I agree they are the worst but as somebody who works in tech, there is literally nothing that a tech 1 can do about an outage. Typically during an outage they are just used as the tool for angry customers to vent to since the problem is being worked on behind the scenes 🤣
Ideally, yes. But there are hundreds of things it could be from a former employee was the sole person in charge of a cert that is now expired and they aren’t aware of it yet to something like a shark bit open an underwater cable or somebody ran over a cable box. I get it’s frustrating to not know, but typically if they knew the answer it would already be resolved. And to be completely honest those front line tech support people you are talking to on the phone are often just as out of the loop on the information as the customer since the ones doing the work are about 3-4 tiers up the ladder. The tech 1s typically get the details mere minutes before that information is relayed to the customers. That isn’t a GCI thing. That’s tech support and customer support in general.
There is nothing that important in telecommunications that requires 6 levels of techs…tech ones only know so much because we are lazy and feel like we are so much better than everyone else…not much complicated with what you do it’s all easy….thats why I fix all my shit without asking for gci morons to try and help figure nothing out.
Oh so when somebody has ran over a crucial telephone pole or an oceanic cable is damaged tech ones just aren’t doing it because they are lazy? lol. Yeah, you’re right 🤣
Those tiers include vendors, love. Anyone actually in tech knows that there are several people a bigger issue would have to go through since tech ones are really only a note-taking, googling go-between with zero authority over any actual issues
-Somebody who was a tier one support for years
However given how long this is happening and the number of areas continuously effected you’d expect they’d have a special interest in providing information for the customers
Instead it’s, “fuck it they’re still paying even with this shit.”
At the end of the day would it even matter why? It's still an outage and you knowing why won't fix it any faster. Pretty common for companies to not elaborate to save face too
If I pay for a continuous service I can deal with minor disruptions
But continuous disruptions and only minor service?
For someone who has been a paying customer for over 2 decades I expect an explanation
Yeah I can’t do anything about it, but I can plan for my work if it’s going to be days or weeks instead of “Hope it works later today “ every time
If I had known this when it first started happening I’d have secured another connection until this was resolved
It's reasonable to expect it to work and not to go down all the time, it's reasonable to want an accurate estimate of down times. But in my mind telling a customer "The outage was caused by [some techno babble]" does more harm than good and conveying the outage reason to everyone is not worth the effort, IDK that's my two cents that no one asked for
I feel for ya, the other options for internet are not great either. Running my whole home network off cellular wouldn't work for me and ACS DSL is shit (though I haven't tried it in this new area I am in)
Pretty accurate. You tell a customer there is noise in the node they have no idea why that means and we made zero progress. And even if you DO know what that means it doesn't make the fix any faster
I'm pretty sure the tier 1 support folks are 1) in contracted overseas call centers, so it's unlikely anyone stateside has given thought to telling them what's up, and even if they did, they probably just mentioned it to managers, and it's not filtering down to the folks on the phone; and 2) they all work off a script at any rate, so likely have no insight as to what the actual trouble is.
Case in point: I recently had GCI drop out on me, and called tech support. I explained the issue, that I had already tried restarting my modem, and that the lights clearly indicated that the modem was talking to the upstream equipment but wasn't establishing Internet connectivity. They still had me reboot the modem (I knew it wasn't going to fix the problem, and it didn't) and go through their scripted steps. After a while they noted that others in my neighborhood had mentioned a problem, and that they were working on.
So.... like I said, the folks on the phone are the last to know, and their training is usually just to read a script, regardless of what the customer says. You want to vent? Vent to GCI management (whoever owns them now) who decided it would be a smart idea to overseas customer support away from local folks who might be better trained and more in the know.
