Don't use Sonic.

[dane]

Our hold times have increased, and our dispatch intervals are improving, but still are much longer than they used to be. We ask for your patience as we work through this cycle of growth, hiring and training.

Sonic remains committed to the principals we were founded on: a focus on customer service, on consumer rights and privacy, and on a reliable service. We haven't sold out, we haven't offshored, and we are still the same folks we've always been.

But that's the challenge - we serve more customers than ever, and finding more great people who embody the Sonic way of doing things. So here's some news and status on that:

In the last six months, we have hired 120 people. This brings our team today to a bit over 350 people. We remain short by at least 30 people, and as a result, much of Sonic's marketing efforts today are in the hiring arena. You'll see this on our Facebook page for example, and we really appreciate it if you will share the info about Sonic employment with people who you think would be a good fit here.

As we continue to hire and train, we will get back to our normal customer service standards: one minute or less of hold time, five minutes or less for text message replies, same-day or next-day for dispatches, and no more than an hour for email replies. I appreciate your patience as we work back to these standards!

[pockyken007]

Our hold times have increased, and our dispatch intervals are improving, but still are much longer than they used to be. We ask for your patience as we work through this cycle of growth, hiring and training.

Sonic remains committed to the principals we were founded on: a focus on customer service, on consumer rights and privacy, and on a reliable service. We haven't sold out, we haven't offshored, and we are still the same folks we've always been.

But that's the challenge - we serve more customers than ever, and finding more great people who embody the Sonic way of doing things. So here's some news and status on that:

In the last six months, we have hired 120 people. This brings our team today to a bit over 350 people. We remain short by at least 30 people, and as a result, much of Sonic's marketing efforts today are in the hiring arena. You'll see this on our Facebook page for example, and we really appreciate it if you will share the info about Sonic employment with people who you think would be a good fit here.

As we continue to hire and train, we will get back to our normal customer service standards: one minute or less of hold time, five minutes or less for text message replies, same-day or next-day for dispatches, and no more than an hour for email replies. I appreciate your patience as we work back to these standards!

And that's why I will always hold Sonic in a very high regard as an ISP - Customer first attitude ^_^

[m2m3]

.....


And that's why I will always hold Sonic in a very high regard as an ISP - Customer first attitude ^_^

Absolutely!!

I would rather pay more and get a more personal and honest business than a more convoluted and impersonal one, provided that it provides a quality product/service, which Sonic does. I highly value small businesses. After all, they are the backbone of our economy. I like for small businesses to grow and take larger parts of their respective industry/market, which provides better competition and quality of products/services and lower prices for everyone in the long run.

I do understand some of the complaints here and encourage those to be as patient as possible and help this exceptional company to gain more traction in the market and to improve services for all of us. I believe that Sonic will eventually iron out most of the issues it is facing now.

[Toxic]

The OP is 100% correct. Unless you're part of the fiber network in SF or elsewhere you're nothing but a cash cow to be exploited as far a sonic goes.

I get 5Mps on a good day. The last week it's been on and off and when it's on, I'm getting less than 2.5Mps, sometimes less than 1.0. For this they're going to raise my cost so they can build better service for the places they care about. F**K'em.

I can get 5x the bandwidth from Comcast for less money. Oh, right, Comcast is an evil corporate monster. Not like the noble sonic.net who bleeds existing customers so they can add better service where the money is. Nothing evil in that. Hardly anything like comcast or at&t, is it?

People get your heads out of your asses. Sonic is as much a bloodsucking leech as any of the rest of 'em. They just have better PR.

[blackmage]

The OP is 100% correct. Unless you're part of the fiber network in SF or elsewhere you're nothing but a cash cow to be exploited as far a sonic goes.

I get 5Mps on a good day. The last week it's been on and off and when it's on, I'm getting less than 2.5Mps, sometimes less than 1.0. For this they're going to raise my cost so they can build better service for the places they care about. F**K'em.

I can get 5x the bandwidth from Comcast for less money. Oh, right, Comcast is an evil corporate monster. Not like the noble sonic.net who bleeds existing customers so they can add better service where the money is. Nothing evil in that. Hardly anything like comcast or at&t, is it?

