When you work from home or are a college student taking an online course, your internet connection is everything.
“It’s huge for small businesses because when someone comes through and you can’t take a credit or debit card transaction, all of a sudden you’re hurting,” said Anthony Childers, a former customer of Suddenlink. “You’ve lost a sale that goes out the door, you may lose a repeat customer who does not come back.”
Childers works out of his house. He’s relied on Suddenlink to keep him connected for three years.
He says he’s tired of spending days consistently without service and no refund. He’s also experienced poor customer service, so he’s decided to switch carriers.
“My last call time was 35 minutes, and that was to try and cancel service,” Childers said.
Last week, Pikeville City commissioners requested that a representative from Suddenlink come and speak at their meeting.
“I think that’s a perfect example of how people really are frustrated and they want change,” said Pikeville City Commissioner Allison Powers. “They want good service that they’re paying for, and they want to talk to somebody about it.”
Concerned customers also had the chance to ask the company about the recent increase in their bills.
“She did address that,” said Powers, who is also a Suddenlink customer. “It did go up. She said 10 dollars and 50 cents which is about what my personal bill went up, and she said that that was a communication increase that was put upon them and then transferred to the customer.”
She says she appreciates the company’s willingness to listen and hopes they make the necessary improvements.
At the meeting, Powers says the company’s representative told the crowd they have already installed some equipment and plan to add more. They have also worked to improve customer service since last fall.
As for Childers, he says customers just want access to the service they’re paying for.
“Slowly the price went up also since I became a customer,” Childers said. “The price nearly doubled in three and a half years from 60 a month to around 100 a month.”
Pikeville City commissioners say they are in negotiations with another company to bring healthy competition to the internet market in their area.
“I’ll see people post a speed test and they’ll post the results on social media and it is always so much slower than what they’re paying for,” Childers said. “Sometimes it’s 10 or 15 percent of what they’re paying for; they should all be paying 10 or 15 percent of their bill at that point.”
Powers says it also hurts their ability to recruit new businesses to the area.
“We really need an internet service that puts us on the same playing field as other places,” Powers said.
Suddenlink released the following statement:
Suddenlink greatly values our long-standing relationship with the Pikeville community and the opportunity to serve residents and businesses with the best connectivity experience possible, and we continue to invest in our local network and services to ensure the delivery of high-quality and reliable service for all of our customers.
There will be a public meeting on Suddenlink issues, organized by citizens, held in the fiscal courtroom at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25.
“We don’t want a class-action lawsuit,” said Powers. “But our city attorney is looking into it. The reason is, we’re going to put out a customer service survey. We really need residents and customers to answer it and send it back in. It will be available online and likely by mail. It’s gonna ask if you’ve had any outages and if you were refunded. If enough people did not get refunded after 24-hour outages, then we will have a basis for a lawsuit.”