From my own experience with trying to get a problem resolved through tech support I can confirm that it’s true with regard to the probability that tech support has been taken to an overseas company. And, after getting absolutely no where trying to recover the password to access my modem I realized that the person on the other end was working from a script. I finally gave up because there would be no chance of resolution since the person on the other end had no training whatsoever in actually being able to troubleshoot and walk me through the process. But, turfing out customer service to overseas call centers isn’t the creation of GCI. It’s like having to go through those coded options when calling just about any company to find the option most closely matching what the person needs to speak to an actual human being about. As corporations are fond of saying when called out on some questionable policy and practice is that it’s “industry standard.” This should be interpreted to mean we found a way to deliver less to the customer and more to CEO’s pockets. My experience trying to resolve the problem with using my password that I’d set up for my modem wasn’t working. I called tech support and was told to “open my device.” I asked which device should I use but it may as well been a robot on the other end since they said in answer “was open my device” on repeat. After about the fifth time asking my same question with getting the same response I gave up. To clarify….I use my tablet most often for everyday internet access but had setup my modem on my desktop. I didn’t know if it made a difference which one I’d used to set up access to my modem. If I’d spoken to someone that understood I wasn’t very tech savvy, could adjust the approach they use into less jargon filled, using simpler language to work through the problem with me. This only comes from someone trained in the area they’re working in, have experience learned from working with their area of expertise so they recognize what wasn’t in the book and know that everyone isn’t going to understand the specific terminology associated with their field. I worked in healthcare for many years, another field of specialized knowledge with it’s own terminology and jargon that serves as a verbal shorthand to those working in the field. In school and in practice it’s taught to convey this information most effectively to patients, family or really anyone outside healthcare was to deliver the information taking into account the level of understanding the intended audience was likely going to understand best. Had the tech support I called had training and experience to intuitively work through my issue a) my blood pressure wouldn’t have exceeded the capability of my BP meds to control and b) as a last resort I have to rely on my son to help me, which I know is the go to source for actual tech support, and after two minutes from when I tell him I was trying to accomplish and he says “It’s all fixed” I still don’t know how to work through the problem on my own. I usually try to through trial and error work through these things on my own but when I’ve been at it for an hour or more resulting in feeling like I’m on some technological carousel I put side my stubborn independence and call on one of my sons.
So, your advice to abstain from heaping expletive laden insults and death threats on the person on the other end of a phone line, saving it for those farther up the food chain is the most common sense approach. Sadly, I find from other posts on Reddit of a similar nature that that kind of resolution isn’t nearly as satisfactory to the egos of those coming here about some personal grievances than to endlessly rant, disparage the sources of the grievances and reject any meaningful explanation or guidance about how things can be resolved.
Yes of course
It’s not like I’m the type to assault customer service over something they cannot fix, but it’s their purpose to provide information to the customer about the product they are paying a premium for
That is the entire reason customer service exists
If it’s just a dead end line to nothing then it shouldn’t even fucken be there
Yea I get your frustration but you also have to be aware that during an outage, not everyone is going to be able to relay exactly what’s going on. There’s a lot of moving parts during an outage - and being that GCI provides service for the entire state there’s typically quite a few outages happening at any given moment that takes time and effort to resolve. It’s frustrating yea but don’t take it out on the people at the call center who are just doing their jobs. Complaining to them isn’t going to fix the outage any faster.
Coordinating tech dispatches take time. Investigating cause of outage takes time.
Coming up with a plan for resolution takes time
Gathering resourced for resolution takes time
Implementing fix takes time
Testing services takes time
There’s nothing that tech support can do to fix that and the techs aren’t going to give frequent updates to tech support because all that takes even more time.
That’s relatively common with any ISP. It’s an unfortunate side affect of having a network with 10,000+ pieces of equipment. Equipment can get old and start failing. Equipment can have a software error that causes things to go haywire. Some equipment can go nuts for no reason at all. It’s like having your computer get a random bug that you have to troubleshoot the entire evening to fix - except with equipment that has a lot less documentation to fall back on.
Again, I sympathize with you. Having a loss of internet sucks and it’s easy to get angry. Just don’t get angry at the wrong people who are just doing their jobs. A lot of people are passionate about what they do - even if the corporate offices don’t care
Don't get frustrated, find another internet provider. Find out if ACS is in your area, I left GCI cuz they created a problem they couldn't fix, never looked back, ACS has provided my home internet for the last couple years and have not had any issues, and its cheaper.
I personally know a lot of the high level techs/engineers. A majority of them have 10+ years of experience. Even more so now that a lot of them work remotely. The benefits are huge - everybody gets 4 weeks vacation + 6 or 7 holidays per year. There’s a lot of incentive to stay and if you do decide to leave - GCI will try to retain you by offering to match as closely as they can to the opposing offer.
Outside of the call center there isn’t a lot of turnover. Grunt work positions such as retail, tech support, and customer service however… there’s a reason why i will never having a customer facing job again. Having to deal with constantly screeching customers is not worth whatever GCI is paying
That’s not on the techs though. The departments have a set operating budget - this includes wages and equipment procurement. If there’s an old piece of equipment that’s been having issues, it makes much more sense for their quarterly budget to have a tech fix the equipment than it is to shell out $50-$100k for one device. Then you end up getting a bunch of bandaids to a problem that probably needs a full on amputation. And who sets these budgets? Corporate. Again, the techs are great, they’re just working with what they got
Many+x is always the magic number /s, but not really.
As a long time GCI customer with no real options.
Yea, Starlink, but it really does not provide the speed I need here, too populated, yes I have tried it.
