New Wave Communications: The Worst ISP in America

Noone May 6, 2010 at 12:30 pm

Wow now that’s damage control!

Michael November 25, 2010 at 1:16 am

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of having to deal with newwave in Mayfield KY. Hands down they are the worst service provider i have ever had. i had so many problems with their television service and boxes that i had to drop them and get satellite tv for which i have had nothing but stellar service and reliability. you would think the issue of going out in storms would be that of the satellite provider but no it was NewWave that would go out in storms.

I was having major issues with the internet service of NewWave with it being totally unusable during “peak” hours. So New Wave decided to expand their pipe for more bandwidth but instead of letting folks have the service they pay for NewWave got greedy and upped their package to 15mb and the pipe was soon full again. While they have given refunds and sent out techs to do the exact same thing the previous 10 techs did the service is still crap. As of this writing my current speed maxes at at 1.78 mb and that is not even stable.

When you try to write the president per the promise thing he tosses up on the web page it is intercepted by lower managers who simply repeat the same processes that had been going on for months. Does the President actually ever see these complaints? i doubt it. I would drop NewWave internet in a heartbeat if we had any other choice but the cable monopoly rules here also.

Simply put if you can avoid New Wave Communications take a wide berth and don’t look back as you can expect nothing but headaches or “upgrades” from 10mb to 15mb when they can not even get you more than 2mb.

Travis December 18, 2010 at 11:49 pm

Im paying for 10mbps and have only been getting about 2 of it for longer than I should have tolerated. Frequent disconnects and frustration are things I had come to think I had to just live with. My relationship with my pc is a big part of my life. New Wave is making me hate my relationship with my pc. Lots of people don’t notice that they’re not getting what they’re paying for as they Facebook, IM, and casually surf but people who play WoW while streaming Netflix movies sure as hell do.

Amanda January 17, 2011 at 4:57 pm

Newwave has been nothing but a complete headache for me since October.
The channels blank out constantly and when they come back, the audio/visual is out of sync. I called I don’t remember how many times to get it fixed without any progress. Then when they finally agreed to send someone to my house “Tuesday between 8 and 10,” surprise! No one showed up. Then I called to complain about it (and about having missed out on college class hours over it) and they told me 1) that no one was in the area at that time when a Newwave van was parked at my neighbors, so close I could literally see it from my house and 2) that they had scheduled someone to come “on the 20th from 3-5,” which is funny since no one told me that and I wouldn’t be home on the 20th from 3-5.
I was also told my bill would be credited for 2 months for all the problems I had, which was great until my cable was turned of due to non-payment of a bill I was told I’d never have.
Needless to say I am more than fed up. I called Friday, paid what I apparently owe so as not to hurt my credit and put in an order for cancellation at the end of this month. We’re moving in February and I had planned on taking Newwave’s service with me and adding phone and internet to it had they done anything, anything at all to fix these issues. But nope. So now my business and my money will be going to Windstream. Something I should have done a long time ago.

james42519 February 3, 2011 at 5:30 am

i haven’t really had trouble with newwave in somerset ky and when i do i can get it fixed calling them usually. i have 10 megabit and actually get that or better sometimes. sure it goes lower sometimes but not enough to effect using it. only thing i think could change is the upload speed. .36 megabit is kinda slow now. i have the cable too but i don’t use a cable box. onyl have basic and extended cable and cables goes to the tv. guess living in the city helps with this being closer to where ti comes from.

james42519 February 4, 2011 at 12:55 am

guess i am lucky then.
it is between these too but usually closer to 9 or 10 megabit.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1141965469.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1141964494.png

pingtest
http://www.pingtest.net/result/33807808.png

are you using the Motorola sb5100 too?

Reid August 20, 2011 at 9:46 am

I’ll throw in my 2cents as well – let’s face it Newwave SUCKS! We moved to Murray KY 3 years ago and had nothing but trouble from day 1! Same scenario as all of the other posts above: poor to no connection on ‘net, TV, etc. I call and call, tech come out and look dumbfounded and tell me they don’t know whats wrong. According to their equipment it should be working, but they stand in front of the TV and computer and can see that it’s not. I’m really sick of it, but they are the only game in my area except for satellite. And the people with satellite say that their reception/service is no different. Does anyone know of some watchdog or regulatory agency that we can contact? Having to pay $130/month for crappy service is just ridiculous!!

Ronnie Null September 2, 2011 at 8:21 pm

Yet another COMPLETELY unsatisfied New Wave Communications Customer in the Bootheel of Missouri. My previous internet provider was AT&T, which unfortunately only had (and has currently) 6M speeds available in my area. On every single site that I use regularly, or even those that I used intermittently or even completely randomly, I would get a reliable ~1M give or take a few hundred KB.

