This is a very long post, but I am a novice at this stuff and this website helped me out once when I was in a jam so I've come back to maybe help other newbies who can benefit from any part of my story.
I am in Seattle and have had 7mbps DSL with CenturyLink since about 2009 on a Price For Life campaign (PFL) that they had back then, where you could bundle the PFL with your home phone line. The 7 mbps was $59.95 per month but when bundled with home phone the final price with all taxes etc. was $39 and some change. (Although the bill added each month the Internet Cost Recovery Fee, on the same bill it also credited back that same amount. I had read somewhere that CenturyLink was told (by the FCC?) that Price For Life meant exactly that, so that is why the credit for it showed up every month.) I've had no trouble with the service, maybe a time or to in all of these years where I lost the connection and a reboot of my modem fixed it. I thought 7 mbps would suffice me forever, yeah right! My brother lives an hour away in Frontier Communications territory where all he can get is 3 mbps and he is envious of my 7 mbps! Yet, now I want to stream without the chronic buffering thing, but I also did not want to lose my PFL convenience and be subject to future price increases.
Well, along comes CenturyLink's resurrected PFL campaign (beginning last September?) where it states you do not even need a home phone to get their PFL prices. Because they had previously strung an aerial fiber cable along my arterial street, the new speeds available to me were 20, 40, 100, and 1 gig. I called them up, wanting to upgrade, but they stated I did not qualify for the PFL prices because I had a home phone with them! Hey, I thought my home phone didn't matter to them! Hmm... I decided they figured they already had me in the bag and only sought customers who switch from their competitors. Not cool. I could have sworn their website text stated "for new and existing customers" but I could no longer find that text. I called back a week or so later to try again, the rep said the only way I could qualify as a "new" customer for the PFL was to disconnect my current DSL *and* my home phone line, then place an order for new home phone service with the PFL High Speed Internet (HSI, no longer referred to as DSL, apparently). I thought disconnecting my home phone line was completely unnecessary and a lot of hoop-jumping for me, the customer, just to get around their apparent marketing restrictions. I didn't do it.
This drove me nuts. I want to pay CL more money but they won't let me! Why won't CL take my money? I've never heard anything like this before. I mean, who doesn't want to make a better profit from their customers? I then finally noticed on their ubiquitous PFL TV commercials the small print that appears for only one second, and it said "for new and existing customers"! Why not me? I'm an existing customer!
After some thought, I decided that perhaps it was the way I opened the discussion with their reps when I would ask them for exactly what was advertised in their PFL TV commercials. If they had to tell me 'no', why wouldn't they say, "But here is what we CAN offer you!". So, a month or more later, I called them up a third time and said, "I currently enjoy bundled service with home phone and 7 mbps internet. I've been thinking about upgrading my internet. What can you offer me to bundle my home phone with a higher internet speed?" I did not even mention the PFL TV commercials.
The rep replied that she could do this: disconnect from my existing billing account the DSL portion, leaving on that account just my home landline, then create a second account (separate billing number) for my new PFL higher internet speed. Smokin'! Gee, did CL just give their reps the ok to be this creative or did I happen to reach a spunky service rep? Who cares! I dig it! I ordered 100 mbps service and chose to buy their $100 modem (er, router) rather than rent it, and because I don't want any future trouble-shooting to be pinned on a third-party router; I want to be able to say, "Hey, I bought it from YOU!" LOL. She said the earliest the guy could come out would be three days later. I asked would my modem arrive so quickly? She said yes.
Two days later, a contractor came out and ran optical fiber from the pole and along my house to near where the copper phone line entered my house, leaving a coil of optical fiber hanging. This is normal and expected. He told me that the regular installer may or may not remove the copper drop.
LESSON NUMBER 1: Although my outcome was beautiful (explained in a moment), if ordering HSI that will result in a brand new fiber drop, one should realize in advance just where they expect to drill through the wall of your home in order to mount on your inside wall their Optical Network Terminal (ONT) so that it isn't a shockeroo when the regular CL installer shows up, with short notice to approve of the drilling. They will want it near an inside power outlet. While their regular installer may have flexibilities available to him to move the drilling location assumed by the contractor, maybe you can get ahead of this by identifying as early as possible what your options are as far as where on the outside of your house they can drill (what room of your house, that is, and near a power outlet). In my case, where they planned to drill and mount turned out to be the best outcome for my situation, even after discussing their options with the actual installer who came out the very next day (the third day).