People get your heads out of your asses. Sonic is as much a bloodsucking leech as any of the rest of 'em. They just have better PR.

Sonic raised their pricing for the first time in 7 years. AT&T and Comcast raise their pricing at the end of every contract unless you harass them for long enough to get a lower price.

Sonic also raises its pricing so further support better infrastructure. AT&T and Comcast do so because they can walk away with more.

If you really feel that way about Sonic, then why are you wasting time on their forums?

[pockyken007]

The OP is 100% correct. Unless you're part of the fiber network in SF or elsewhere you're nothing but a cash cow to be exploited as far a sonic goes.

I get 5Mps on a good day. The last week it's been on and off and when it's on, I'm getting less than 2.5Mps, sometimes less than 1.0. For this they're going to raise my cost so they can build better service for the places they care about. F**K'em.

I can get 5x the bandwidth from Comcast for less money. Oh, right, Comcast is an evil corporate monster. Not like the noble sonic.net who bleeds existing customers so they can add better service where the money is. Nothing evil in that. Hardly anything like comcast or at&t, is it?

People get your heads out of your asses. Sonic is as much a bloodsucking leech as any of the rest of 'em. They just have better PR.

Bye Felicia don't let the door hit you on your way out

[SonicwasOK]

My line went down from Thursday to Sunday. I’ll spare you the many texts and phone calls during those days that consumed my time. Here’s the key text: “We do not consider a 4 day outage acceptable, but due to AT&T’s increased workload, there is very little we can do but wait for their update on when they will resolve the problem.” So that’s it, Sonic sells you FTTN, but basically has no control on it.

The 4-day outage was only 4 days because I pushed very, very hard on Sonic. Who knows how many days it would have been since they tried to make it 5 days and I could easily see it having gone past that. Even so, it was 4 days with no phone, no internet. In the end, I had to spend 7 hours on a Sunday waiting for and working with AT&T techs only to be told in the end that apparently my line was somehow assigned to someone else with no clear reason and once a line pair was connected back to me everything worked OK. This is the same kind of problem that led to the last 4 day outage for my account last Fall. It appears that Sonic not only has no visibility into the delivery of service to their customers but that AT&T may be reassigning Sonic customer lines whenever they find it convenient. Not only was I unable to telecommute to work for urgent matters, but I couldn’t even go into work because I had to be at home on a Sunday to deal with two AT&T techs to get my service back on line. I had to go in for a couple of hours after they left.

I believe Sonic should disclose the Quality of Service terms they have with AT&T on providing FTTN. I’ve asked for this before, but no one seemed to know or be able provide that info. Are we second-class customers to U-Verse? Is 4 days or more an OK loss of service per the agreement between Sonic and AT&T? From what I read here and get from Sonic support, residential customers should figure they have no reason to expect even the 99% up time claims of AT&T when buying through Sonic.

[phr]

AT&T service is so awful that your 4 day Sonic outage looks like smooth sailing by comparison. My mom's house has been out for almost 3 weeks even though they got the technical problem fixed in about 2 days. Trouble is they screwed up her account while doing that, and it's taking them this long to get it back together.

Comcast had awful network congestion problems (it was fast when it worked, but was messed up often enough to be useless) but I'd say they did respond reasonably quickly when there was an equipment problem at the house. AT&T had far fewer weird network jams. It was slower than Comcast but it at least worked most of the time.

I'd be happy to get Sonic VDSL but it's not available here, just the crappy DSL that has people pissed about the price hike. I've said about that in the other thread though. It's a sucky situation.

[oddhack]

The 4-day outage was only 4 days because I pushed very, very hard on Sonic. Who knows how many days it would have been since they tried to make it 5 days and I could easily see it having gone past that. Even so, it was 4 days with no phone, no internet.

Next time, consider filing a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission that your phone service is down, and letting both Sonic and AT&T know that you've done so. I don't know if the PUC remit includes DSL, but they can strike the fear of god into phone carriers.

[Guest]

Next time, consider filing a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission that your phone service is down, and letting both Sonic and AT&T know that you've done so. I don't know if the PUC remit includes DSL, but they can strike the fear of god into phone carriers.

For POTS, yes, it definitely strikes fear into telcos. But if the phone service is IP-based, then no, because that infrastructure is not regulated.