Roughly 3 months ago now, I saw a New Wave tech doing an install about 5 houses down from mine on my street, and thought, “Hey, why not ask about their internet packages?” The inner geek in me was then extremely “aroused” by the concept of the 50M connection the tech told me just recently had become available in my area. I jumped on that in a heartbeat and barely batted an eye at the $105.00 pricetag. 50M was eons faster than what I had right? Surely it was worth an additional 45-50 bucks a month! When I first got the service, there was a slight improvement in streaming speeds/page loads from very common websites such as youtube, amazon, msn, google, bing, etc. Nothing to bow down in amazement of. So then I start doing speedtests on both the Windows XP Home laptop and the Windows Vista 32bit Desktop that I owned (and both worked!) at the time. These showed roughly 24-34M down speeds. (I only use wired connections.) So then I go to actually install a few games/apps/programs/updates/patches from such sites as Blizzard Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, Itunes, Microsoft.com and I realize I’m only getting an actual 2M down speed, which varies down to 1M randomly, but in the 3 months I’ve owned it and the tons of downloads I have done (or at least attempted) I’ve seen a total of about 12 minutes of speeds greater than 2M, and it was 5-6M on the same sites I had already downloaded these things, or had to redownload, because my hard drive died on my computer (Seagate firmware issue) a couple of weeks after receiving this internet. (My main rig at the time.) EVERY OTHER TIME I HAVE DOWNLOADED ANYTHING FROM ANYWHERE I HAVE NOT GOTTEN OVER 2M! It will reach 2M, hit 2.1, then drop to 1.6. Repeat, drop to 1.7. Repeat, so on and so forth. Never going over 2M. On this 50M connection! I have called New Wave Customer Service on the order of 10-15 times if not more regarding this exact same issue. They even sent an engineer to my house on one of these visits, and he plugs in his laptop and gets 32M on a speedtest. Like this is supposed to tell me something? I had just performed the speedtest before I ever called them, and saw what it said, but I also saw what I was getting in actual down speeds from a plethora of different sites. This could be downloading a YouTube vid with Realplayer, downloading an album from Itunes, downloading the game client for World of Warcraft, downloading the Star Wars The Old Republic beta game client, or even downloading updates from Microsoft. 2M.

So, I gathered as many details as I could about the symptoms it was exhibiting, mainly the fact that I could have the same download queued up multiple times (around 5 copies) and receive almost the exact down speeds on all 5 copies. Roughly 2M. Which is effectively 10M down. But for some reason I can only get 2M on a single file from anywhere. I then called New Wave, and spent the next several minutes attempting to explain my extremely frustrated situation to the apparently clueless customer support rep, and after a bit of this, the rep apparently thought he had muted his mic, and he actually paused for a minute then said “Shut the F*** up…” Immediately I was like, “Excuse me?” and asked to speak to his supervisor, and informed him of this incredible lapse in both judgment, customer service ability, and humanity in this individual. He (the supervisor) made sure he gave me his name/email, and said he would definitely look into this as this wasn’t the type of thing that was expected of New Wave Employees. Ya think???? Other than that he didn’t seem all that perturbed by this turn of events. Over the next month and a half or so up until now, I have called repeatedly about this exact same issue. Seeing a huge number on http://www.speedtest.net, then actually going to download something from ANYWHERE, and not getting over 2M.

This past Saturday (Aug 27th, 2011) my speeds dropped down to about 200-400KB/s with epic slowdowns to 5KB/s that was sustained over several hours. I immediately called, and they said (once again) “We’ll send a tech out.” This tech, (that I had seen several times already) seemed genuinely interested in at least attempting to figure out what this issue was, as clearly 2M wasn’t even close to what I was paying for, and he told me he would recquisition an laptop and a DOCSIS 3.0 like my own and test various points in the line up to my house. This was supposed to take place yesterday. Nothing was fixed as of this morning.

So today, I called and actually asked to speak to the on-duty technical supervisor, as clearly, all of the times I had recounted the exact symptoms I was having to the “normal” employees were either misunderstood, misinterpreted, or completely misplaced. After a 27minute hold, I then spoke to “Cody the Technical Supervisor” and then reiterated once again my situation. He at this point told me “Well, I was unaware that you were having these types of issues (i.e. the multiple files queuing at the same speed while one file only does 2M, pages taking sometimes over a minute to load (simple pages like email or bing) or especially since this past Saturday, roughly 40-50% of the sites I was clicking on were saying server not found, cannot find website, or check your internet connection, although the connection indicator at my status tray showed a valid connection, and the lights on the modem showing the same.

Cody then tells me that yes, this does sound like a modem issue, and he would make sure a tech brought a new DOCSIS 3.0 out today to see if that remedied the issue. He also told me that he was “teaking a few things” and shortly thereafter, my speeds normalized at their standard 2M.