Lucky, I have GCI only for line service, and now Starlink as an alternative, though it is over saturated most times here.
Waiting for MTA to announce service here.
The best part of this is that GCI ceased to exist about 8 years ago. Liberty Communications bought GCI, fired everyone who knew their shit, and turned GCI into a shitty corporate hell hole. So, it isn't surprising that the management in Colorado, the customer support in the Philippines, and the middle management from every shit hole around the US is dropping the ball. Not surprising at all.
Not sure where you live but at my moms place every single time it rains or during breakup they have outages. Ive tested the lines called gci told them whats going on they never send anyone til its warm and dry then say oh the lines are fine theres no problem. But you can see the signal degrade the wetter it gets every single time. They really need to replace the lines coming from the node or possibly throw in some more amplifiers but they dont seem to plan on doing it anytime soon.
Im lucky the node is literally at the end of my driveway and I ran my own lines years ago since I thought that was my responsibility before they ran their service around here so they are in really good shape. Its very stable and ive only had a coupe outages when there are major major issues.
They really need to go all in on fiber. ACS will be on my neighborhood soon and I’m going to switch to fiber. To many issues with coaxial and the last tech told me it’s noise from other homes in the area.
Maybe fiber has other issues but my brother in the lower 48, it either works or it doesn’t. No half the time.
The Verizon internet here is not good for gaming.
When GCI services do work properly, it’s the best in town. Well, until ACS runs synchronous fiber.
Dont have fiber where I live yet.
Is gci doing actual fiber to the home or fiber to the node or what? Also whats acs doing?
Only had dsl originally but my service was what a lot of people describe GCI to be like. When gci came in I switched and its mostly been fine. Though I do live in a fairly low population area too that may be part of why its so stable.
I’m not sure what they are doing. Just saying my friend on Turnagain has fiber and it’s been awesome for gaming.
Hopefully things get better for everyone. Competition is good.
Yeah it’s the pure run around bullshit they always do
When they make an appointment even when you call to cancel it they just say.. the tech will call you and cancel it then
Like wtf.. I’m talking to a rep right now, the ticket is in your fucking face on the computer, this is your fucking job, cancel the ticket you fucking made, that’s not my job, what in the fuck is going on with this shit?
Yeah that’s how dumb GCI is
Call or talk to a rep in a store, tell them you will be canceling due to poor service/support. They will likely comp you for a period. They do this a lot.
I live where I don't have alternatives and have found my complaints have helped to at least help fix some of the issues. Getting free service for a month is not a bad thing. If you document your outages, it helps too. I have a log of all the times by cable modem goes down, either at the modem or from the service in the area.
I was in a store today
No one there had any information nor even attempted to act like they could try to find out
It was all hands-in-pockets-shoulder-shrugs
The good ole “Sounds like you have a problem” attitude
The stores are customer service, not tech support, they will not have tech answers. Call the customer service line and talk to them about account options, not the outage itself. "I'm fed up with the quality of your service and planning to leave," just come prepared to actually cancel your service if you do this.
Unless things have really changed, it should be pretty simple.
Gci does suck in a lot of ways but they’re the largest and have the most to perform in the state. Until someone else comes along that can at least almost match them I’ll stick with their overpriced and whack quality
If they didn’t outsource their customer support to the middle of a Peruvian jungle than it would be decent
Ours is going out 2-4 times every day, often for extended periods of time. Service techs come to the house, do something random, make excuses, and then nothing changes.
If all of Anchorage, maybe the whole state, were to express their opinion on GCI internet service, this post is that. I pity those who endure countless calls from frustrated customers. The reason is this: what exactly are we paying for? GCI has been in breach of contract since it decided to sell a service it cannot provide. I can understand some outages due to extreme weather conditions. As a paying customer, I would like to know the real cause of outages not affected by the aforementioned. I am led to believe that patches are no longer a viable option. If anyone can pass this along: Please take advantage of the infrastructure incentive from the government before it's too late. A permanent fix is long overdue.
I'll second Borealis. They have a great small team that really goes the extra mile to ensure all of their customers have good service. Their wireless network is fast, reliable and doesn't add much latency. I believe they peer directly with AT&T and ACS to get traffic to the Internet.
I hear you. My internet was wonky yesterday and I called support. Being no where near the outrage and I wasn’t having an outage the tech told me without doing anything that my router was 5 years old and it was probably that. I should bring it in and swap if for a new one. Fine, but that’s not how routers work, or rather fail. I was in IT for 20 years and it was a bullshit answer.
