Having problems with your Broadstripe service? Can’t get Broadstripe to provide uninterrupted service you pay for? You are not alone and there are options available. First, put your communication with Broadstripe in writing and record every outage in this communication. Broadstripe will likely ignore your complaint but keep recording your problems.
- File a complaint with the Seattle Office of Cable Communications >http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/cable/comments.htm
- Write Councilmember Bruce Harrell, chair of the Energy and Technology Committee [email protected]
- Contact the State Attorney General’s Office >http://www.atg.wa.gov/fileacomplaint.aspx The AG’s office can bring civil and criminal action against companies on behave of the citizens of Washington State.
Please start locally as they will no doubt review the complaints received by the city prior to taking any action. Broadstripe is currently in bankruptcy and probably will not do much to improve their service. They have a very well deserved horrible reputation and currently have the worst rating nationwide for cable providers on Broadbandreports.com.
My Broadstripe service has been down about 50% of the time from late December 2008 to mid March and up four days in the last 5 weeks since then. When it is up it is incredibly slow. While Qwest does provide DSL service, we deserve more options, let the best service providers prevail, not those protected by the city of Seattle. Even if you are not a current Broadstripe customer, but once were and left due to poor service, please take a moment to notify the Office of Cable Communications about your experience. Our friends at Beacon are also frustrated: >;http://beaconhill.seattle.wa.us/2009/02/03/broadstripe-cable
Thanks for posting this. I’ve been frustrated for years with our Broadstripe service, but it’s the only reasonable option if you want cable and don’t want a landline. It’s glad to know what the options are for complaints.
The Office of Cable is very helpful. I got pulled into a situation where an elderly woman was having problems with the cable company, who told her that City Light could help her (How’s that for palming off a problem?). It turned out that the pole that served her house had been taken out by a developer and not replaced. I contacted the Cable Office, who forced the cable company to replace the pole and provide her with service.
Broad-swipe is how they are known in this house. The price keeps going up and the quality keeps going down. If I see one more commercial about how wonderful they are (playing constantly on TV…low budget commercials of happy customers) I won’t be responsible for my actions. It’s ridiculous.
I have spoken with qwest. They are expanding their fiber optic cable throughout Seattle. I was told that if we want it in the CD we need to call their corporate public relations office in Denver and request that our area become a priority. Why a priority? Please state that we have horrible service now from Broadstripe (ghettovision) and thay would pick lots and lots of customers!
even though I have to have an ugly sat dish stuck to my house it’s worth it to not have to deal with that company.
qwest provides DSL without having to apy for a landline as well
…that the city chose the lowest income part of seattle to beta test competition? you think they’d let this market directed gov intervention go on this long on Queen Anne? Or in Ballard?
No. The answer is no.
Funny write-up on the Consumerist detailing on how Broadstripe is making us feel warm and fuzzy about their outages:
http://consumerist.com/5223917/isp-donates-to-united-way-to-
So stop complaining, you ingrates!
The CD is not the lowest income part of town. Not even close. Why can’t we ever have a discussion on the community without these sorts of half-baked hystrionics and victimization creeping in?
I agree, Broadstripe is awful. I only have it for TV, and only have the most basic cable service so I can watch NHL Playoff games on CBC. We have Clearwire for our internet service and it is generally useless. I have to unplug the modem and router and reset them almost anytime I want to use it. That’s what Cleawire actually recommended, in a brilliant showing of troubleshooting ingenuity. Anyhow, my contract with them finally expired and I’m not really sure where to turn. Recommendations are welcome and appreciated.
ok, not lowest. but one of.
why wasn’t this tested in ballard? why not in QA?
I’m asking a question that I think you just prefer not to address thorny issues of inequality.
I lived here back when they put cable in. We were the only part of the city that did not have cable because no cable company wanted to provide cable here in the CD (read racist redlining). The city sought out a company to provide cable here in fear of discrimination law suits. We got the lowest bid.
