CenturyLink internet not working for many (or is it?)
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Many of CenturyLink’s high-speed internet customers in Virginia appear to have reason to grumble today, as the provider is experiencing a wide-spread outage.
“We are currently working to resolve this issue,” says a recorded voice at the technical support number. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
A phone call seeking further information about the outage was promptly returned— with the information that there may not be any wide outage at all. So says Simone Alley of CenturyLink.
“We feel like that [recording] may be in error,” says Alley. “We don’t have any widespread outages reported. Our load doesn’t show any kind of a spike.”
And so the mystery continues for a while.
– story updated at 2:14pm (original headline: CenturyLink internet not working for many)
sounds like somebody downloaded the TSA app to the centurylink servers. all of our packets are going through a lengthy pat-down before being allowed onto the internet.
Thanks, Hook — this information is helpful to the consumer and also probably to CenturyLink/Embarq, whoever they are right now. I’m sure it saves countless phone calls to their customer service desk.
It’s not the internet that’s down, it’s their phone service. I have both and the ‘net is fine, but the phone is out.
I know my DSL has been slowed down to a crawl for the past few days - 0.20 Mb/s when I should be getting 3.0 Mb/s. Several other folks in my general vicinity have also complained of slow connection speeds. After several hours on the phone with tech support over the weekend, they found that they have some sort of issue on their end that they are, in theory, working on fixing today (local tech repair doesn’t work on the weekend).
Slightly off-topic. Can anyone speak to the quality of Century-link these days vs. Comcast? We’ve been frustrated by our Comcast service (intermittent speed) . . has anyone made the switch? Positive or negative? Cheaper?
My CenturyLink DSL is abominably slow, and there are frequent drop-outs (like, during an hour session, there might be three or four moments when the signal is just gone. In my experience, they just stink. And customer service is pure useless.
My CenturyLink DSL and phone works fine, Hoolarious you can stop by and try mine.
I’ve actually had two outstanding customer service experiences with CenturyLink. One was to inquire about my rural DSL service. They managed to make it faster (but not the highest speed since my area is so rural, the cows don’t count as potential customers) AND lowered my bill by $20 a month!
My second call was for an ISP problem - got someone in America to answer the phone right away; when she couldn’t fix the problem, she handed me off to someone else, who answered right away and fixed the problem within 5 minutes. A far cry from being on hold with Embarq for 45 minutes before getting a human on the phone.
My Centurylink DSL sometimes works really well and sometimes it’s really slow. I can’t tell so much just surfing the internet but when it slows down I can’t even watch my Netflix streaming. I think it worked better when it was Embarq but that could just be my imagination.
We had very slow internet at work today and were told there was fiber broken in Culpeper.
This morning on the radio a listener called in and said there had been a multi car accident (involving a tractor trailer) twenty something miles north of Ruckersville. I think that would be Culpeper county. I wonder if the two are related?
@Bud
Have you noticed the times that your Internet is slow? If it is about 6 - 9 o’clock at night then it is probably because a bazillion other people are on the Internet also, which slows things down.
I live in the woods in Greene. I have had to live with slow, slow dial-up since hector was a pup. CenturyLink does not seem to care much or at all about me. They make high speed internet available for some of their customers: the ones who live in a large enough clump to make it worth their while $$$-wise. This is the country. We don’t live close together. We are still paying customers. I have not been late with a bill in years. Take care of your customers CenturyLink!
Our internet connection has been slow for several
weeks. We’re getting about 5 percent of the speed
we’re paying for. Today it was almost as bad as
dial up. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is.
We lost DSL signals last night, then again in mid-morning. I used my AirCard and contacted CenturyLink tech support and they informed me the service will be back on in full by 11:30 AM 11/23 and that I may have service on and off during today (11/22). So what’s the big deal? Slow news day? Maybe you can get someone at CenturyLink to explain what happened to cause the outage, that would be worth something….
My Centurylink DSL has been up and running all day yesterday and so far today. No speed issues either. Sounds like the equipment you are connected to is whats bad.
From what C’villeboy says, it really does sound like a piece of equipment failed and they were overnighting new equipment in. I always thought the phone company had redundant equipment so this wouldn’t happen.
Join the crowd. We haven’t had broadband since Nov. 5. We also didn’t even have dialup the 19th aand 20th. IBEC service is through Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, but Verizon is handling the work. We believe the Verison repairmen come to work at noon, take an hour for lunch, and leave at 1:00.
“I always thought the phone company had redundant equipment so this wouldn’t happen.”
That would indicate they give a hoot about customer service :-)
They are probably hoarding cash instead of spending money on spares. Of course that assumes they are profitable.
Is .14 mps a good DSL speed from CenturyBlink? Maybe from CenturyBlink I shouldn’t expect too much. I think my dialup was about the same speed.
CenturyLink recognizes that our repair customer service message stating there was a statewide outage was in fact an erroneous message on Monday. We had only a few customers out of service, and all service has been restored to all customers.
CenturyLink has a local operating model with management and customer service representatives in Charlottesville. We strongly encourage customers to contact us here with any service problems, so we can further investigate and resolve issues. CenturyLink is committed to bringing the most reliable telephone and internet service to all of central Virginia.
Please feel free to contact us at our local retail store (434-974-6928) for any customer service issues or sales inquiries.
Unfortunately, not all service has been restored as my DSL is still out. Not only that but my initial trouble ticket was closed without resolution as the BMC said that they could not sync with my modem, claiming it was off (it’s been on the entire time). So, after another hour on the phone with tech support today, they’ve opened another trouble ticket which won’t be fixed until Friday at the earliest. Not only that, but all the notes associated with my initial trouble ticket were mysteriously deleted so none of the info was available.
The other really annoying thing is that my folks, literally next door and with a phone/dsl line off the same pedestal, have a normal dsl connection (back to the 3 Mb/s speed it should be) after having the same slow/no connectivity that I had.
Argh!
Don’t feel alone down in Virginia, we’ve been experience difficulties here in Ohio as well. In just the past hour, we’ve lost connection due to connection time outs through CenturyLink here as well. In the past week, we’ve consistently seen our DSL drop or greatly reduce in speed at all hours. Right now my connection is only at 368kbps - nowhere near our normal speed.
So, it seems the problem isn’t just down in Virginia, it’s affecting a broader customer base. Maybe the techs at CenturyLink should pull their heads out of the sand & stop ignoring the issue & actually put some work into fixing it.
I have a 3mb connection speed because i figured it would be pretty good, right now and for the past week I have been getting about .4 and mainly lower. I have never reached the 3mb I am paying for and I am about to call and chew someone out.
I switched from Comcast to Embarq/CenturyLink a few years ago because of Comcast’s poor customer service and erroneous billing. When I moved to my new home and Embarq had evolved into CenturyLink I noticed I would have times when phone/internet would just disappear. This would happen several times a day/ Century Link would keep on assuring me that nothing was wrong. I finally realized that ADT was using the telephone line to send out status updates and that was the time when our phone/internet would go down. CenturyLink installed a splitter at my home and it has worked fine since then.
century link’s very name is synonymous with internet failure.
I live in north eastern nc, almost va border. I have been having connectivity issue since 11-23 century link is clueless. My wireless is fine but hard wired laptop and desktop have little and no Internet respectively. I’m on new modem #2 with number three on the way. Can’t get them to send tech.