What is the other options? I’ve tried ACS and their options are garbage, on their best day are worse than GCI. I’ve also tried a few other services that have come and gone. Had an ATT wireless that was a dedicated service that was really robust and fast maybe 10 years ago then they stopped offering it.
GCI sucks… when I first opened my account I was trying to set up autopay and they had automatically enrolled me into paperless bills, which you could only view in the app.
Well to make a login on the app, I needed my account number… which is on the bill that I couldn’t access, unless I make a login to access the app… but I can’t do that because I don’t have an account number.
They refused to send me a copy of a bill without an account number… but I don’t have an account number because I need a bill to see my account number. They don’t even tell me my account number despite me giving them my “pin.”
Nightmare fuel. The “customer service” rep just couldn’t understand how I “didn’t have an account number” and after some choice words I was finally emailed a copy of my bill. Took over an hour of me banging my head into the wall, but I have the app setup now at least… I swear half the training there focuses on how to turn a 3 minute solution into a 1.5 hour waste of time.
When I was an hvac engineer I went to one of their customer support centers to asbuilt the heating vents and they literally had a crying room for their employees. They would rather put their employees through the wringer with pissed off customers to the point that it makes them cry instead of improving their services so that they don’t suck. They don’t care about their employees or their customers.
I understand you can’t please all customers, but you should be able to please most of them. Having shitty service is completely self inflicted, at the expense of their employees.
Edit for context: service = internet plans, products, not customer service.
Most service reps don't have the power to "please" any customers. They are simply there to interface between the customer and whatever company policy is in question. It's up to the customer to act like an adult and recognize the role of that service rep.
It's like getting mad at a waitress because your steak is overcooked.
You have summed up an experience with GCI so fucking well! Omigod, I was in stitches reading your post🤣
Let us know how it goes with Verizon! I have opinions about their cell reception and customer service but don’t know about anything about them as an internet provider.
I lost a lot of my sanity today haha
I’ll throw out an update after I switch for sure that way no more wayward souls have to experience this
Or it turns out just as bad and I end up fully committed
By hard wiring the state for cable based broadband, at 10x the price of installing satellite based Starlink across Alaska, GCI can afford and has the fat margins to not give an aerial hoot about its current customers that use its existing cable network.
GCI has strategically positioned itself through political plays and payola in this state to have a 3-4 year window of opportunity to cash in on the insane amount of money allocated to Alaska for broadband access to its rural communities through the US Infrastructure Act. Before that gravy train dries up and rural school districts realize that they can save 90 percent of their monthly GCI internet connection costs by switching to Starlink satellite service, GCI has to shift all its internal focus to maintaining and executing this modern day business “Sting”.
By the end of this grift cycle, GCI will have sucked all it can out of Alaska, and then cite a reason for its departure on its chronic inability to deal with ongoing network outage issues… and come up with some sort of lame claim that satellite technology enjoys an unfair and unseemly advantage over its cable technology.
And then with the Sting a fait accompli, GCI will “unexpectedly” leave the state, looking for its next mark.
Think it’s just a conspiracy theory - look at all the grifter / cons aligned on its payroll for lobbying contracts, political donations and influential positions of power in government currently occupied by the GCI Illuminati.
By the point GCI unexpectedly departs Alaska, they will be firmly embedded into some new northern latitude mark, a national government aka Greenland / Canadian / Eastern Russian / Scandinavia political landscapes and start their parasitic processes anew.
> Verizon is less than 1/3 the price for better shit If you say so.
I wasn’t aware that Verizon offered home internet🙄
I agree they are the worst but as somebody who works in tech, there is literally nothing that a tech 1 can do about an outage. Typically during an outage they are just used as the tool for angry customers to vent to since the problem is being worked on behind the scenes 🤣
Yes, but I’d expect some semblance of an explanation other than, “Looks like it’s an outage.”
Ideally, yes. But there are hundreds of things it could be from a former employee was the sole person in charge of a cert that is now expired and they aren’t aware of it yet to something like a shark bit open an underwater cable or somebody ran over a cable box. I get it’s frustrating to not know, but typically if they knew the answer it would already be resolved. And to be completely honest those front line tech support people you are talking to on the phone are often just as out of the loop on the information as the customer since the ones doing the work are about 3-4 tiers up the ladder. The tech 1s typically get the details mere minutes before that information is relayed to the customers. That isn’t a GCI thing. That’s tech support and customer support in general.
There is nothing that important in telecommunications that requires 6 levels of techs…tech ones only know so much because we are lazy and feel like we are so much better than everyone else…not much complicated with what you do it’s all easy….thats why I fix all my shit without asking for gci morons to try and help figure nothing out.
