Mr. CEO: We're VERY disappointed...

General discussions and other topics.
4 posts Page 1 of 1
by bebop4ever » Tue May 17, 2022 9:32 am
We switched to Sonic a few months ago due to deep dissatisfaction with AT&T service. We were told on the phone that we'd get 10GB speed for about HALF what ATT was charging for 1GB. ALL good...

... BUT, when the techs arrived, they said that 10GB speed is not yet available and may not be for several years - it's unknowable today. Fine - set it up, wasn't any better than ATT, but it wasn't worse either so we decided to go ahead due to the pricing advantage.

... Today I called to make the change permanent and was told that that the price was 25% higher than what we were originally quoted: $49.99 (not $39.99) + tax PLUS $20/mo for equipment rental(!??!) - and just like that, you're more expensive than AT&T and the speed is, frankly, crap - never much more than 400MB download and < 200MB upload. I think you'll agree that while 400MB speed is VERY fast - it's a LONG way from 10GB!

... If your sales department had been forthcoming with ALL the pricing info - we could've made an informed decision, but instead, Sonic pulled the oldest trick in the book: the Bait & Switch.

At best, your company misrepresented your ACTUAL offer, at worst, it is committing straight up fraud.

Please don't waste my time with words. If you want to keep me as a customer, I need you to ACT and eliminate the monthly equipment fee. I am happy to pay for the equipment - ONCE - since that's what you're, essentially, forcing me to do in order to avoid these ridiculous rental fees which are SEVEN TIMES more expensive than ANY equipment rental fees I've ever paid.

I think you'll agree that this is NOT the standard of service you are training to, but I am deeply disappointed in Sonic as you've made me feel like a sucker for believing your sales department to be telling the WHOLE truth. I'd hoped for more, but now wonder if I've made a mistake.

Yours sincerely,
Scott A, Reinhardt Drive, Oakland, CA


PS: in fairness, your c/s folks downgraded my service somehow to make the price $39.99 + equipment rental fees + tax. Suggestion, NO ONE likes to hear that their service is being "downgraded" - especially when it was to eliminate an overcharge!
by brandonc » Tue May 17, 2022 10:32 am
Hi Scott,

I'm sorry to hear that your experience with us so far hasn't been a very positive experience. It seems like there were some miscommunications/misunderstandings regarding the service and I hope that I can help clear this up.

We do have you installed for 10gbps, so I'm unsure as to why the installer told you that it wasn't actually available yet. As for the speeds your currently seeing, are you testing over the WiFi or via Ethernet? If over WiFi, then the speed you mentioned ~400mbps is an expected speed result due to the speed limitations of WiFi technology as whole. The only way to achieve the full 10gbps speed would be via Ethernet, but that also depends on the equipment/device to have a 10gbps compatible port, which can be tricky to find since 1gbps hardware is still the "standard" currently. However, if you're only getting 400mbps over Ethernet, there's probably something bottlenecking the connection that we need to troubleshoot with you to figure out.

As for the pricing, you were signed up as a part of our Test-Drive Program, which included a 3 month free promotional deal, but was dependent on signing up for the Internet + Home Phone bundle, which is the $49.99/mo price point. We also offer a Internet Only option without phone included for $39.99/mo that wasn't a part of the promotional deal, which is where I think the confused was and that's what we "Downgraded" your service to.

We can't permanently waive the equipment rental fee or outright sell it to our customers as a one-time cost unfortunately. However, the equipment rental for this service is optional, so you can use your own equipment and return ours instead. We typically install a standard $9.50/mo router, but looking at our installers notes it looks like your neighbor who was present for the install had texted you asking if you wanted equipment and he claimed you said you wanted the rental and an extender as well, so we installed our two Eero units, which are $10/mo each. I'm sorry that the communication about the pricing difference wasn't mentioned then, that definitely should have been brought up and okay'd with you before we installed them. If you would like to return them, please just let us know and we can process the return for them. Although, I would suggest getting your own equipment set-up and make sure it's fully working before sending ours back, just to be sure there's no downtime.

I hope that this cleared up some of the confusion and I'm sorry again for the miscommunications regarding the service thus far. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Kind regards,
Brandon C.
Community and Escalations
Sonic
by bebop4ever » Thu May 26, 2022 6:47 pm
I'll have to take your word for the fact that Sonic.net is providing 10GB speeds; I think the point was that equipment limitations today put a lid on the speeds we actually see to something less than 1GB, and, btw, the speeds I mentioned to you WERE using an Ethernet cable; wifi was about half of what we could get via the cable. Perhaps I overstepped in characterizing what your installers said to us, but I can say for sure that what we heard on the phone during "the pitch" and what we heard from the installers were two VERY different things - and NO ONE mentioned the router rental fee(s) which is still a sore point with me.

So you said we can buy our own eero routers and return the ones your installers put in to avoid the ongoing $20/mo fee. So please tell me EXACTLY what kind of router we're wanting so to maximize performance. There must be over a dozen of them offered on Amazon. Maybe you could look there and send me a screenshot of the ones you recommend? Left to my own judgement, I'm sure I'd pick one that was incompatible with Sonic or caused your modem to explode or something, so please advise me on what we're looking for.
by brandonc » Fri May 27, 2022 9:13 am
Hi Scott,

Thank you for clarifying that you were testing via Ethernet, that does seem to indicate that something is bottlenecking the connection speed. I looked into your Eero and ran a speedtest internally and it tested 948.91Mbps download over 1000Mbps upload, so the full speed is at least reaching the Eero. It could be that the Eero isn't relaying that connection to your devices well, so to test that, I would try plugging in your computer directly into our ONT and bypass the Eero altogether for a moment to test. Try running a speedtest while directly connected to the ONT and if you're able to see the full gig speed there, then there's something off with the Eero. In that case, try unplugging the power on the Eeros and let them reboot, then after you plugged it back into the ONT, try testing again to see if the speeds are normal.

If not, we can send out replacements if the issue is persisting for the meantime.

As for buying your own router to use, really any router should work as our ONT acts as the "modem", so there's not any specific specifications needed aside from making sure the router can handle the speed of your connection, in this case a 1gbps router or a 10gbps router. Although, 10gbps routers are really limited on the market and can be really expensive at the moment currently. The biggest thing to watch out for is that it's purely just a router. Modem + Router combos will not work.

I can't recommend or link any 3rd party equipment myself as we can only recommend the equipment that we provide. We can't 100% guarantee that 3rd party equipment won't experience issues and since we are only trained on our own provided equipment, we might not be able to help fix it unfortunately. However, you can always ask here on the forums for recommendations for equipment! There's a lot of really knowledgeable customers here that love to help out other customers in the ways that Sonic can't.

Kind regards,
Brandon C.
Community and Escalations
Sonic
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