January 19, 20, 21, at 12:01 a.m.
— from Mark Molzen, CenturyLink Corp Communications —
On January 19, 20, 21, at 12:01 a.m. each day, CenturyLink will upgrade switches serving the San Juan Islands. During the upgrade, Internet service will not be accessible for approximately 30 minutes. All phone services, including 911, will remain available in a reduced capacity.
We apologize for this inconvenience.
This announcement of curtailed service was accompanied by an ad from CenturyLink reading “this deal will go fast, like our Internet.” Was this self-parody intentional?
Hallelujah! CenturyLink’s downtimes are going down to 30 minutes!
Come on folks, cut them a little slack. I’m no fan of CenturyLink, but in this case they are being proactive and upgrading equipment to improve service. It is not “curtailed” service, it is only for 30 minutes, and it is happening at midnight when the overwhelming majority of customers are sound asleep. If CenturyLink didn’t proactively upgrade equipment and just waited for it to fail before replacing it you’d be all over them for not being responsible to their customers. Here they are being responsible and you’re still all over them. I don’t think that’s being very fair.
Fair? Do you want to talk fair? What about paying $300/mo. for crackly business phone lines and theoretical broadband at 1MB (often more like .5 MB) when trying to maintain a business on the island? Hours and hours of being on hold or, worse, actually speaking to service reps, half of whom couldn’t access our account (the merger apparently didn’t “take” for the computers) and some of whom denied we were customers. Being told that Orcas was a “legacy” system that wasn’t being attended to and that doesn’t include many of the advertised features. Having to contract for broadband service elsewhere (thank goodness for Orcas Online.)
I was making a sarcastic remark out of frustration. Much worse could be said about CenturyLink.