my property manager contacted a local rep who contacted me and apologized for my experience. Told me he could get me free install and honor the price and speed I was initially promised but only for a year. I took the bait.
When he put me in contact with the local office to reschedule my install they were rude and not helpful. They told me they could put a rush on the install but couldn’t promise it would be that week. (You mean after you guys already no showed and I have been waiting 3 weeks?)
Finally a install scheduled– Friday from 1 – 5. Stressed multiple times that the installer needs to call me since I’ll have to leave work.
8:00 am Friday morning I had just got out of the shower and was getting ready for work: and the front gate rings — it was the installer. I told him to please give me 5 minutes and I would come down to let him in. (I needed to put clothes on) Not even a minute later … A knock at the door. I am fanatically trying to put clothes on– a little flustered when I answered the door. I said «sorry I wasn’t expecting you– I thought that they told you that you needed to call on your way and that the install wasn’t until after 1pm???» His response :” oh yeah, I have a 408 area code and no one ever answers so I never call…” Seriously?
So it’s been about a month. There is no way in hell I have the speed they told me :40mbs– and Netflix can’t end stream smoothly? (I never had that problem with my 12mb service prior)
Internet cuts out– disrupts my ability to work and is just plain annoying to watch a show that constantly pauses. I have tried to shut off, restart, and it doesn’t getting better. Day over day I feel like the disruption gets worse.
I am calling in tomorrow to see if they can come out and look. I can only imagine how that’s going to go. I am taking a short video every time it cuts out and noting time so when they come they can’t tell me it’s fine. (Captains log– in the past 2 hours Internet has cut out 17 times. Each time lasts about 3 minutes + so out of 120 minutes I have spend 51+ of them staring at nothing)
Overall– do yourself a favor and stay the hell away from Century Link. Unless you really hate someone– then recommend the shit out of it.

Subscribe their service if you have death wish. Horrible service. Horrible service. Horrible service.
This is a company without integrity. I wish they go out of business in 2016.

Horrible service through and through. Signing-​on they were nice as sunshine, promising me 10mb speeds. On connection.. . 5mb max speeds. Customer service line hungup on me when I called to complain that the speeds I signed up for were not even available to me. When the person transferred me to their supervisor they just hungup. Call back and just ask for a supervisor and the person was helpful enough. Convinced me to stay with them by lowering my bill.
6months into the service they raised their price by $ 1, that’s not too bad except that it was after I had already paid my monthly bill. On my next bill I get a late fee for that $ 1 they tacked on. $ 15 late fee. Customer service hassle again, they can’t remove the fee. They can do a «1-​time courtesy offer» to credit that amount to my next bill. That’s right, they had the nerve to make it seem an inconvenience to them to fix their own mistake.
To the service itself. «DSL, never get anything less than you paid for! Not like cable service where the number of connections will slow your service!» That sound familiar? 40% speeds on weekends and some nights. that’s ~2−2.5mbps speeds. 2009’s 3G mobile speeds topped at ~6mbps, remember how slow that was, How much of a difference it went after hitting 4G? Customer service says their line shows no issues, it must be my router. It wasn’t my router, the service drops at peak times, w/​spotty connections throughout.
If this were a meal, it would be a restaurant promoting their 5 course meal, serving you 2, overcharging you and «graciously» giving you a % discount on your next meal with them.

WORST SERVICE EVER. Their customer service is AWFUL. Last time I called for help both representatives said, «What do you want?» Umm… I’m sorry… I think I want a little respect. In the meantime, both representatives were having a side conversation and kept asking me to repeat myself. And then when I was trying to get help on my bill the representative I was speaking to kept trying to sell me some service after I said no 4 times. I’m trying to LOWER my bill… not raise it.
All in all– if Century Link wasn’t a Seattle monopoly, NO ONE would be a customer. I wish I could give it ZERO stars.

Worst internet provider ever.
I moved, and cancelled the service about a month or so ago. The associate on the phone said she cancelled it, and that she would send me an RMA for my modem I had rented. Long story short, I still have not received the RMA, I’ve moved, and I can’t get in touch with CenturyLink (either via chat, email, or phone). I’m also still getting billed at a rate that was double what I was paying (the promo rate had ended, but I’m not even in that building anymore).
As an internet provider, the internet service was decent– we did have a lot of internet outages, but they generally were only for 30minutes-​2 hours.

Shady sales techniques. Comparing their service to comcast. Full of lies and inconsistencies. Very suspect and unclear pricing
Don’t buy it

This is a rip off. I have never experienced such bad wifi service ever. They promote different speeds that in all actually do not exist. My wifi freezes or drops my device every other day. I can’t wait to move so that I have to get Comcast.
Shame on these people for false promises.

I signed up for Century link, and my service was supposed to start last week.
After three outages in a 24 hour timespan, they scheduled a tech to come check out what was wrong. The tech was supposed to come between 10:15 a.m. — 12:15p.m. last Saturday. The guy never showed. At first when I called they told me it was because he was «running late». At 4 p.m. they called back to let me know that the guy «didn’t want to pay for street parking.» Are you kidding me?
So now I’m out of internet until this coming weekend, when let’s hope the guy actually shows this time for his appointment.
Also, I signed up for CenturyLink via their online chat with a representative. DON’T DO THIS. The jerk made promises he couldn’t keep. First he told me I would get a $ 50 credit added to my bill. It took phone calls, chats and emails with five other representatives to get that taken care of later on. Secondly, he told me that if I bundle my bill with Verizon i’d save an extra $ 10 on top of the promotion I already have. Not the case at all… A Century link representative just called me this morning to tell me that that «wasn’t possible.»
False advertising, poor customer service, and a bad product.