At around 5:30, this gentleman comes to the door, a New Wave “tech”. And the first thing he does is the same thing all the other techs have done (and the ONLY thing the other techs have done) is run the speedtest.net and once again, unsurprisingly, it shows a high number, this time 42M. So at this point he tells me clearly there’s NOTHING wrong with the modem or the internet service. So I then begin recounting all of the issues I’ve had, and the fact that I only get 2M, and he says “Well, what servers are these?” I then tell him EVERY FREAKING SERVER. This obviously isn’t good enough, so we go and begin downloading things. The blizzard downloader at that was showing 2M. It would hit 2.1, then drop to 1.7. Hit 2.1 drop to 1.5, and repeat this forever. I also told him that I had downloaded the client for WoW, from the Blizzard Entertainment content servers (Blizzard Entertainment is at the very least one of the richest game developers in the world with BEEFY servers with which to handle their nearly 12 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS) and told him that 3 of the 5 guys that were in my ventrilo channel had just downloaded this same file that I had just downloaded, 2 with 30M connections getting roughly 12M and 1 with a 20M connection getting about 6.8M down, and all three had made it into the game (same size file) hours before I was able to on my 50M connection.

So Mr. Internet tech says well I’m going to go out back and check some stuff. I went and used the restroom, and went out back to smoke, and he wasn’t there. He was in fact out front, sitting in his van, speaking to someone on his cell. So then he asks me “Did you actually see these speeds these people told you they were getting?” and “They couldn’t possibly be getting those kind of speeds because the person he had just spoken with told him that no one would be able to download from them if they were pushing that kind of speed.” Unknown person on the other end of the line was CLEARLY an idiot with a capital IDIOT.

Mr. Tech guy then proceeds to in about as many words tell me that no one really gets over 2M on the internet anyways… to which I promptly replied, “So you’re honestly telling me that no one in the effn world gets more than 2M on the internet????? Are you effn serious? That is BS and you know it.” He then replied, “Well, I don’t know….”

So then I go into hardcore “You gotta believe that this is complete BS mode…” and we went into the computer and proceeded to download from several different sites where my undeniable download speeds were between 400KB/s-2.1M. He then tells me that he wants me to email him all those sites because he has the same internet I do, and my modem is showing 42M and his doesn’t show that much.

So I then asked Mr. Internet Tech what his download speeds were. He told me, “I don’t know, I just download stuff and let it do it’s thang.” This is suppsedly a high-speed Internet Technician that doesn’t even know his own actual download speeds?

So I set out to compose a list of commonly used sites with readily accessible downloads in addition to a few of the other game type downloads that he could attempt in addition to all these others (some of my examples included Microsoft where I could get nothing at all to download, and http://www.bing.com which would not load for 7 successive attempts, each time telling me that there is no internet connection even though my status tray and modem tell me otherwise) and thought to include some of the several complaints I had personally read over these past couple of months about New Wave Communications that reeked of the same S*** i’ve been dealing with all this time, and stumbled across this particular page, and felt obligated to include my own horror story. Needless to say, if this isn’t resolved by the end of this billing cycle, I’m going back to my much more reliable 6M connection from AT&T DSL.

So a word of warning to all potential New Wave Communications customers who hear 50M!!! and go “wow” and sign up, most likely you’re not going to get even 5% of what you’re paying for, and if this proves to be the case, New Wave will most certainly be rude to you, call you stupid, exhibit utter stupidity of their own, lie, and continue to charge outrageous prices for NOTHING.

Buyer be warned…

Rod September 9, 2011 at 1:22 pm

I’m in Catlin, IL, and I had DSL Elite (advertised download speed of up to 6 Mb/sec.) with AT&T for over 5 years. I’ve checked the speed with Speedtest.net many times, and almost never saw a speed of under 5 Mb, regardless of time of day (even peak hours). I only experienced one outage in all that time, and that was due to a driver sliding off an icy road into a telephone pole. And it was only down a few hours. I had some intermittent drop offs that were due to a failing modem, which they replaced at no charge. Pretty good service considering what I’ve gotten from NewWave. AT&T set a bandiwdth cap of 100 GB a month, and charges $10 for every additional 50GB. I use the net a lot, downloading, and playing online games for hours, streaming music, and video, etc. So, I decided I’d give Avenue Cable a try. They offer 15 Mb/sec. download for a few dollars more that what I was paying for DSL, and no bandwidth cap. A month after switching to Avenue, they got taken over by NewWave. I’ve experienced a dozen outages in 2 months of service, some of them lasting all night. Speeds drop considerably lower during peak hours, but not horribly bad every night. My ping in games is about 20ms, compared to 40ms on DSL, but DSL was steady and reliable, though its max. download and upload speeds are less. Things will be alright with NewWave for a week, and then it goes to shit. It’s bad enough I’m seriously ready to go back to AT&T DSL and try and live with the bandwidth cap.

I’m getting so peeved about it, I’m wondering about trying to organize other NewWave customers to put pressure on the company to upgrade their infrastructure to deliver on their promised speeds, even if it takes a civil law suit to get them off their asses.

Rod September 11, 2011 at 7:32 am

Yes, Nick, my speedtest.net speeds are lower doing peak hours often, as are actual download speeds. Some nights I’ll see tests of 7 Mbps, and others much lower, some nights 10 Mbps. Some Sundays it’s so slow it’s barely useable. On the 9th (the day I wrote my first post here), the service went down entirely, and wasn’t restored until sometime the following afternoon. It’s been really good since then.

