Qwest

Obvious and appalling attempted fraud, theft and deception.
A charge for $ 29.84 was posted to my account 2 weeks prior to the internet service being «activated» by Qwest. I noticed on the first bill that this charge was not even mentioned and that there was another set of charges totaling $ 29.84 on the first bill. When I asked a phone representative «Hey, haven’t I already paid this charge?» the phone rep seemed annoyed and placed me on hold to «talk to a supervisor.» When she returned, 5 minutes later, she told me that this was a «deposit» that I would be getting back in the next 6 months. «That’s odd, because there’s no mention of a deposit, either online or in the bill I received. I looks like they just have one hidden charge and then re-​charge you on the first bill for the same thing.»
I called back immediately and asked exactly the same question of another telephone rep. This time it was a man, who was apparently completely on my side and said «Well sir, that’s ridiculous and that person just told you that to get you off the phone. Qqwest doesn’t charge a deposit — We’re gonna get to the bottom of this.» He said as he was looking up my account, the $ 29.84 fee had been credited back to my account and that it would show up in a few hours.
So then, what was this mysterious «deposit» that was refunded secretly to my account? To me this is the clearest case I’ve ever seen of fraud and deception in pricing. Qwest charges you a «one time fee» of $ 29.84 when you sign up online for internet service. Then when you receive your first bill, that same charge appears, but NOT the one you already paid! I’m guessing most costumers miss this and are defrauded by Qwest. What a bunch of bastards!
Another thing that worries me, as a brand-​new customer: Several places on the bill, there are warnings stating «Please let us know if you would like us to prevent 3^rd party charges from appearing on your bill (other companies trying to charge you fees, charities, elections funds, etc.) Qwest will block these charges free of charge.» Uh, what? So Quest’s billing system is so insecure and open that 3^rd parties can just hack into your bill and start charging you fees? OK, I literally thought this was a spoof when I first read it, but it’s very real. Somehow, it’s a known issue that customers regularly are charged for service from OTHER COMPANIES and charities, etc. Why isn’t this «3^rd party fee blocking» feature the default? Why would the customer have to specifically ask for a free service that blocks unwanted, fraudulent charges to their account from unauthorized 3^rd parties?! Wow.

Slow! Poor customer service. Failure to provide services as ordered and paid for. Good luck cleaning it up Century Link…

Qwest.
Monopoly at it’s finest.
Hated by many.
Used by many due to the fact that we are stuck with it.
Qwest makes it impossible to switch with a new company and keeps us hostages to Qwest inconsistencies and bad bad bad everything forever.
If I could have a magic eraser I would use it on Qwest.
If I could have a magic wand I would use it to turn Qwest into a rock. or a frog. or a drozofilla fly that has a lifespan of a day.
If I could get through a Qwest ignorant staff I would spend time out of my life to share how they make the world feel…
If they only care… ugh
Btw: bad for kids, pricey, no parking for location not detected, loud, inattentive, would recommend? ABSOLUTELY NOOOOO

Qwest disconnected my internet WITHOUT WARNING. I had recurring payments set up on my card, later lost my card, got a new one, and with ZERO WARNING, they shut off my Internet a month later due to lack of payment.
Their phone reps have no idea about anything, but they’re constantly trying to upsell me because I only have internet (not cable or phone), so it takes FOR EVER to do anything over the phone.
Their website is a joke, you can’t make payments, you can’t do anything. With terrible phone AND online service, you just can’t get anything done.
They funnel you to contact them by phone rather than online, because I think they’re more confident that they can upsell you over the phone, which is extremely condescending.
You can’t schedule a disconnect of services, you have to call THE DAY OF your disconnect. Wow.
This company is the most grotesque, hideous, monopolistic, absolute worst company I’ve ever dealt with in my life. Avoid at all costs. Qwest only has customers because they have exclusive contracts with apartment buildings around town, and your options are either Qwest or nothing.
–Written from my iPhone, using the 3G provided by a comparatively OUTSTANDING company, AT&T.