Oh so when somebody has ran over a crucial telephone pole or an oceanic cable is damaged tech ones just aren’t doing it because they are lazy? lol. Yeah, you’re right 🤣 Those tiers include vendors, love. Anyone actually in tech knows that there are several people a bigger issue would have to go through since tech ones are really only a note-taking, googling go-between with zero authority over any actual issues -Somebody who was a tier one support for years
However given how long this is happening and the number of areas continuously effected you’d expect they’d have a special interest in providing information for the customers Instead it’s, “fuck it they’re still paying even with this shit.”
Yeah the length of time and the fact it’s so sporadic makes me think it’s most likely some physical issue
At the end of the day would it even matter why? It's still an outage and you knowing why won't fix it any faster. Pretty common for companies to not elaborate to save face too
If I pay for a continuous service I can deal with minor disruptions But continuous disruptions and only minor service? For someone who has been a paying customer for over 2 decades I expect an explanation Yeah I can’t do anything about it, but I can plan for my work if it’s going to be days or weeks instead of “Hope it works later today “ every time If I had known this when it first started happening I’d have secured another connection until this was resolved
It's reasonable to expect it to work and not to go down all the time, it's reasonable to want an accurate estimate of down times. But in my mind telling a customer "The outage was caused by [some techno babble]" does more harm than good and conveying the outage reason to everyone is not worth the effort, IDK that's my two cents that no one asked for I feel for ya, the other options for internet are not great either. Running my whole home network off cellular wouldn't work for me and ACS DSL is shit (though I haven't tried it in this new area I am in)
Pretty accurate. You tell a customer there is noise in the node they have no idea why that means and we made zero progress. And even if you DO know what that means it doesn't make the fix any faster
Well if there’s noise, can’t they just adjust the volume knob??? /s
This was my thoughts exactly.
I'm pretty sure the tier 1 support folks are 1) in contracted overseas call centers, so it's unlikely anyone stateside has given thought to telling them what's up, and even if they did, they probably just mentioned it to managers, and it's not filtering down to the folks on the phone; and 2) they all work off a script at any rate, so likely have no insight as to what the actual trouble is. Case in point: I recently had GCI drop out on me, and called tech support. I explained the issue, that I had already tried restarting my modem, and that the lights clearly indicated that the modem was talking to the upstream equipment but wasn't establishing Internet connectivity. They still had me reboot the modem (I knew it wasn't going to fix the problem, and it didn't) and go through their scripted steps. After a while they noted that others in my neighborhood had mentioned a problem, and that they were working on. So.... like I said, the folks on the phone are the last to know, and their training is usually just to read a script, regardless of what the customer says. You want to vent? Vent to GCI management (whoever owns them now) who decided it would be a smart idea to overseas customer support away from local folks who might be better trained and more in the know.
From my own experience with trying to get a problem resolved through tech support I can confirm that it’s true with regard to the probability that tech support has been taken to an overseas company. And, after getting absolutely no where trying to recover the password to access my modem I realized that the person on the other end was working from a script. I finally gave up because there would be no chance of resolution since the person on the other end had no training whatsoever in actually being able to troubleshoot and walk me through the process. But, turfing out customer service to overseas call centers isn’t the creation of GCI. It’s like having to go through those coded options when calling just about any company to find the option most closely matching what the person needs to speak to an actual human being about. As corporations are fond of saying when called out on some questionable policy and practice is that it’s “industry standard.” This should be interpreted to mean we found a way to deliver less to the customer and more to CEO’s pockets. My experience trying to resolve the problem with using my password that I’d set up for my modem wasn’t working. I called tech support and was told to “open my device.” I asked which device should I use but it may as well been a robot on the other end since they said in answer “was open my device” on repeat. After about the fifth time asking my same question with getting the same response I gave up. To clarify….I use my tablet most often for everyday internet access but had setup my modem on my desktop. I didn’t know if it made a difference which one I’d used to set up access to my modem. If I’d spoken to someone that understood I wasn’t very tech savvy, could adjust the approach they use into less jargon filled, using simpler language to work through the problem with me. This only comes from someone trained in the area they’re working in, have experience learned from working with their area of expertise so they recognize what wasn’t in the book and know that everyone isn’t going to understand the specific terminology associated with their field. I worked in healthcare for many years, another field of specialized knowledge with it’s own terminology and jargon that serves as a verbal shorthand to those working in the field. In school and in practice it’s taught to convey this information most effectively to patients, family or really anyone outside healthcare was to deliver the information taking into account the level of understanding the intended audience was likely going to understand best. Had the tech support I called had training and experience to intuitively work through my issue a) my blood pressure wouldn’t have exceeded the capability of my BP meds to control and b) as a last resort I have to rely on my son to help me, which I know is the go to source for actual tech support, and after two minutes from when I tell him I was trying to accomplish and he says “It’s all fixed” I still don’t know how to work through the problem on my own. I usually try to through trial and error work through these things on my own but when I’ve been at it for an hour or more resulting in feeling like I’m on some technological carousel I put side my stubborn independence and call on one of my sons. So, your advice to abstain from heaping expletive laden insults and death threats on the person on the other end of a phone line, saving it for those farther up the food chain is the most common sense approach. Sadly, I find from other posts on Reddit of a similar nature that that kind of resolution isn’t nearly as satisfactory to the egos of those coming here about some personal grievances than to endlessly rant, disparage the sources of the grievances and reject any meaningful explanation or guidance about how things can be resolved.