Randy L Shear October 28, 2011 at 12:56 pm

Figured I might as well throw my war story in here. This is the message I just sent to New Wave. I’ll update if they respond:

I have been stood up three times by your company. It took me almost a month to even talk to someone about turning on service, and then they were a no show. When they did show up, and turned on my internet, the internet didn’t work for almost 2 days. A few days later I decided to get phone, internet, and cable. A week and a half ago I made an appointment for today (Oct 28th between 9a-12P) to have everything turned on. It is now 12:30 and nobody showed up. I am currently on hold, and the CSR has been rude, and her very first response to my complaints was to cancel my order. I own A1 Title 42 Service in Oklahoma, as a business owner, and a consumer, this is very poor customer service. As I explained to her, cancelling my order is not a solution to my issue. The solution is to send someone out here as promised. I have complained before to the CSRs when I had to call in over and over for no show, and when the internet didn’t work, and not once was I offered any compensation for my valuable time, frustration, and aggravation. I have more important things to do than sit on the phone all day trying to get service that I already had an appointment for. Not once when the technicians were going to be late, or just not show up at all did I receive a phone call letting me know. They simply let me sit here and waste my time. I still have my Verizon DSL account as I was testing your service before I shut down Verizon. I will admit Verizon does not have the bandwidth New Wave has, but their network is stable, I have never lost connection, and my services were turned on when they promised. Their customer service is outstanding. I would like either a discount on my service, or a credit to my account for all the time I have wasted waiting on techs, and all the time wasted sitting on the phone (most of it on hold). I would also like my services turned on today as promised (if at all possible). I really hope this message finds someone who remembers what customer service is, and how important customers are to your business. Thus far I have been made to feel very unimportant to your company.

Randy L Shear November 11, 2011 at 7:47 am

Yes I intentionally misspelled waive, as wave as a pun 🙂

Gloria November 15, 2011 at 10:03 am

I my gosh, you people have scared me to death. We just got a letter from Comcast and they are turning our service over to NewWave. We get fantastic service from Comcast, internet and tv. But reading all the commplaints have pretty much convinced me to bit the bullet and get Direct tv. Seems like just when you think you life is going smooth someone throws a wrench in it!

melvin monroe November 27, 2011 at 9:47 pm

New Wave Cable service is slow to change stations.
Direct and Dish wasn’t.
The Internet is slow like Dial-up.
The phone service was slow to call out and a lot of times not work at all.
I told them about it 4 or 5 times and they have never came to do anything about it.
So I went back to at&t, DSL and DirecTV.

Bryce December 16, 2011 at 5:57 pm

Now, I truly do know about these issues, and trust me, even us technicians have these problems. Yes, ill admit on this bash-site, I am a New Wave Com. BBT1 tech. I work in the central Illinois region and I usually get good responses from my customers about the service. Now you guys/gals have your right to bash and complain and i dont blame you for a second, I am not here to defend NWC or anything like that (which im sure i probably should, but i didnt put my real name on here for personal protection reasons)i just want you to hear me out. I worked previously for a company called Avenue cable, before NWC bought the system. If any of you ever had Avenue service, you know what bad service truly is. Yea we “offered” phone, up to 15mg dsd, but you were lucky if it EVER and i mean EVER worked…….period. And truly the techs didnt care because they didnt have to. since NWC came in, we had to care, otherwise we are out of work. I can see the changes NWC has brought to my area because i live it every day. New wave techs are usually your most helpful people ever, because we have to be, we have to meet certain quotas with re-occurring T.C’s. We are all trained and professional….most of the time, i mean, comon, we all have our bad days where we really dont feel like being threatened because someone didnt pay their bills and they feel the right to treat us like dirt, like something they stepped in and think they can just do/say to us whatever they feel. Now from reading this, you guys didnt have too many bad thing to say about the techs, mostly the call center, youve got to realize, these are people that do not have field training, they have a list of things in front of them to say and if they dont work they send us out, and then usually, the techs can fix it. There are occasions in which we cannot, due to problems that we cant resolve. Now, sometimes we do cut corners, and do not chastise me, because we all do it in our every day lives. You try to make it to 20+ houses in 8hours when each one can take up to an hour. Then after youve worked all this overtime, try getting yelled at by your boss because you didnt make appt’s on time and how theyre going to fire you if you dont “shape up”. Ill admit, our service may not always be at 100% or ever, all im asking is that people start being a little more thankful and nice to the field hands, because its us that keep the system running, not management, its us thats working out in a blizzard when the cable goes down, not the call center and its us that misses our weekends, family events, child milestones and literally have a great potential of dying all in the name of your entertainment and enjoyment of services, not you. So all im asking is please, be a little nicer to the techs, i understand that you all are frustrated,and i truly see where you are all comming from and i am in no way trying to put anyone down here, but there is no and i mean no reason to flag me down just to cuss me out because you feel like being nasty to us to make yourself feel better. Thank you, i hope you will take this message into consideration, happy holidays to you all.