Qwest owns the public (?) phone lines, so I had to go through them when I wanted to use an alternate ISP. Qwest did everything they could to sabotage the deal. Qwest relentlessly tried to slam my business away from the alt ISP, even when on conference call with both parties! A Qwest technician came to my house no less than 3 times, and I don’t know how many hours I spent on the phone with customer support reps from some other country who either did not understand what I was saying, did not listen, or simply did not care.
This went on for 3 weeks.
I finally gave up and called Comcast, got working DSL in 24 hours.
At no point were the Qwest representatives not rude, aggressive, or incompetent (or some combination of the 3). Months after, I’m still receiving bills from them, asking for money I don’t owe for services I never received.

I hate their commercials sooo much, more then any commercial I have ever seen! So cloying, poorly acted, not funny, not clever, just blah, blah, blah. Watching them is like eating a napkin.
Their attempt to be dead-​pan just comes across as awkward and uneven timing. They just give me the creeps and I can honestly say that in my recent search for an internet provider, I went with a worse deal then Qwest strictly because I didn’t want to feel any association with those loathsome ads!!!
Wow, and after reading all of these service reviews, I guess I couldn’t have found a worse deal. Thanks Unilocalers!

They never do what they say they will do. They never show up when they say they will show up. Days of waiting at home for their service techs only to find out that the wrong instructions were given, the order somehow disappeared, the order was somehow listed as completed even though service was never provided. I hate them.

I’m like everyone else. I have sworn to myself that every dime that Qwest robbed me of for bad business practices and outright lies would come back to them under the form of lost business.
Don’t go to Qwest for internet folks. I have never heard anyone not complain about them. I should have listened.

Qwest is one of the worst corporation for the consumer. Try canceling your terrible service. Then, you keep getting charged. It’s been a 6 month process. No one is able to help you no matter high you escalate. There is not documentation of your phone call of what you try to achieve.

have 1.5mbps DSL — is OK sometimes — other times is god-​awful slow.
they don’t offer any faster service at my location — but if they did — I’d be skeptical if they could reliably provide it.
have problems reliably watching any kind of video. if I try to download a file in the background — any other access is brought to a near full-​halt.
on the positive side — they’re relatively cheap.
avoid.

If you have an alternative like comcast, please take it. Absolutely THE WORST ISP I’ve EVER encountered. Let’s start with the speed — we’re paying for the 7mbs/​sec service and at best (20% of the time), we get around 4. We kept calling customer service and they kept taking us around these time wasting, convoluted routines even though we tell them that we’ve gone through all of them and nothing helped. Then they messed up our bill. You’d think 1 call to them should suffice in fixing whatever mistake they made — WRONG. It took 3 calls, 2 of which were over an hour including hold time. I’m in a building which unfortunately doesn’t have comcast and qwest is unfortunately the next cheapest on the list. I’m tempted to switch to speakeasy which I’ve never really heard of and is more expensive but can not be as bad as qwest in customer service and product reliability. It’s absolutely unacceptable!

I broke down after 2 ½ years of going cell phone only and got a land line again. Big mistake.
I’ve had my land line literally for THREE HOURS and I’ve gotten FIVE telemarketer calls. A friend of mine tried to call me and my line was busy, thanks to a telemarketer.
Un-​fucking-​believable.
So I call their Customer Service and I hear a bunch of laughter in the background right when I tell the rep what’s wrong … hmmm, maybe they deliberately spam their new land line people to coerce them into what she then tried to sell me!
«Non-​solicitation Service» — $ 7 set up, $ 6.95/month
Hmmmm …
Again, unFUCKINGbelievable.
Gawd, I HATE phone companies and ISPs.

Well, after getting off the phone with the nice customer rep, I was about to post a glowing review! I’d had very few problems with outages, always had a strong connection, and it was SO EASY to cancel. But, I was canceling for June 1^st. Ever since I got off the phone with them, my internet has been CRAWLING.
WHY? WHAT DID YOU PEOPLE DO??? It’s like they turned some kind of satellite away from me because they knew I wasn’t keeping the service. Is that possible? F U Qwest. I want my last 5 days of internets.