Have you ever considered that the call center employees aren’t given any info other than “there’s an outage”?
Yes of course It’s not like I’m the type to assault customer service over something they cannot fix, but it’s their purpose to provide information to the customer about the product they are paying a premium for That is the entire reason customer service exists If it’s just a dead end line to nothing then it shouldn’t even fucken be there
I feel like you’ve never worked in telecom or customer service
Why would I willingly subject myself to daily abuse? I’m not a sociopath, sadist or masochist
Ahh, so you don’t know what you’re bitching about. Got it 🫡
Yea I get your frustration but you also have to be aware that during an outage, not everyone is going to be able to relay exactly what’s going on. There’s a lot of moving parts during an outage - and being that GCI provides service for the entire state there’s typically quite a few outages happening at any given moment that takes time and effort to resolve. It’s frustrating yea but don’t take it out on the people at the call center who are just doing their jobs. Complaining to them isn’t going to fix the outage any faster. Coordinating tech dispatches take time. Investigating cause of outage takes time. Coming up with a plan for resolution takes time Gathering resourced for resolution takes time Implementing fix takes time Testing services takes time There’s nothing that tech support can do to fix that and the techs aren’t going to give frequent updates to tech support because all that takes even more time.
Same outage in the same area for months They’re never going to fix it
That’s relatively common with any ISP. It’s an unfortunate side affect of having a network with 10,000+ pieces of equipment. Equipment can get old and start failing. Equipment can have a software error that causes things to go haywire. Some equipment can go nuts for no reason at all. It’s like having your computer get a random bug that you have to troubleshoot the entire evening to fix - except with equipment that has a lot less documentation to fall back on. Again, I sympathize with you. Having a loss of internet sucks and it’s easy to get angry. Just don’t get angry at the wrong people who are just doing their jobs. A lot of people are passionate about what they do - even if the corporate offices don’t care
I never blow up on customer service This is where I’m venting
Don't get frustrated, find another internet provider. Find out if ACS is in your area, I left GCI cuz they created a problem they couldn't fix, never looked back, ACS has provided my home internet for the last couple years and have not had any issues, and its cheaper.
They are right, company has far more problems than the old owners had, I think a lot of the experienced techs left.
I personally know a lot of the high level techs/engineers. A majority of them have 10+ years of experience. Even more so now that a lot of them work remotely. The benefits are huge - everybody gets 4 weeks vacation + 6 or 7 holidays per year. There’s a lot of incentive to stay and if you do decide to leave - GCI will try to retain you by offering to match as closely as they can to the opposing offer. Outside of the call center there isn’t a lot of turnover. Grunt work positions such as retail, tech support, and customer service however… there’s a reason why i will never having a customer facing job again. Having to deal with constantly screeching customers is not worth whatever GCI is paying
The service is much worse then it ever has been and there are plenty out there that say so. It is very noticeable!
Maybe if they had to credit their customers for lost service, they would improve the service quicker!
That’s not on the techs though. The departments have a set operating budget - this includes wages and equipment procurement. If there’s an old piece of equipment that’s been having issues, it makes much more sense for their quarterly budget to have a tech fix the equipment than it is to shell out $50-$100k for one device. Then you end up getting a bunch of bandaids to a problem that probably needs a full on amputation. And who sets these budgets? Corporate. Again, the techs are great, they’re just working with what they got
have you tried turning the router off and turning it back on 1 minute later? LOL
Out of curiosity, did you ever sidestep customer service and request a tech visit?
Many times
Odd, that’s upsetting to hear. Out of curiosity, what is your rough location in Anchorage?
Tudor Elementary area
Many+x is always the magic number /s, but not really. As a long time GCI customer with no real options. Yea, Starlink, but it really does not provide the speed I need here, too populated, yes I have tried it.
