Sonic.net

Very frustrated user here ... i have been with Sonic for a long time ... loved the Net Neutrality and the customer support initially.

I have however for a while now been trying to get a response about the fiber service in San Mateo, epecially since their cars are zipping around town.

When I originally inquired about a year ago, I was told that the pole in our neighborhood is overloaded which would prevent fiber to come to our neighborhood. I asked what to do and was told to file a claim with PG&E / PUC.

Which I did ... months later I got the response that the communication part of the poles are not even owned by PGE but ATT, which basically means that I was made waste my time. Sonic should have known that before sending me on a PUC goose chase.

Tonight I got an email from Sonic, telling me that there might be better speeds available in our area. Please log into member tools, it said, to find out more. Well, i did and found out, there are not. A quick call to Sonic revealed that our ara isn't even on the plan for a Fusion extension yet! I was told this was just a marketing email ...

Meanwhile I am paying $80+/month for miserable, unreliable ATT service which is completely unsupported by Sonic (Sonic scheduled two ATT service visits, where the guy didn't even show up, but caused me to stay at home the whole afternoon. When I complained, I was told, Sonic could neither help nor escalate).

I am not sure what is going on with the company, but I can tell you it has turned me off ...

Very sorry for the experience. Clearly, the end result of having everyone on fiber is our goal, but those who are not yet do have an inconsistent experience. I'm happy to say that 2/3rds of customers now ARE on our fiber, and we're reaching over a million residents of the SF Bay Area now. But that doesn't help you if we're not yet on your street and all the way to your house.

I'll check your username tomorrow and look up your address and see what the engineering situation is. Poles are jointly owned, if they have power and telecom on them, by both PG&E as the lead agency, and AT&T managing the communications space. We've had lots of challenges with unsafe poles that these utilities have been slow to resolve. The CA PUC recently passed a decision which obligates them to resolve those issues when we apply to attach, so we're optimistic that in the first quarter of next year the process may become smoother and we'll have less gaps in coverage and be able to deploy more widely.

I love how Dane replied to Sonic's customer.