CDS taking over wireless broadband

[dana6@sonic.net]

Can you give more update on CDS taking over wireless (like the old pogowave)? Will we be able to keep our old email addresses. When will the transition take place. If we are doing automatic payments, when will that need to change? Any chance the download speed will be increased?

[dane]

Can you give more update on CDS taking over wireless (like the old pogowave)? Will we be able to keep our old email addresses. When will the transition take place. If we are doing automatic payments, when will that need to change? Any chance the download speed will be increased?

Here are some details to address your specific points:

Yes, you will be able to keep your email address (either @pogowave.com or @sonic.net.) You can either have it forwarded, or retain a mailbox here. Mailboxes are included free with hosting, or available for $4 monthly for up to four of them.

The transition took place effective 4/1/2012. Any prepaid time has been transferred to CDS, and your next auto-billing for wireless service will be from them.

Regarding speed, I would expect in the next few months they'll simply be busy with migration of backbone equipment from our roof to their tower site, and it's unlikely they will be engaging in upgrades. After that, I don't know - you should ask them then!

[Disappointed]

This is a huge bummer. I happen to know from firsthand experience that CDS does NOT offer anything approaching "World Class Customer Service". Their frontline customer service technicians are rude, surly, unknowledgeable, and unhelpful. They treat you like it's YOUR fault that their service is faulty. I am greatly disappointed that CDS is going to be taking over my contract, and very apprehensive about what the future holds as regards my wireless broadband. If their product is as bad as their customer service, we'll have to look for another option.

[dane]

I'm very sorry to hear that this has been your experience with CDS. I don't myself have direct experience with their customer service. With regards to the quality of the network itself and it's performance, CDS has purchased the network we were using to serve our customers, so I wouldn't expect you to see diminished performance.

[donegal]

I don't know about anyone else, but we got no advance notice of this action. I pay almost $700 a year for Pogowave, which is better than satellite, but not by much. Pretty high-handed to just fob us off on another provider without advance notice. I found out today when I complained about he Pogowave slowing down again.

Poor customer service by both Sonic and CDS. This was badly handled.

Oh, yeah: CDS doesn't answer their phones.

I used to have Sonic DSL at my old address just outside RP city limits. Our new place is less than 1/8 of a mile outside SR city limits. I can't figure out why I don't have DSL available out here yet. They've worked on Sebastopol. Why not SW Santa Rosa area?

How do I "sign up" for my sonic.net email address? I can't lose it.

[dane]

I'm sorry that you did not feel well notified. We did send both email and a letter in the mail.

[kbenson]

How do I "sign up" for my sonic.net email address? I can't lose it.

If you want to keep your sonic.net email address, you have two options. We can either forward the email to another address of your choosing permanently for free (you can use the @sonic.net address as long as you want), or we can convert your account to an email only account and you can continue to get your mail at sonic.net, use the member tools to manage that email address, and continue to benefit from any specific spam filtering configuration you've set up.

Whichever method you choose, I can help you get it set up. Please feel free to PM me here on the forums or send a message to support@sonic.net with "ATTN kbenson" in the subject with your request.

[Guest]

I have been with CDS for seven years. Next-door neighbors have used PogoWave. Both have had their ups and downs, but I haven't seen any clear advantage one way or the other. The technology is simply not as solid as wire/fiber, but we don't even have DSL here. Cable? Ha, ha, ha.

Sometimes it takes a while for CDS to fix a problem, which can be frustrating. But it's always been clear that they want to provide good service to me. Some of the CDS technicians don't have the "gift of gab", but they work until they get it fixed. I prefer that to listening to a BS artist who sounds good but doesn't fix the problem. Work with the CDS technicians, don't fight them, and they will work with you.

I considered switching to PogoWave when Sonic bought them, because I think Sonic is a great company. But I couldn't be sure that the service would be any better than CDS's. As of April 1, that's a moot point.

[mapierce@sonic.net]

CDS actually has technicians?
How do you contact them when CDS does not answer phone calls, or respond to support requests?

I have been a sonic.net customer for about 10 years and have never before had a complaint. The few times that I had minor issues with my connection, sonic.net support resolved it immediately.

Since changing to CDS, the quality of my connection has steadily degraded. For the last two months, my connection has been intermittent, unreliable, and very frustrating. I have given up trying to download anything and when I open a web page, it has a 50/50 chance of loading. (This page can not be displayed, connection has timed out, etc.)

When attempting to post a message such as this, I have made it a practice to copy and paste the text into a document before clicking preview, or submit, as the page may never load and the message may never be seen again.

When sending email, the messages will sometimes remain in the outbox for several hours while windows live mail attempts to establish a connection over and over again. (socket error 10060; SERVER NOT FOUND, THE CONNECTION HAS TIMED OUT)

After contacting CDS several times about this issue, the problem has actually become worse. This is not only poor customer service, it is fraud. I am paying for a service that is not being provided.

At this point, it seems my only option is to find another wireless internet provider. However, I do intend to keep my email account with sonic.net.

* 20 minutes after typing this message, I am still attempting to post it.