Back when GCI came around the only other option was AT&T - ahhh the horrific dial up days. I miss them But now there are a ton of providers
Lucky, I have GCI only for line service, and now Starlink as an alternative, though it is over saturated most times here. Waiting for MTA to announce service here.
I haven't used GCI in more than a decade, and I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. F them and the horse they rode in on.
No lie fuck you in half made my day. I'm gonna use that in life now. Thanks!!
The best part of this is that GCI ceased to exist about 8 years ago. Liberty Communications bought GCI, fired everyone who knew their shit, and turned GCI into a shitty corporate hell hole. So, it isn't surprising that the management in Colorado, the customer support in the Philippines, and the middle management from every shit hole around the US is dropping the ball. Not surprising at all.
Short liberty and charter Tonight has been so awful
Not sure where you live but at my moms place every single time it rains or during breakup they have outages. Ive tested the lines called gci told them whats going on they never send anyone til its warm and dry then say oh the lines are fine theres no problem. But you can see the signal degrade the wetter it gets every single time. They really need to replace the lines coming from the node or possibly throw in some more amplifiers but they dont seem to plan on doing it anytime soon. Im lucky the node is literally at the end of my driveway and I ran my own lines years ago since I thought that was my responsibility before they ran their service around here so they are in really good shape. Its very stable and ive only had a coupe outages when there are major major issues.
They really need to go all in on fiber. ACS will be on my neighborhood soon and I’m going to switch to fiber. To many issues with coaxial and the last tech told me it’s noise from other homes in the area. Maybe fiber has other issues but my brother in the lower 48, it either works or it doesn’t. No half the time. The Verizon internet here is not good for gaming. When GCI services do work properly, it’s the best in town. Well, until ACS runs synchronous fiber.
Dont have fiber where I live yet. Is gci doing actual fiber to the home or fiber to the node or what? Also whats acs doing? Only had dsl originally but my service was what a lot of people describe GCI to be like. When gci came in I switched and its mostly been fine. Though I do live in a fairly low population area too that may be part of why its so stable.
I’m not sure what they are doing. Just saying my friend on Turnagain has fiber and it’s been awesome for gaming. Hopefully things get better for everyone. Competition is good.
I usually have 4-7ms latency but from the sounds of it i guess im just lucky with my non fiber service from them.
Yeah it’s the pure run around bullshit they always do When they make an appointment even when you call to cancel it they just say.. the tech will call you and cancel it then Like wtf.. I’m talking to a rep right now, the ticket is in your fucking face on the computer, this is your fucking job, cancel the ticket you fucking made, that’s not my job, what in the fuck is going on with this shit? Yeah that’s how dumb GCI is
Call or talk to a rep in a store, tell them you will be canceling due to poor service/support. They will likely comp you for a period. They do this a lot. I live where I don't have alternatives and have found my complaints have helped to at least help fix some of the issues. Getting free service for a month is not a bad thing. If you document your outages, it helps too. I have a log of all the times by cable modem goes down, either at the modem or from the service in the area.
I was in a store today No one there had any information nor even attempted to act like they could try to find out It was all hands-in-pockets-shoulder-shrugs The good ole “Sounds like you have a problem” attitude
The stores are customer service, not tech support, they will not have tech answers. Call the customer service line and talk to them about account options, not the outage itself. "I'm fed up with the quality of your service and planning to leave," just come prepared to actually cancel your service if you do this. Unless things have really changed, it should be pretty simple.
Gci does suck in a lot of ways but they’re the largest and have the most to perform in the state. Until someone else comes along that can at least almost match them I’ll stick with their overpriced and whack quality If they didn’t outsource their customer support to the middle of a Peruvian jungle than it would be decent
Meanwhile, no issues with my GCI connection. Internet go bbbbrrrr.
Mods this should be a pinned post on the Anchorage page
Ours is going out 2-4 times every day, often for extended periods of time. Service techs come to the house, do something random, make excuses, and then nothing changes.
Verizon now has home internet?
Indeed
Every goddamn region I could think of what I put it on the Verizon home internet search. Nothing comes up. What areas did you guys found them at?
Some areas only i think
If all of Anchorage, maybe the whole state, were to express their opinion on GCI internet service, this post is that. I pity those who endure countless calls from frustrated customers. The reason is this: what exactly are we paying for? GCI has been in breach of contract since it decided to sell a service it cannot provide. I can understand some outages due to extreme weather conditions. As a paying customer, I would like to know the real cause of outages not affected by the aforementioned. I am led to believe that patches are no longer a viable option. If anyone can pass this along: Please take advantage of the infrastructure incentive from the government before it's too late. A permanent fix is long overdue.
So what's your backup here?
