RCN of Chicago

Reviews 3

AN

Anthony Speziale

UPDATE (11/1/15): My original post below was largely in regards to how bad the Internet was and gave the TV a pass. After my tv got stuck on a "loading" screen, I spent another 30 minutes on the phone with someone. Only to inform me a technician would be out the next day, in a window of time. So again, out of TV for two days. They were kind enough to credit me for a day of TV. I guess. Will update when I receive my paltry couple dollar credit. After all that, technician comes out, this one far less smellier than the first, he got my TV working. He was kind and efficient. But needed to connect to my internet from his cell phone for some reason. Now today, my internet goes out again! Its been 2 hours so far, and my 110mbps internet will not load a screen. Wifi says its connected, and even hard wired it says connected. Nothing loaded from my cellphone, MacBook, nor my HP laptop. This is after having spent an hour on the phone with them on Friday to tell me my inernet gave out because I was in an "outage area". No they werent sure the cause, and no they didnt have a timeline for it to be fixed. Im really looking forward to this phone call so they can tell me to try unplugging my router and waiting ten seconds. "Oh you already tried that? Well lets try it one more time". I apologize for any typos/poor formatting. As this is done from my cellphone on my data plan. --------------- Below is the original review: Welp. I cracked. After writing and deleting a review 3 times, Im finally going to submit this one. If I could give less than a star, I would. But I believe they deserve at least one star for their incredibly lackluster service, and impressively terrible Internet. I pay for their highest Internet, 110mbps and recently upgraded to HD and TiVo. Their television offering is as terrible as the others. Bare minimum, if any at all, put into the user experience. But worst of all, the channels periodically lose signal, or blur/line through. I wouldnt be paying for television if it wasnt included in my rent. Now onto the impressively bad part... the Internet. Holy cow the Internet. The 110mbps is fine. Never had a problem with loading speeds. Although this is objectively no faster than my 50mbps was from Comcast. Ill blame it on their provided router. I can hardly be 10 ft away and around a corner before the wireless drops. The impressive part to this, is when I asked RCN for an upgraded router due to this issue. The rep on the phone replied, "Im sorry that is our only router. But Ive been hearing that complaint for a while!" Like it was some light hearted joke between friends... All their marketing of their great service and quality must be made up because I cant find it from any review site. If youre about to sign up for RCN, follow this workflow: 1. Dont. 2. If they are your only option, move. 3. If your only option is RCN, and you absolutely cant move, then just go to a coffee shop and use their internet. Their customer service is OK. But not OK enough to justify the hour or two I spend on the phone with them each week. RCN is so bad, ill be running for congress in the near future to let actual companies that care provide Internet and tv. Look for my name.

NI

Nicole Senn

This company is appalling, possibly worse than Comcast. Ive rarely had to call them for anything, which is good because their customer service has always been incredibly hostile. They extort money, make up policies that arent written anywhere, charge you fees for paying them, and on top of it all theyve discriminated against me multiple times. Ive been assessed fees for their screw ups like charging my autopay before theyre supposed to or because I "requested technical service" when their service stopped working and it was their fault. My discrimination story is the best though. I called to let them know they put the wrong name on my account and they acted like it was no problem to change it. They asked what the name was on the account and what it should be, when I told the guy on the phone he paused for nearly a minute and then said in a super angry tone "okay then". Which was followed by "unfortunately we are not able to change names except in the circumstance of marriage. When I said I have a court order and I changed my name because I am transgender he said "okay, so what do you want me to do about that". I asked again if he would change my name. They said they need proof Im transgender to change the name on my bills, then they told me it would cost $20 to change my name. When I started getting annoyed, I asked if they charge to change a name due to marriage, they said they do not but my situation "isnt quite the same". Which to me sounds like discrimination. They wouldnt do anything and every time I called, the price to change my name kept going up and they threatened to change my service price, so when I moved I canceled my service and started a new service under my new name. Somehow I ended up with service under my old name in a new address. They just transferred my service because they recognized the phone number on the account and when I called they accused me of trying to get promotional prices and lying. Ive been mistreated multiple times by multiple people and recently it seems theyve outsourced their customer service to a third world because I can never understand anyone Im talking to and theyre not only rude, theyre belligerent and harass me, even yell at me on the phone. Ive paid on time with no issue for years. Instead of being treated respectfully like a good customer who pays on time, except when they screw up, they treated me like a poor lazy person who cant pay my bills. I have never been behind on a bill... this treatment is absolutely uncalled for. Its not my fault your system is broken and you charge customers random fees for basically breathing. Out of everything this company does and all of the complaints that Ive read, this company doesnt just hate LGBT people, it hates all people and customer service is their bottom priority.

JO

John Michael

Have been an RCN customer since moving to Chicago a couple of years ago. Their strength is their net access; the software running their cable offerings is amazingly outdated and cheezy. Every time I look at the sub-SD onscreen menu and its limited capabilities, I get annoyed. No way to identify "favorite channels" youd actually like to watch, so you have to slowly scroll through the entire list of channels you arent interested in to find the one you want to program in. Unless some knucklehead is downloading bit torrent movies, my net speeds have been usually acceptable and often close to what was promised. I sublet briefly in a building with a lot more 20-somethings, and net access choked to a halt most Friday and Saturday nights. Cable has been reliable and HD images are almost always clear. Remote tech support has been helpful the few times Ive called them. If its anything common, they have a pretty good script to reboot the system. One time we add an ongoing problem with audio dropouts from several local stations so they sent out a "technician". My wife was creeped out by his spacey demeanor and he obviously had no clue how the RCN received interfaced with a basic AV amplifier. He kept insisting there was nothing wrong with the RCN equipment but "your TV sound is defective". I knew that wasnt true because we werent even using the speakers embedded in the TV, and the problem was limited to a handful of local stations. When our invoice arrived, we were charged $50 for this "service"! I called CS and complained but the rep just kept repeating that the tech said "it was our TV". In addition to calling me a liar, she wasnt willing to credit our account or even split the charges as a goodwill gesture. Overall, customer service is usually polite but rarely helpful. As others have noted, the cost is quite high for the cable and no one is interested in matching service or pricing from competitors. Today, I asked for help in updating my credit card number to continue auto-pay. NOT POSSIBLE! The only RCN solution is to cancel the auto-pay and then sign up again but it takes up to two cycles before the new card number is working so you have to make other payment arrangements. So, my experience is 4 star net + 3 star cable + 2 star customer service = 3 stars overall. RCN is remains far behind the technology curve and doesnt seem particularly concerned. I was a DirecTV subscriber for 25+ years [but its not an option in this building] and had comparable HD stations for significantly less with consistently good customer service. RCN is just OK, at best.

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