James May 20, 2012 at 1:03 pm

Ha, I was thinking to put up such a page, this is truly a pitiful service in Southeast Missouri. Now I am informed they have implimented bandwidth limits. Stay away!!!

Matt S. July 7, 2012 at 6:05 pm

I read through this article that you wrote and, I must say, I thank you so very much for doing so. NewWave’s internet has been an immense issue ever sense we signed up for that piece of garbage, as I simply cannot talk to anyone on Skype without it outing on me in the middle of conversation, as I wait for 3 hours for it to go back on. Heck, one time when we called them after a major outtage had occured earlier that afternoon, they had people come over to rewire something for $50. Did nothing, and we wasted $50.

But then, after reading through this, I suddenly learned why this is. They know that the only other choice we have is obsolete dialup, so they truefully don’t care how crappy their service is: as long as it attracts the most customers, their greedy selves will be happy. It also reassures me that we’re not the only having problems with this unacceptable ISP.

Anyway, once again, thank you so much. This really uncovers the true facts behind why I can’t surf for an hour or two without an irritating outage occuring near me.

LaReaux August 9, 2012 at 12:59 am

Two and a half years and counting! If the shelf life of this page alone isn’t enough to dissuade people from using New Wave I don’t know what is. I never really had any technical issues with the service. I sit on AT&Ts Redback Pipeline which New Wave leeches off of for this area so my speeds were fairly consistent. My problems came when it was time to pay the bill. I used to have a direct withdraw situation set up with them, but when they started drawing more money from my account then they should’ve I killed that and went to paper billing. About the second or third month into that they tried to tell me that I had failed to pay for the previous month and still owed that balance. I wasn’t happy but what could I do but save my receipts for the future? Another three months on and they did it again, only this time I had the proof. That’s what I thought anyways. Even with the receipt in hand they told me that I still owed a balance of $200 give or take so I had them cancel the service. It was a few years ago so I can’t remember the exact amount, but all in all I believe New Wave outright stole about $600 from me . Who am I going to talk to about that?

Josh Mischler January 5, 2013 at 12:08 pm

My name is Joshua Mischler. My fiance and I have been new wave internet customers for approximately 2 years. Over the past several months we’ve been plagued with constant internet issues that no one at our local call center seems to understand, or care to fix.

We ordered the 15mb cable package approximately 2 years ago for steaming video and internet gaming. Initially our problem began with slower than normal speeds which we complained about and eventually just got used to. Then came the connection dropping which has been going on for the past 4-5 months and despite numerous calls to the call center and even speaking to the local network engineer Bart Kotter, the situation is still being left unresolved and ignored. Here’s what happens.

I have 3 computers on my home network. Its your basic simple home network with security enabled no special bells or whistles. 2 computers can be logged into Skype, AOL instant messenger, world of warcraft, and a voice over ip server. As long as these computers do not disconnect from any of these services voluntarily, they will remain connected and be able to do whatever they please.

When the 3rd computer tries to connect to anything, it cannot. If either of the other 2 computers try to open a browser and go anywhere on the internet, they cannot. If they disconnect from any of the programs currently running and try to reconnect, they cannot. If you reboot the modem and router, no one can connect to anything.

All the while, the link lights on the modem say I have a solid connection, as well as the network notification in the system tray. If I attempt to open a browser and visit Google it will time out and ask me to reload. However, if I open a command prompt and ping Google the ping is successful. This problem will go on for anywhere between 20 minutes to 4 hours.

Now I’m no internet dummy. I hold a CCENT Certification, as well as an A+. I know how to diagnose a connection issue on a home or small business network without much of an issue. After checking over my own hardware to make sure that I personally don’t have anything interfering with traffic, I’ll call new wave’s support line. The only thing the technicians can tell me is “yes I can see that your modem needs to be restarted”. I’ve had a tech visit the house and replace the wall socket for the cable itself, the modem, the filters, run a new RG-11 cable, and I’ve personally replaced the router twice. This problem at this point is on new wave’s end and the best they are offering me is to discount my bill monthly.

Recently I received a call back from the local network engineer for new wave Mr. Bart Kotter. Mr. Kotter contacted me on December 16th at 6:45pm EST and discussed the problem with me. He assured me that this problem wasn’t a bandwidth issue as he personally had added another gigabyte of overhead to my grid on the network. He then proceeded to tell me that he’d begin flooding my home modem with packets to see if we have a packet loss issue or if its something else. Mr. Kotter gave me his personal cell phone # and his work schedule so that I could get in touch with him at the moment the problem started acting up and he could look into the issue first hand. Since then I’ve heard absolutely nothing back from Mr. Kotter in regards to my issue despite my attempts to contact him personally during the outages.

Below is my contact log with Mr. Bart Kotter.

December 16th 6:45pm EST
Mr Kotter calls me personally to discuss the issue.