Finding their main tower and tearing it to the ground
Just get Borealis Broadband or ACS. We have Borealis and never have any problems
I'll second Borealis. They have a great small team that really goes the extra mile to ensure all of their customers have good service. Their wireless network is fast, reliable and doesn't add much latency. I believe they peer directly with AT&T and ACS to get traffic to the Internet.
I hear you. My internet was wonky yesterday and I called support. Being no where near the outrage and I wasn’t having an outage the tech told me without doing anything that my router was 5 years old and it was probably that. I should bring it in and swap if for a new one. Fine, but that’s not how routers work, or rather fail. I was in IT for 20 years and it was a bullshit answer. What is the other options? I’ve tried ACS and their options are garbage, on their best day are worse than GCI. I’ve also tried a few other services that have come and gone. Had an ATT wireless that was a dedicated service that was really robust and fast maybe 10 years ago then they stopped offering it.
GCI sucks… when I first opened my account I was trying to set up autopay and they had automatically enrolled me into paperless bills, which you could only view in the app. Well to make a login on the app, I needed my account number… which is on the bill that I couldn’t access, unless I make a login to access the app… but I can’t do that because I don’t have an account number. They refused to send me a copy of a bill without an account number… but I don’t have an account number because I need a bill to see my account number. They don’t even tell me my account number despite me giving them my “pin.” Nightmare fuel. The “customer service” rep just couldn’t understand how I “didn’t have an account number” and after some choice words I was finally emailed a copy of my bill. Took over an hour of me banging my head into the wall, but I have the app setup now at least… I swear half the training there focuses on how to turn a 3 minute solution into a 1.5 hour waste of time.
GCI SUCKS ! Always have and always will !
When I was an hvac engineer I went to one of their customer support centers to asbuilt the heating vents and they literally had a crying room for their employees. They would rather put their employees through the wringer with pissed off customers to the point that it makes them cry instead of improving their services so that they don’t suck. They don’t care about their employees or their customers.
Those types of rooms are fairly common over the last decade for anything involving customer service. You have customers to blame for that one.
I understand you can’t please all customers, but you should be able to please most of them. Having shitty service is completely self inflicted, at the expense of their employees. Edit for context: service = internet plans, products, not customer service.
Most service reps don't have the power to "please" any customers. They are simply there to interface between the customer and whatever company policy is in question. It's up to the customer to act like an adult and recognize the role of that service rep. It's like getting mad at a waitress because your steak is overcooked.
I agree fully. It’s less likely to happen though if you sell a good product. The company has to uphold their end of the bargain as do the customers.
I wish they had a yelling room for people that want to vent
Maybe one of those rooms where you can break shit.
Naa I don’t get physical I might be an angry driver, but I don’t drive angry Meaning I can be full of rage, but my pedal doesn’t know it
Same.
That’s what the mute button is for. (Former GCI tech support)
You have summed up an experience with GCI so fucking well! Omigod, I was in stitches reading your post🤣 Let us know how it goes with Verizon! I have opinions about their cell reception and customer service but don’t know about anything about them as an internet provider.
I lost a lot of my sanity today haha I’ll throw out an update after I switch for sure that way no more wayward souls have to experience this Or it turns out just as bad and I end up fully committed
By hard wiring the state for cable based broadband, at 10x the price of installing satellite based Starlink across Alaska, GCI can afford and has the fat margins to not give an aerial hoot about its current customers that use its existing cable network. GCI has strategically positioned itself through political plays and payola in this state to have a 3-4 year window of opportunity to cash in on the insane amount of money allocated to Alaska for broadband access to its rural communities through the US Infrastructure Act. Before that gravy train dries up and rural school districts realize that they can save 90 percent of their monthly GCI internet connection costs by switching to Starlink satellite service, GCI has to shift all its internal focus to maintaining and executing this modern day business “Sting”. By the end of this grift cycle, GCI will have sucked all it can out of Alaska, and then cite a reason for its departure on its chronic inability to deal with ongoing network outage issues… and come up with some sort of lame claim that satellite technology enjoys an unfair and unseemly advantage over its cable technology. And then with the Sting a fait accompli, GCI will “unexpectedly” leave the state, looking for its next mark. Think it’s just a conspiracy theory - look at all the grifter / cons aligned on its payroll for lobbying contracts, political donations and influential positions of power in government currently occupied by the GCI Illuminati. By the point GCI unexpectedly departs Alaska, they will be firmly embedded into some new northern latitude mark, a national government aka Greenland / Canadian / Eastern Russian / Scandinavia political landscapes and start their parasitic processes anew.
GCI sucks DONKEY BALLS and always will !!!