It’s a damn miracle that I’m typing this review from my Qwest Internet service.
Twice now in my history of tenancy I’ve been forced to use Qwest for DSL internet due to the fact that some older buildings are only wired for their service.
For DSL service, Qwest is pitiful. They have outages constantly, and sometimes for no explained reason when the internet does work, it will suddenly become e x t r e m e l y s l o w, like 1995-​style when I had AOL on dial-​up, only worse.
Their customer service call center is another story. It will take you about 10 minutes of working through the automated stuff to get to where you’re supposed to go, then at least 10 minutes of being on hold, and when you do finally get to a live person there is a 90% chance they will be a total dumbass.
They’ll «talk you through» a whole line of things to do to fix your internet that you’ve already done, and then finally begrudgingly have someone reset the signal. You’re better off catching a rocket ship into outer space, somehow locating your DSL satellite, and re-​setting it yourself.
I do have to say that the few actual technicians they have sent out to my house have somehow been totally nice and helpful … but that good service is completely overshadowed by the umpteen cretins I’ve had to deal with on the phone to get to him/​her to come out in the first place.
The next time I move, having an ISP other than Qwest in the building is gonna be right up there with running water and electricity.
Now I’m gonna click «Post It» … and if you’ll please excuse me for a while I’m going to go take a shower, peel 50 pounds of potatoes, and compose a sonata while waiting for the next page to load …

Qwests’ motto should be «Spirit of Dis-​Service» I called customer service yesterday to try and solve a problem i have been having with my DSL connection. I usually assume that the whole customer service process is going to be a total pain in the ass, so i try to diganose and fix anything myself before hand. After a moderate wait on hold i get a rep who seems to be totally astonished that i dont have a land line at my house and therefore dont know my home number. we wont even get into his disbelief when i told him that i had nothing other than the DSL modem plugged into the phone jack. (no phone? no alarm system? no dish network? no alarm system?) after rewording the same question a few times he finally pulls my account up by name and we progress into a phone conversation that was a complete waste of time. instead of simply asking me if i had reset my modem, double checked the connections and all that, we get to walk though those steps in infinite detail. he even asked me the color of the phone line at one point. so after some similar nonsense where we tried every «trick» short of tapping on it a little he finally decides that he cant diganose the problem and needs to send a technician out to check the lines…
REP-«if the tech has to come inside there would be an additional charge for that. will you authorize those charges?»
ME-«no, i dont own the building and you would need to get with the leasing company to authorize any repair charges to the building»
REP-«so you are telling me you live in an apartment?»
ME-«yes, hence the term apartment 177 when we verified my address at the begining of this conversation.»
anyway after a bit more nonsense he dispatches the tech and we are finally able to end our little game of cat and mouse. maybe he was lonely and had no one to talk to… they get 2 stars cause the tech actually found the problem outside my apartment (it must be a miracle!!!), fixed it and the DSL is working fine. happy times…

Qwest,
Qwest and I have spent about 6 or seven hours together on the phone this year. They were my DSL provider for the last three years until this summer when the DSL quit working. So I bought a new actiontech gateway for $ 100. Still didn’t work. Qwest says, we will come out to your house but if irts not on our end you will pay another $ 100. Seems fair, so they came out and admitted the problem was on their end and charged me $ 100! then the DSL still didn’t work. So I would call every week for about 35 minutes being transfered to and fro all with no resolution. They would claim that my account was credited but then a bill! So I called Qwest in India and asked them to print a copy of all the calls I had made in regard to their «service» in the last 6 months and send it to me. They can’t do that. I offered to pay the postage. I asked if they had a printer in the office, they said no they did not, then they said they did. After some more hours they shut off my service and after being transfered 5 different times waived the fees for the spurious charges… or so I thought. Yesterday I received a bill from «Omnium». Turns out they sent the charges ($ 45.57)to collection! So I called yesterday the Omnium people and they said they were not obligated to tell me what the nature of the charges were. Huh? They said I needed to call Qwest. So, I called Qwest. The charges were interest on the collection premium could I wait on hold? After another 35 minutes they have magnanimously waived the charge. Don’t ever use Qwest. Ever ever ever ever ever ever. You know whats great about qwest? Every time you call they ask for your phone number. Shouldn’t they have caller ID? Then they transfer you. It goes like this…“Do you mind if I ask yopu a few questions? Whats your phone number? What are the last four digits of you SS#? Are you still working at that degenerate bar? So one answers all the questions and told to wait on hold for the same questions to be asked by the next customer service person. The last letter they sent contained this bit of wisdom: «Make this the year that you resolve to pay down your debt. If you are entitled to a refund from the IRS, consider using it to clear up your financial obligations» I can’t believe I have to grant them a star for this to be posted. No star!