December 30 8:42pm EST
Text Messaged Mr. Kotter. “Hello Mr. Kotter, This is Josh Mischler. Have you figured out what my internet issue is?” I received no response

January 4th 9:05pm EST
Left a voice mail on Mr. Kotter’s personal cell phone. No response.

We left town to visit family on December 21st, and arrived back home on the 30th. Since arriving back we’ve had nothing but disconnection issues, time outs, reload requests, our service is practically UN-usable. With 2 weeks of solid up time and usage on our connection, I would think that a network engineer working for a national company would’ve come up with something. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying for cheap cable internet. However, I’d rather pay full price for what I ordered in the first place and not have to deal with crabby / rude customer service technicians.. Its hard to watch netflix or do any gaming or downloading on internet that will not connect.

I’ve whittled down to a very short fuze with the 1 888 new wave customer support line at this point and I’ve decided to take this up to ladder. I will however give credit where credit is due. You do have a night manager by the name of Zeth who has been dealing with my issue off and on for the past 2 months. He’s done a wonderful job so far and has been the only sincere tech or manager I feel I’ve dealt with yet..

At this point I’m taking the step to post my complaint publicly on your facebook page as well as getting in touch with Mark Bookout the General Manager for Southern Indiana. I’ve also called the President’s Hotline to try and get this situation resolved. I am tired of being ignored.

Randy December 7, 2013 at 5:11 pm

Since New wave has taken over my ISP it has gone from bad to HORRIBLE!!! alot of sown time, intermittent service and super slow speeds. When I hade problems with the old ISP company they were super prompt on answering the phone and tried everthing they could to help. New Wave, puts me on hold for long periods of time and just says there is a problem in your area without even asking me for my account etc. and they do it in a rude way. It has benn 5 days now of major intermittent service and after 3 days of calling cant even get them on the phone now.

Cory October 21, 2014 at 10:31 pm

Ever since newwave has taken over my local ISP, my internet does not work from 5pm-midnight, They have oversold bandwidth in my area and refuse to fix it. I have talked to several techs and called 15+ times over 2 months and still nothing, stay away.

frank November 21, 2014 at 11:08 pm

Add me as another very unsatisfied customer. I’ve been paying for 10Mb down (the max they offer here) and I’m lucky to get 2Mb (even at off peak times). Called and had them send someone out and the tech flat out said that there was nothing he could do because the area is oversold and congested. My question is, how the f*ck can that be legal?
Really is sad that a company like this can have such a substandard product for so long and still remain in business.

James December 4, 2014 at 9:11 am

And it is still exactly as bad as it has been, in my community, for the last 3 years. And I absolutely REFUSE to call and talk to the idiots. My six year old knows more about troubleshooting problems than their “techs”, and definitely knows better how to treat, and talk to people than their “Customer Service” reps. NewWave is a joke. NEVER, EVER pay for their service if you have ANY other choice at all!

Jeff January 2, 2015 at 10:04 pm

Every time I call tech support it’s a different problem, even when I know what the problem is. Everyone in this region has the same issue – slowness and outages at night. Only one tech support guy so far has admitted that it’s the local circuitry bandwidth limitations, but when I called to ask when that would be completed they said it already was.

Wow really? I never would have noticed.

So of course, they want to send a guy out to look at my house wiring and my modems. And that’s their only ‘solution’. But there’s nothing wrong with them. And that’s as far as I got while trying to solve this problem that every poor soul in this area is having.

You’ll never get around the run-around. There is no victory for the customers. Spread the word. Get out while you can.

McK January 28, 2015 at 8:25 pm

Well add me to the list of haters and one day I might just find the one person that WILL listen and WILL do something about New Wave’s BS.
Same here. I call and call and call complaining that the internet is not working. Day after day after day. Oh, we’ll send a technician out there. The technicians, and I say that very lightly because they are nothing but a bunch of low paid “yes” men…or boys….some with very smart mouths who think it’s funny to tell a customer that if they don’t like the service they are getting, to call up the company and tell them to disconnect it. Yea, I’d want my business run by this bunch of idiots.
Now let’s get to the problem. Or should I say excuses….?
The problem is “we have too many people on the lines and we just don’t have the banwidth to take care of them all. But we’re working on it”.
REALLY? How the hell long does it take to “work on it”, because I’ve called for months….time and time again and I keep getting the same damned excuse! But you let my bill go a few days over, and boy how fast they find my line to shut it off!

Here’s MY problem with all of this BS. If your tech comes to my house and hands me a line of crap like that, and he tells me that between the hours of such and such when all the kids get out of school and start gaming, and then again during the hours of such and such when everyone gets home from work and gets online, there’s not bandwidth for ME, then why the hell are you charging me for it every month. If I don’t pay, I don’t get service. If I DO pay, I STILL don’t get service! Why am I paying for something I’m not getting??
Furthermore, I PAY FOR NETFLIX, but New Wave Communications stops me from being able to watch that as well. So now I’m paying for TWO services I can’t use! (and New Wave wants me to turn my television service back on and buy their telephone service too! HAHAHAHAHA! When hell freezes over assholes! You don’t give me what I pay for now. What makes you think I’m so dumb I’d want more of your crap???
JUST FIX THE DAMN INTERNET ALREADY!! I’M SICK OF THE EXCUSES! And don’t bother to call the “President” like it says if you’re not satisfied with the service you’re local company is giving you or the way they handle your complaint. They don’t call back either! It’s just a big game for the monopolizing bstags.

