08.02.09
Astound Cable lives up to its name
It might be de rigeur to bitch about your internet provider but I want to take a moment to sing the praises of mine.
Getting internet connected was one of our first priorities when we moved into our new pad in San Francisco. Thanks to the wonders of Skype this also means we have a home phone. I asked around and it seemed that Comcast was the biggest provider but that many of its customers (or at least the vocal ones) were dissatisfied.
It was @aptinfrance on Twitter who tipped me off to the DSL Reports review site, which let me type in my zip code to see customer reviews for internet providers in my specific area.
I narrowed down the search and spoke to two different companies and eventually decided to go with the cable company Astound. They offer television and telephone as well but we just wanted broadband internet.
In Australia broadband internet costs the earth and comes with draconian download limits. In the UK, the price is not terrible but it’s normal to wait six to eight weeks for a connection, or to change providers, and ADSL is usually the only choice. By contrast, we have it pretty good in California, but I think Astound’s service has been above and beyond the usual.
The prices were competitive – it was a special offer and the price is guaranteed to remain the same for 12 months. We are paying $32 a month – $29 for the service and $3 for rental of the cable modem (we could buy our own if we wanted). This is the total cost as there’s no tax on internet here. It’s for the High Speed 10 plan, which is not their fastest but at 10Mbps download was faster than our previous ADSL connection in the UK.
Despite the price guarantee, we are not locked into a minimum contract so we can leave at any time. We expected to pay about $20 for the installation but we have not been charged for this on our first bill. I don’t know if we’ll end up being charged for it later, but as I’ve agreed to it, it’s fine either way.
I called on a Tuesday to get the prices and spoke to a woman called Megan. She sounded like she was local and was very helpful and pleasant. (this has been true of everyone I’ve dealt with at Astound). She talked me through the different plans. When I called back 10 minutes later to place my order, I spoke to the same person. She called me back 10 minutes later to set up an appointment for the installation. I opted for 2pm-5pm on Thursday – two days later.
I had a call the day before to confirm the appointment and then on the day, the engineer called half an hour early. When I said I was home, he asked if I would like him to come early since he was already in the area. I said yes.
It took him a little while to set things up as he needed to run a new connection from the street to the front of our house and then configure things with the modem in the house. He was probably there for 40 minutes all up, mostly outside. He remained entirely professional and courteous throughout and waited to check if the internet was working properly on my laptop before he left.
We had a customer service call a few days later just to check we were happy with everything so far. Of course we were.
After two weeks of smooth sailing, last night we got home to find our internet wasn’t working. We waited until this morning and it still wasn’t working. This evening we finally bit the bullet and called Astound. We placed the call at twenty minutes to six on a Saturday evening. They said they could have someone there by 8pm. The engineer showed up at 6.15pm!
It turned out that Comcast had been around the day before and disconnected us. (The engineer recognised the Astound cable with the Comcast terminator on the end). Presumably the previous tenants were with Comcast and they’d asked to be disconnected. The upstairs neighbours probably gave the technician access to the passageway while I was out. He didn’t think to check if it was actually a Comcast line or not and just disconnected it anyway.
The Astound guy got us back up and running within about 20 minutes. This meant it took under an hour for Astound to fix our internet, despite needing to send a technician to the property!
I don’t think I’ve ever written such a glowing review of ANY company before, let alone a utilities provider! Please note, I am just an anonymous customer and this review is unmotivated by anything other than complete satisfaction.
I am astounded!
Georgina said,
August 2, 2009 at 4.43 am
Wow! So nice to hear a good news story about an ISP for a change.
Tom Allen said,
August 2, 2009 at 12.14 pm
That is sensational, but in a way, what I have come to expect from US service providers, where there is genuine competition.
Is there any chance that Astound or an affiliate will be setting up in Sydney some time?? Oh, I forgot… we don’t have genuine broadband here yet, so why would any decent service provider bother?!
Steve said,
January 29, 2010 at 4.46 pm
Your review for Astound shows up when you do a google search, so let me counter this good review with a bad one.
I switched over to them about a year ago. For months, the service worked well. Then, inexplicably, latencies started shooting up past 500ms randomly. That kills streaming connections.
They were unable to address the problem. After sending three different techs out and determining that yes, it was somewhere on their end, they effectively gave up.
Personally, I’d recommend looking elsewhere.
The Niltiac Files » Internet saga: Preview of connection process to AT&T DSL said,
August 21, 2010 at 9.16 pm
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