r/Windstream

Service randomly drops for hours for just no reason multiple times daily. At least 4-6 hours of nothing. I really don't understand how they are even in business still. If you have any alternative to Windstream take it and be grateful not to have to deal with these just straight up thieves.

So, this will be a pretty long winded venting of frustrations....but maybe someone at Windstream will see it and be able to do something about it...

I live on a small farm. It was my parents until a year ago, I have known the place for almost 50 years. It sit's between 2 cities. The capitol city ~12 miles to the East, and a small city ~12 miles to the West. Has a state hi way running along one side. Over the years I have watched them install fiber optic cable into the ditch along my land. My father worked in Network Operations for the local telephone company that is now owned by Windstream, so I know what they were putting in, I even still have the end of the cable from where they spliced it 100 feet from the driveway. Anyway, I know that cable is old, they put it in in the 1980's and was for voice traffic at the time. But still, I know fiber when I see it being installed, and I know where it runs. I know there is fiber in my ditch that carries the internet traffic between the 2 cities. When I, unfortunately, lived in the smaller city, I had fiber to my house from Windstream (Kinetic) and it was great, never had much issue with it that wasn't actually my fault.

Anyway, recently, in like the last 2 years, the county that the farm is in installed fiber conduit through the entire county...got funding from the infrastructure bill. Was supposed to bring actual broadband internet to the rural residents. But so far all they have done is run fiber to the homes in the villages which already were getting at least 100mb DSL...my parents had DSL from Windstream and were lucky if they got 7mb down and 0.75mb up...And I am sure they are running it to the housing developments that are springing up everywhere...

When the hell do I get it? Why is it so hard when the fiber is already literally 500 feet from my house. I know they are deploying it where they will make the most profit from it, but damn it, that funding was supposed to help the ruralest of the rural...like farmers, not towns people who already had decent service.

Right now I am stuck on TMobile 5G, because at least I get useable speeds, but wireless will never beat fiber. Plus, I can't even open ports in the router due to CGNAT, so my sons friends can join his Minecraft server...I still have the fiber to my house in town, so I am VPN tunneling back there for port forwarding, but I hope to rent that house here eventually so I'll need to move the rest of my equipment to the farm...

Thank you for letting me vent.

Got on a chat to ask if fiber was available in my area because the form said yes but the person on the phone said no, chat agent pushed me to troubleshoot (my internet was working fine, it’s just slow because my wiring is old, no troubleshooting is going to change that), I said no repeatedly. Agent sends the “connect to cellular data because the troubleshooting could cause us to be disconnected,” starts the troubleshooting which turns off my internet connection, then disconnects the chat. Now they’re insisting that this can’t be remedied over the phone/over chat and a technician has to sent out in a few weeks? I need the internet at home for work, and now I’m just screwed I guess?

I live in a state to which Kinetic Windstream does not service... But I have been receiving emails about service technicians, payments processed and so on for almost a year...

I'm not seeing any charges to my personal CC or accounts (so not a super big deal, I guess?), but I'd like to know why and how my email is being used by some customer out in their service area and how to contact this company to remove it.

Anyone with a similar issue or know of a solution to this kind of problem?

What is the best modem/ router to buy that is reasonably priced that can do 1 gig Windstream Kinetic fiber? We had it just launch in our neighborhood but I don't want to "rent" a modem/ router so to save me cost I would like to just buy a router outright. Please help. Thanks

DSL ActionTec 3260

Browsing as normal, no issues, then suddenly offline. Waited a while since brief outages happen. Hour or so later, I decided to check the outage map. None shown. Chat Bot Tech popped up, tried a few things ... NADA

Last resort before a Tech Ticket was a hard reset of the modem ... toothpick in the hole.

That restored service, but I lost the SSID I'd been using for years. There have always been two, one for 2.4 and another for 5. The old one for 2.4 is gone and both 2.4 and 5 now show the same SSID, which means the Key has to be changed. That means I have to reset almost everything in the house that used the old one.

I'm going to try setting the key back to the old one, but I'll still have to rest everything to the new SSID, so I may not gain anything.

So I called last month because Kinetic put an extra $10 on my internet bill without warning, and I asked why. I already pay a whopping $133 dollars for service, up from the $75 I started out paying.

The rep offered me no explanation but said they could do a one-time "courtesy" $10 off my bill. She also said I was eligible for the $15 off for a year loyalty credit and that my bill would be lowered to what it was before - $75.

I say thank you and end the conversation.

Well, this months bill is generated, and my bill is $108.

I called, and I asked about this because the rep i previously spoke to confirmed 3 different times that my bill would be $75 the next time it generated.

They give me the run around, and aay a bill can not be changed once generated even though the first lady did, in fact, change the bill after it generated. But anyhow, they transferred me again to their loyalty department and I have another lady saying my next bill will be $61.

I think if it doesn't change this time I am dropping kinetic. They've steadily increased my internet bill about every 4 months until it reached an outlandish $133.40 every month when I was paying $75.

we pay 80$ and only get 3 to 4mbps is there something wrong with our line?

Many moons ago we used Windstream because it was our only option where we lived. The service was extremely slow (our package was 10 mbps) and extremely unreliable. It would go out constantly, support was useless, and I couldn't access the router for any port forwarding to host servers or try and improve latency in games. Nextlink started servicing our area and we switched immediately and haven't looked back.

Over the last few months, though, Windstream has been installing fiber in our area, and I just called and they do service our address now. Have they gotten better in the last decade or so? Or do they still suck? Is a 20x increase in speed worth dealing with their crap again?

Got a letter saying that fiber is coming and that “As we upgrade our network, your current service will need to move to fiber. This switch is required to keep your internet service running smoothly.
As an existing Kinetic customer, you'll be able to switch for free with no change to your current plan.”

They already ran Windstream fiber lines a few years ago or so to upgrade a DSLAM to being fiber fed, and deployed FTTH to less than 10 houses on my rural road a mile west of me. So a lot of the infrastructure seems to be in place but no fiber splitters on the pole near the fiber taps at my house yet.

In your experience how long did it take after you got the letter until you could order/upgrade service?

I’m hoping that some US-based Kinetic/Windstream people monitor this sub.

I have an elderly father who lives in a retirement community that has Kinetic internet and Windstream landlines. The whole complex has lacked both for over one week. Support is off-shored and has not been able to provide updates. Does anyone here know anything? This seems like a potentially dangerous situation.