Finally time to leave Sonic for Comcast

[bvz2000]

I hate Comcast. I hate them so much I have been paying Sonic $60+ a month for an incredibly lousy 6Mbps down and less than 1Mbps up. It is miserable. Trying to download large files is painful. Uploading work files to a server is impossible. But I pay that amount month after month for the lousy service for two reasons:

1) Comcast really sucks.
2) Sonic is building out Fiber to my location within the next 5 months.

So today I called to pre-order Sonic's fiber.

And guess what? That awesome $40 a month first year rate? Not for me. Only for "new" subscribers. My reward for loyally sticking with the slower, more expensive Sonic service is that I get to pay $180 more for the first year vs. someone who just joins up now.

So what does that make me? The moron who has been funneling money to AT&T via Sonic for crappy speeds over the past several years instead of BOTH saving money and getting 10X internet speed via Comcast? The loyal customer who has been helping bankroll Sonic's push into Fiber who then gets it up the arse by way of reward? The dupe who expected to somehow be valued as a longtime, reliable customer?

Sonic may be one of the "good guys", but my money winds up in AT&T's pocket anyway. Why would I put up with this garbage speeds AND then be penalized for it when the switch to fiber comes around? Nah. Not worth it. I'll hold my nose, switch now to Comcast, and revisit the whole situation in a year. If Comcast is fast enough and cheap enough, I many not bother switching back to Sonic in the future.

And to be clear, I am not asking for a lower price right now. I just want to get the same consideration as a nobody, new customer when I too upgrade to Fiber.

So my plan is this:

I will bail on Sonic this week. I will switch to Comcast and finally get some fast internet speeds (10 times faster down AND up) . I will also save some money (about $20 a month) because Comcast only charges $30 a month for the first year. So... a $240 savings for the first year PLUS 10X internet speeds. After this last interaction with Sonic, why WOULDN'T I switch?

See ya. It's been... well... underwhelming.

[bvz2000]

Ok, I spent a little time working out the numbers.

I pay $67 a month for Sonic and get 6Mbps down and .8Mbps up (this is via ethernet plugged directly into the modem). That breaks down into $50 for the service, $6.50 a month modem rental fee, and the rest are taxes and fees.

Comcast has a pre-paid, no-contract 20Mbps down and 1Mbps up plan that I just found. It is $45 a month with a one time $35 equipment purchase fee. Assuming the same amount of taxes and fees (this is not obviously guaranteed) I would be paying about $56 - $60 a month plus the pro-rated equipment purchase fee ($35). Higher speeds, for anywhere from $7 - $10 less a month.

So I switch tomorrow (already have the paperwork started). Over the next 5 months while Sonic has not built out their fiber to my house yet (and perhaps longer because we all know that nothing like this ever gets done on time) I get faster internet AND save $35 - $50 (which covers the equipment purchase and maybe a beer for me to cry into because I am giving my money to Comcast).

Then, when Sonic has finally built out their fiber to my location I (possibly) switch to them as a new customer, saving myself $180 that first year over what they want to charge me now. I pay less now, I pay less later, I get better internet all throughout.

Or I switch to Comcast's one year contract, pay $30 a month (plus whatever modem rental and taxes and fees) and get 60Mbps down and 6Mbps up immediately. I then switch to Sonic fiber in a year (if they are still the best game in town). Either way I get faster internet and save money doing it.

[miken]

While this may be a good short term solution, our competitors are well known for skyrocketing prices at set intervals, whereas we've had one $10 price increase to our Fusion platform in the last 7 years. That's not to mention the award winning privacy, local customer support, pro stance on Net Neutrality, no throttling, etc. I'm sorry that the current speeds and pricing aren't cutting it for you right now - hopefully that changes once Fiber is deployed. In the mean time, if there's any assistance I can provide please don't hesitate to let me know.

[ngufra]

Sonic does introductory pricing but not retention pricing.
Maybe it would make more sense to us for them to do neither intro nor retention pricing or both but not just one.

The introductory price is $10 off per month for one year i think.
If you use your own equipment, you can avoid the rental fee.

6 Mbps: seems like you are on ADSL2+. Is VDSL available at your location? if not too far from the exchange, it could give you good speed.

The points mentioned by Mike are very valid and should help balance the price difference.
However Sonic may not be able to have a financially attractive offer everywhere.