On the morning of this third day, the actual CL installer had called me early 0830am to verify that I would be home for my afternoon window. I said yes but the promised new modem had not arrived in the mail. He said no problem, they would loan me one to get me up and running and when mine arrives I could swap it out and return theirs to them with pre-paid postage. Cool. He came out and I pointed where on the inside wall I was looking for the ONT to be mounted, he measured relative to the nearby window, went outside and drilled the hole. Over the hole on the outside of the house he mounted a sturdy plastic box that he said contained the extra optical fiber length, coiled up. Over the hole on the inside of my house he mounted the ONT upside-down, probably to put the connection jacks at the bottom side where dust wouldn't fall into them. I like that he did that, placed it upside down, and this black box is so devoid of style and printing that you do not notice its orientation on the wall unless you get your face up close to read the small print labeling the LEDs. All connections attach along the bottom. Perfect.
He had assumed my home phone line would also be served by the fiber drop so he proceeded to make me realize that the copper wiring to all of my existing wall jacks would be made inoperative. I asked how can I have my existing phone extensions in the other rooms if he cut dead the copper drop? This was a surprise. I had not anticipated this. To run a phone cord from the nearest wall jack to the ONT phone jack in order to still utilize my other wall jacks would be too far to run it. He said what folks do is to buy a phone system with many wireless handsets, plugging in the base station at/to the ONT and to the nearby wall outlet, then plugging in the remote handset bases wherever else in the house they wanted extension phones. As I settled into this unsettling consequence (another expense, and will eat up more wall outlets), and as he went back and forth inside and outside my house, upon his next trip indoors he said he looked closer at my order and they were keeping my home phone on the copper. Hooray! That means my wall jacks will stay operative. I will have both a copper drop for my home phone and a fiber drop for my HSI. No need to buy a new phone system. I love it!
LESSON NUMBER 2: if you currently have a working landline plugged into any of the wall jacks that were installed when your home was new, and if you do not want to abandon that copper line and all of your extension jacks when you install a new optical drop, to have to buy a new wireless phone system to hog all of your wall power outlets, you should find out in advance from CL if you can keep your landline on the copper and have only your HSI go in on the new fiber drop. That is definitely the way I would go. I make note that the contractor was not there to pull down the copper. I am very happy that they kept my landline on the copper. Maybe I lucked out because the service rep had created a separate billing account for only my HSI which logically left my landline untouched. Incidentally, with my HSI removed from the phone line, I was now able to remove from each wall jack the little filtering dongle that CL gave me back in 2009 to use at each wall jack where I had a phone plugged in.
With the installer done with his installation, I accessed my modem wirelessly from my desktop, seven feet away, tables, books, and a huge printer in the air path. He said a wireless connection would be less than the 100 mbps speed. A speedtest came in at 79mbps download which seemed too much of a degradation over wireless but it is his loaner modem and maybe my modem will be better? After he departed, I replaced my wireless connection with a 14-foot CAT6 cable and the speedtest came in at 103 mbps. Smokin'! What a drop in download speed for wireless, though, huh?
A week later, my first bill on this new billing account was rendered and it showed the $100 charge for the modem which had still not arrived. I called the billing department to explain I was not excited to pay for something that may never arrive. He said the notations in my account showed that they considered the loaned modem as mine. I told him the installer said it was not new and I'd rather have a new one for the price I am paying for a new one. No problem at all, they ordered a new one and as I write this, the UPS tracking states it is expected to arrive Monday, two days from now. The rep said there was no additional charge of course but he was wise enough to say that if somehow a second $100 charge shows up on the next bill, to call them and they would write it off because of his copious notes from our call.
That is my experience. I will say the contractor and the CL installer were both nice, courteous, and available to answer my questions. Even though this long story might seem to contain several minor issues, I am very happy with how this whole thing went down. I have worked for a large company and have dealt with plenty of large companies and I know how things go, so you will not find me blaming for certain unknowns in this story. I later read that CL initially allowed PFL for only new customers but later allowed it for existing customers so maybe that explains why I was initially refused. I don't hold ill will. My new 100 mbps HSI from CenturyLink absolutely rocks. And, it's Price For Life which took the scare out of future budgeting on my income. Their website says PFL is still exempt from the Internet Cost Recovery Fee. I am very happy with this service and wanted to explain the whole upgrade experience, the great, the good, and the not so good. I would recommend this service to others but I would make any novices like me sit through my story so they would be better equipped. I understand CL personnel also read this forum. Thank you.
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