I have spoken with qwest. They are expanding their fiber optic cable throughout Seattle. I was told that if we want it in the CD we need to call their corporate public relations office in Denver and request that our area become a priority. Why a priority? Call and tell them. Please state that we have horrible service now from Broadstripe (ghettovision) and that they would pick lots and lots of new customers!
But Qwest fiber wont help all of us stuck in condos and apartments with broadstripe-only contracts. Qwest DSL next month, cya broadstripe.
I got that very letter in the mail the other day Mark – absolutely ridiculous.
Is there an email we can use to contact them with request to prioritize our area?
Loved that letter. What a joke.
We’re waiting for our refund check from broadscam. They took money from our checking account a month AFTER we canceled our service. Let’s hope they don’t do it again this month. I’d hate to have to switch out my checking account because of their shady business practices. As soon as we get it…if we get it…we’ll complain some more to the city. The last time we did broadscam lied and lied and lied and lied some more. Super unhappy with them. Super unhappy we can’t get decent service from anyone due to our condo rules about not putting up a dish and we can’t even fudge the rules by putting it on our deck because our deck faces north. Come on Seattle dump them already!
Can’t you work with your bank to stop it?
Guess that’s why I don’t have any auto pay set up. Yes, I spend my time writing checks, but NO ONE dips their hands into my bank account!
According to the Seattle Office of Cable Communications, there are no legally binding “building” contracts with any carriers.
I hate Broadstripe, I hope they go out of business.
I fired them, told them that their service was by far the worst internet provider that I’d ever used, and that I had switched to Qwest. It took a matter of days to get Qwest out to my place, and I was up and running immediately. Hassle free – Qwest isn’t a dream, but it’s miles better than the unprofessional buffoons who own Broadstripe.
It’s clear at this point that Broadstripe is just hanging on until their end comes. They aren’t even making real investments in their service.
Broadstripe’s plans are awful. Dish has way better pricing for TV.
And as for internet, well… they’re just terrible. Not enough bandwidth, way too much money. To say nothing of their reliability problems.
I’m on Qwest DSL now, 5Mbit down/896k up for under $60/month. I also tried out Speakeasy; great service, excellent latency (less than 6ms to pretty much anywhere on a backbone!), and they have a 99.9% SLA, but the prices were just too steep. So I live with Qwest; 150ms to the nearest backbone (all west coast customers are routed through their 1 internet connection in San Jose), but worth it for the bandwidth and the price.
Qwest was having congestion issues at peak times up until a few months ago, but that seems to have cleared up. Now I’m just upset that I can’t get over 5Mbit because of their crappy wiring in the CD.
Missed this article about Broadstripe from a great source:
http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2008/04/07/broadstripe-fo
First off my internet has been up for one whole week. After 20 some phone calls and 20 some emails I finally got Broadstripe to keep my service up. Anyway after speaking with a very nice woman at the Office of Cable, I wanted to pass along some information I have learned. There is no protection for Broadstripe. The CD and Beacon Hill are open to any company who wants to begin providing service. The city is having a hard time getting other providers to serve our neighborhoods. I was shocked and disappointed as this is a huge problem. I called Verizon as FIOS has great reviews from all those I know who use them and they have no plans for Seattle at this time. They are several years out but it can’t hurt to call. I also called Comcast. They acknowledged they could provide service but won’t as long as Broadstripe is around. The representative essentially stated they didn’t want to deal with competition as this wouldn’t guarentee them customers. I mentioned one really couldn’t call Broadstripe competition but Comcast fear of a little hard work is going to keep them away for now. I have reported this to the City Cable office but they really cannot do much. I received a post card with a case number from Broadstripe stating they have been trying to contact me. Despite the fact that I have explained I also have no home phone when my Broadstripe service is out they call my home phone instead the alternative number I have provided them multiple times. I have also heard from many neighbors that Qwest provides pretty good service, is always up and is available without a home phone. So it seems that our best option is to use Qwest and keep contacting potential providers for future options. Call Verizon, call Comcast, call Qwest for fibre service. If you have problems with Broadstripe, send them an email, then call the city Cable office for real help.