[bvz2000]

While this may be a good short term solution, our competitors are well known for skyrocketing prices at set intervals, whereas we've had one $10 price increase to our Fusion platform in the last 7 years. That's not to mention the award winning privacy, local customer support, pro stance on Net Neutrality, no throttling, etc. I'm sorry that the current speeds and pricing aren't cutting it for you right now - hopefully that changes once Fiber is deployed. In the mean time, if there's any assistance I can provide please don't hesitate to let me know.

This is true and I have been a relatively "happy" Sonic customer for a while now.* But a one year contract with Comcast locks me into their introductory rate. When it rises for the second year I have the option to leave.

Look, I don't necessarily begrudge you the right to raise prices. I am just confused as to why a brand new customer signing up for Fiber would be rewarded so much more richly than a longtime, loyal customer. who is signing up for fiber. It isn't like I was asking for a price cut now. I just wanted the same consideration for signing up for fiber as a new customer would have. As it stands, I will actually save money by switching away from Sonic and then save even more by switching back when you finally have Fiber because then I will be a "new" customer. This situation is almost the dictionary definition of a "perverse incentive".





*Happy with the customer service and philosophy. The speeds have pretty much sucked for a while now, though they are worse today than when I started.

[bvz2000]

Sonic does introductory pricing but not retention pricing.
Maybe it would make more sense to us for them to do neither intro nor retention pricing or both but not just one.

The introductory price is $10 off per month for one year i think.
If you use your own equipment, you can avoid the rental fee.

6 Mbps: seems like you are on ADSL2+. Is VDSL available at your location? if not too far from the exchange, it could give you good speed.

The points mentioned by Mike are very valid and should help balance the price difference.
However Sonic may not be able to have a financially attractive offer everywhere.

I'm not sure what tech I am on with Sonic. I know that when I started I was getting around 10-11 Mbps. Now I regularly get around 6-7. But I stuck with them because of their service and the fact that I really hate ATT and Comcast.

But there is a point where I am just subsidizing someone else with very little upside for myself. The fact that they support NN is great. But a fair bit of my monthly payment is going to ATT anyway, just funneled through Sonic. Throttling is not an issue since my service is so slow it is effectively throttled all the time. The privacy issue is a real one though, and something to consider.

But I think the issue is that Sonic sees me switching to Fiber as just an existing user getting an upgrade. I saw the advertised price for Fiber and was excited to pre-order at that price. But finding out that I have been paying $67 a month for 6Mbps for years (and will continue to do so for the next half year while waiting for an upgrade) AND then having to pay more than a new user for the upgraded fiber service (by a full $180 for the first year) just feels like one step too far. It is like I am being penalized for trying to support the local, little guy.

Much better to switch to Comcast now, save $240 over the next year, have much faster service, and then possibly switch back to Sonic as a new user and get that benefit as well.

[miken]

I took an in-depth look at your line and emailed you some additional information that may be of help.

[engr4]

I couldn’t have said it better than the original poster. I’ve had sonic for nine years. When I got the service there was a guarantee splashed over all their advertising that the price would be $40 (base rate, before $11 of fees, at the time) and would, emphatically, *never* increase. At some point sonic switched the price to $50 (before fees). The company was unapologetic. They said they needed the extra money to fund their capital expenditures in order to be able to offer a better service to others.

I have never had better than 5 or 6 Mbps (download speed) since 2011. For months at a time, perhaps as much as a year, this would be down to about 3 Mbps. I would call tech-support and they would fiddle with something at their end and then I will be back to 5 or 6 for a year. For the last year or two they haven’t been able to conduct this fiddling. Instead we have switched my modem off and on in a variety of ways with no results and now I am getting about 2 Mbps for $64 a month.

I should have switched to Comcast years ago. It turns out that, for free, I can actually sign into a Comcast Xfinity hotspot using my friend’s account and I get 28 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload even though the hotspot router is located 800 feet from my window. (That friend lives 25 miles away.)

[Sonic Guest]

I am just confused as to why a brand new customer signing up for Fiber would be rewarded so much more richly than a longtime, loyal customer.

Dane posted this in another thread somewhere. Each individual is offered a 1-time discount. You got your discount when you first subscribed to your DSL connection.