James February 18, 2015 at 7:42 pm

I dropped Newwave Internet several years ago because of slowness and outages. Since then, our DSL has never let us down.

Last month, I dropped the TV cable because satellite is now cheaper. I put an antenna up for my local channels and it works great, so I may not even get the Dish. I mentioned this to a fellow employee last week, and he is dropping Newwave also. It’s not just bad customer service, it’s also greedy high prices.

JMS April 19, 2015 at 11:24 am

Yuuuupp… Southern Illinois here also experiencing outage times. Usually Sunday on my day off when I actually get to sit down and try to relax after my work week. This has been three weeks in a row my d/l speeds are less than lmb/ps and upload is 1.5mb. I’ve tested on 4 devices, all the same. No point in calling, I was on hold for 30 min listening to them advertise their reliable awesome internet… I wouldn’t piss on newwave if they were on fire.

Capt Brent May 23, 2015 at 9:06 am

My 90yo mother has New Wave…unfortunately. Her phone service has been out for 4 of the last 7 days. Cable about the same. Nice. Forget calling. They’re “upgrading” their system, but can’t explain what that means. When I was in IT, if I had caused widespread outages over multiple states for weeks at a time, I don’t think my customers would have called it an “upgrade”.

Steve July 19, 2015 at 9:42 am

NewWave communications is without a doubt, hands down, the worst ISP inn the market. We had a local company here before (Texas Gulf Coast Cable), and they were outstanding (was really pretty bad) in comparison before NewWave. I have called and called and called, and NewWave doesn’t care. All they can say is, we will send out a technician next week. The technician comes out and told me the first dozen times, it was my problem. Then the local tech finally told me that the problem was in the office, that they needed to upgrade the equipment, and the management will not do anything about it. I am considering a class action suit for false advertisement as I am paying for 10Mb service and getting 1.5 on a good time of a good day. It is ashamed that this provider continues to take our money and has no regard for the service they are providing.

I can echo each and every comment here, as they are the exact same problems I have here on the Texas Coast. Evidently their management is incompetent and doesn’t care. How does a class action law suit for false advertisement sound!!! That is my next move!!!

Chris August 20, 2015 at 1:21 pm

My comment is re: the TV cable through NewWave, I am in Beaumont TX, they have been “upgrading” their system for months, last week the “upgrades” were done. All the channels have changed, which really is no problem, BUT they got rid of the guide. Now how do you know which station is which and what is on? I called and my husband talked to the rep. and she said “if you can’t find a program, just call me and I will tell you what station it is on” WHAT ???
Last weekend there was NO sound on all the local channels. Now TNT has a flashing picture and a clicking sound.
We are getting our cable service in the RV park as part of our rent. We were also told we could get the guide IF we PAID for a box… I see satellite TV on the horizon !!!

Jody October 8, 2015 at 5:37 pm

Thanks for your post..new wave is trying to takeover my area in IL…I have consolidated and they are awesome…awesome customer service and service guys who know there stuff…would never switch….so new wave can stop sending me junk mail

crissy Hansmeyer October 12, 2015 at 8:45 am

hello . Me and my husband have been dealing with the same things for over a year . First we got 30mbs for 45.99 a month for 1 year first month free. Our first bill was a hundred dollars , lol first month free . well OK . then our computer would only work at night never during peek hours . after about 10 tech visits they finally figure out we needed a new modem . so I call newave tell them its finally working right , so the lady tells me that they will credit us a month for all the hassle I didn’t even ask she offered . So each month goes by no credit , so each month we wait for our credit we build up late fees , now 9 months later 200 dollars in late fees never gave me 30 MBS a second , they told me I only purchased the 15 MBS package when I know what I got . they finally credit us 25 dollars , what a joke , we paid over m200 dollars in late fees . so we contacted the attorney general . still nothing , next step is we need to all get together and get an attorney . they will steal from you lie to you . the communication between the employees at this company is non existent . Each employee you talk to has no idea what you and the customer service representative you last spoke to even talked about . The last time I called they wouldn’t even put a supervisor on the phone . So what our we supposed to do as customers, when the company could care less that you are a customer . when they would rather drop your service then fix it or give you a refund . when they false advertise . all we can do is take it to court . So I need you all to contact me . my email is juniortwo30@gmail.com . I have been talking to a few attorneys who are interested in the case .

