Northwest Communications

I recently moved to Somerset, WI with my boyfriend and we had purchased internet from Northwest Communications. In the beginning, we were extremely happy with the service and were unsure why the company had so many harsh reviews. I now know why... I have never reported a company nor have left a bad review for a company in my life but this one rubbed me the wrong way.

Our internet had gone down on Friday morning around 10 AM, I figured it was a short outage and everything would be back up and running shortly, so I went along with my day running errands. When I got home around 5 or so that evening, it was still not working. I had called NW Com. and she said that everything looked good on our account and it didn't look like there were any outages in our area so, she forwarded me to tech support.

I went through all the steps with tech support and they told me it was the service and they'd be sending a technician out to survey the troubles. Well, that didn't happen for four days. When I called again to follow up, they proceeded to tell me my account was still good and they were unclear as to why our service was off... so, they bumped our "tier" to be a higher priority for a technician to come out.

Then, a few minutes ago, I received a phone call from a not so pleasant lady who was INCREDIBLY rude from the first word. She proceeded to tell me that all of my calls have pretty much been non-sense and that the reason they canceled our services is due to having a $700 bill with them? I proceeded to ask how that was even possible since multiple people have told me my account was in good standing and I have yet to see one email or invoice sent to me. She said they were giving people a break due to "COVID" and are now shutting services off after their four-month "break" period and are back charging people on their bills.

I am EXTREMELY agitated as I was never told that my account wasn't getting charged, that there was some sort of "break" going on, I never opted in for this "break". My internet was set up for auto-pay and honestly, since it has worked for the last 4 months I have been living there, I wasn't constantly checking my bank account when this bill was supposed to be pulled, so I figured everything was good. When I told her that wasn't a "break" and honestly hurts my bank account by forking out $600 at once instead of $100 a month, all she said was "And...?". I proceeded to say that it wasn't fair that they had done this and that I wasn't going to be paying this $600 since I never was told about them putting my account on pause but continuing my service, she said: "Sounds great, I'll proceed to cancel your service with us!" I got so mad, I hung up.

This is not fair at all. I should have been notified that this happened and now I'm unable to run my business from home due to this misunderstanding and unprofessionalism. So, now with having no internet, possibly a $600 bill, and no revenue coming in, I'm hurting more than I ever have before.

Our issue is with their internet service they provide, that has never worked correctly, below is the letter I sent them with my December bill. I have not gotten a response from them on this. And today when I opened our bill, the internet charge has actually been raised by $10/month, and the issue of WiFi connection not at the speed of what I'm paying for still has not been resolved. Ookla Speed test tonite, is still around 2MB with no upload (it errors out), we still cannot have more than 1 device running. If one of us does need to use WiFi, like our daughter who is home from College, and needs to submit school work and communicate with Professors over JTerm has to go to our public library in town to get internet service. *** & ***

I’m writing you regarding our Internet Service we have had with Northwest Communications since 2011, which has never worked correctly since we subscribed to it.

Today as I am writing this: according to my bill description, I am paying for 10MB and according to the Ookla speed test, what I have is 2.05MB for a download and the upload errors out. This has been the norm since we went live in 2011. We cannot have more than 1 device connected to the WiFi, if someone in the house chooses to watch a video or a movie, we cannot watch it without loosing connection due to buffering if we can watch one at all.

In the last 8 years we have had our Router re-placed at least 12 times. Summer of 2017 we had it re-placed 2 times due to having an electric current come through the Coax cable hit the router and short out and destroy our desk top computer TWICE in 10 days. We have had service technicians out here, many times, so many I can’t count. Every time they come, they replace the router and re-run the Coax Cable into our house.

Northwest communications is the ONLY internet provider that our part of Somerset is allowed to use, they have an agreement of some sorts with the city and use of the power lines, so no other company is able to use them. Currently they are charging me $77 (because they force you to also pay for a phone line and phone number even if you don’t plan on having a house phone) for 10MB speed of internet. We do speed tests randomly and so far we have never ever got over 3!! Also, the internet randomly goes down completely multiple times a day, I know this because I work from home and all my work requires internet usage! When I call to let them know, they just tell me that I must have t set up wrong and they walk me through the proper set up... which is just plugging everything in! I am 24 years old, I have worked with technology pretty much my whole life, I know how to plug in an internet router! The router they supply as well as the wireless router we had to purchase all have the correct lifts on and say they are working properly, it is clearly their service that is not working and they are charging for speeds that no one ever gets! If you look at the reviews online, they have an average of a one to two star review because they have terrible service as well as terrible customer service. They know what they are doing is wrong and they just don’t care. Their customer service ladies are very rude but they don’t care about how they treat customers because they know that they are the only option. I have honestly considered moving just because of this internet problem but unfortunately I can not afford that right now. I would be very appreciative if something was done about this company and their services. All I am asking is that I get the speed I pay for and that it works all day, that is not asking al lot seeing as that is what I am paying for!

Internet service provided is maybe half as fast as it should be with customer/tech service unable to get it up to speed. Price for the internet service is also double what any competitor would charge, if we had any competition.

I have been a customer of this company for many years. I am paying for 10 MBPS of internet speed and I can never even get 3 MBPS continuous. They walk me through the setup and it works great, 15 minutes later the speed drops off again. In early morning and evening hours you cannot get and maintain even 2 MBPS. They claim to have replaced my comtrend, but I suspect they just give me another bad one. At minimum, I need to reboot my modem 3-5 times or more per day. I have replaced my router and still no luck. I don't have any other choice, if I could switch companies I would in a minute. Since they have the area locked up and will not allow any other service provider, they need to upgrade their equipment or my service in order to meet what I have been paying for. Since this has been an ongoing issue, my complaint will be transferred to the FCC as well.