Mike F. October 16, 2015 at 1:58 am

I am in Poplar Bluff, MO and NewWave took over our local municipal ISP. No horror stories here, our service is excellent even at peak hours, we rarely if ever have downtime outside of late night scheduled maintenance, and they have done nothing but update and improve our service and cable TV since. They even doubled our speeds for free, and we get 95-100% of that speed 24/7, 50 down 5 up with low pings. You probably think we just use the internet for email or facebook right? Wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if our household was the one of the heaviest users in this area. The 3 of us eat over 1tb/month in bandwidth easily with everything from gaming to Netflix and other streaming stuff. Good thing there’s NO BANDWIDTH LIMIT. Seriously, short of google fiber I honestly could not ask for better internet service than what I get from NewWave in Poplar Bluff. It’s just about the only thing in Poplar Bluff that doesn’t suck. It’s still not worth living here, but it does help ease the pain.

I would imagine many, but not all, of the complaints here come from people who do not properly configure their router or other devices. If I had not taught myself how to diagnose and repair basic internet problems over the years there would be many occasions of downtime or other problems that I would erroneously attribute to my ISP. Learn more about your router, your computer’s wireless hardware, and basic diagnostic tools. It won’t help you every time, but it will come in handy.

Christian Gregory Sweeney October 31, 2015 at 10:35 pm

I was put on academic probation when I was in college, because all of our homework is online, and Newwave was fucking up major, like always.

Internet is no longer something people can do without- just like people can’t do without fax machines or telephones.

No internet = no job, no education, no life.

If you have a choice, don’t pick Newwave.

Dexter resident January 1, 2016 at 9:32 am

Well I have been fighting with newwave for over 6 months now about my modem always resetting itself they came out yesterday and hooked up a new one and guess what…..today it’s not working right. I haven’t touched it nor do I want to its not my thing I don’t pay them for me to have to fix it. But I shouldn’t shell out that kind of money every month for shit Internet and cable Chandos that lose signal all the time.

Cricket March 23, 2016 at 6:58 pm

The. Worst. Company. Ever! Since Newwave took over my tv goes out constantly and my internet sucks! I have been in this house for 15 years and this is unequivocally the WORST service I have ever had with any company.
I have been on the phone with 2 CSR and one Supervisor for the last half an hour and I just don’t have the energy to go on a long rant. Let’s just say my Newwave file folder is full of notes from the numerous calls I have made because my cable box has gone out no less than 4 times, my tv and internet are out a ridiculous amount of times monthly and my internet speed is a JOKE! I have bumped my internet speed from 10 to 50 and it’s still a little faster than dial up. Simply ridiculous! Our hands are tied because they have a monopoly and I can’t figure out how it is legal.

Amy April 26, 2016 at 7:24 am

& to the reply above about not configuring routers correctly is a load of crap. Starters at other cable companies you do not have to continue to mess with the router or generic BS like that. Like I mentioned my kids father was an installer for this generic company & he’s constantly fixing my equipment & BTW my internet goes out everyday around noon & it appears a little funny each day it will do this around the same time. I have cable & internet loss guaranteed a couple days a week & I live in town here in BrownCounty, but there is always a excuse & I feel I should be refunded each & every time I am without service. No on demand is pathetic enough lol.

L Andrews December 12, 2016 at 1:19 pm

I guess I can join the other 80-some people who have problems with New Wave. I am also one who lives in an area with no choice of cable providers. I have also had problems with TV service and, now, am having problems with internet services which I recently signed up for. I do have to say that they do come out when they say they will and usually do fix the problem, though it often is just a temporary fix because I soon have problems again.
Another complaint I have against New Wave is that they do charge extremely high prices for their crappy services. I cannot add much to what everyone else has said about this crappy cable company because I have had pretty much all of the same problems.
I would be very happy if, like Amy said, New Wave is planning to sell out to another company. However, this does not guarantee the new company will be any better. New Wave, in my area, took over from Charter (another crappy cable company), but the service did not get any better, so. . .

Shannon myers September 19, 2017 at 2:04 am

The worst service ever! I call multiple times EVERY MONTH! I’ve had no success… I’ve had at least 2 supervisors hang up on me because I called them out on the multiple excuses and reasons they gave me in a single phone call which none of the information they had was correct…my question is why have tech support when they never can help you???? Plus they mostly have poor attitudes

Matt March 3, 2018 at 11:14 pm

The data cap is simply the latest in a long string of poor decisions by this company in all of the markets that it services. Unfortunately, however, they do not seem to care about their reputation. They routinely ignore customer complaints, and in all of the markets that I personally deal in (as a travelling PC technician) they are generally regarded by most people as having low quality customer service, poor support, and frequent outages. I’ve had customers choose ADSL connections over the (supposedly faster) New Wave connections just to avoid the customer service nightmares and outages.

The fact that they’ve decided to cap data is just the nail in the coffin of whatever reputation they have left. If you live in an area where you have no choice, you are simply stuck though, and there’s no escaping it.

Actually finding a satisfied NW customer is fairly difficult. In 2016 and 2017 our corporate office (with a New Wave connection) was down over 8 times, one time for FOUR DAYS with a bunch of apologies. Repeated calls to tech support. The only thing I can say, is that their business tech support will show up on time, whether they actually fix the problem is another story.