I have Speakeasy DSL, and while it’s expensive, they’re a local company and we’ve always had friendly service from them. It’s worth it to get out from under the thumb of Broadstripe and Qwest.
We just moved and were disappointed to learn that the new house was in Broadstripe’s area. We grudgingly called Broadstripe to transfer service. They told me on a Tuesday that since the new place was new construction that they needed to set up the new address in the system and that they’d have to call me back to set up the transfer order. “In a few hours?” I asked. “By tomorrow” was the reply. (Qwest told us something similar about needing to set up the new address, but they set us up in like 2 minutes) No call Tuesday, no call Wednesday, no call Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. I called again on Monday to cancel. They asked why, and I told them about their never calling back, and they just continued with the cancellation order. No explanation, no apology, no offer of compensating us. What kind of service is that? I was _actively trying_ to give them our business after our move, and this is what they call customer service? No wonder they had to file for bankruptcy. We just got Qwest DSL instead, and so far it’s been great. [I considered Speakeasy, but they never replied to 2 online requests for a call, and then I got pricing info; WAY more than Qwest]
My net connection has been down for 2 hrs (typing on phone). What’s up?
wow, glad I am not alone haha
just moved to seattle….totally shocked a city with such a great reputation as a tech hub (job wise) would have such an incredibly lame ISP. I was forced to use them by my apartment…”only cable Internet Provider allowed”. Am going to to spring for the landline and go DSL at first opportunity
I have been a Broadstripe/Millenium Digital Media customer for 5.5 years. So I have a lot of experience with their incompetence and inferior service. Like others, I think this is the worst company I have ever had to deal with, and even after changing their name, getting a call center to actually answer people they had to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy to protect themselves from their incompetence. Their upload speed is inferior, 5 Mega bits versus Comcast at 15-30 Mega bits, they have fewer channels, they don’t have Logo channel for their LGBT customers, they just eliminated most of their digital music channels, they only have 10 now instead of the “Dozens of channels are available featuring commercial-free, CD-quality music stations in a variety of categories” and “all the …digital music you want – right through the cable service you already have”; Comcast has 68 digital music channels. http://www.broadstripe.com/cable/faq . I talke dwith a customer service rep today about the loss of almost all the digital musci channels, many that I liked, and mentioned that Brownswipe (as we call it in my circles) is an inferior product to Comcast. She said that is another company and it is my “opinoin” that Comcast offers a better product. She also said that Comcast will “tell you they have 15, 20 and 30 Mega bit downloads”, implying that Comcast lies. Well, its Broadstripe that lies. I mentioned again that if Brownswipe has only 10 channels of music and 5 Mega bits upload speed, while Comcast has 68 music channels and 15-30 Mega bit upload speed, Comcast is a superior product. She had the gall to say Broadstripe is a better company and it was just my “opinion” that it isn’t. I told her, not my opinion, its facts, 10 versus 68 music channels and 5 versus 15-30 Mega bits, its simply facts, not opinions. She also said they were not in bankruptcy, I said, no you are in Chapter 11 bakruptcy, its a fact. Broadstripe cannot handle facts and is living in fantasy land. She also admitted that she has satellite not Brownstripe cable! She actually has no idea how bad her own company’s service is!
If you can avoid this horrible company, do it. They are incompetent, have a shoddy, inferior product and are out of touch with reality. If they were such a good company and gavce customers what they want, would they be in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy?
All right, I work for this “Broadswipe” “Broadscame” whatever you all want to call it. We have mad massive upgrades to our systems over the past several months. You state that we are a shady corporation. I hear you want excellent services, but don’t want to pay for them! You all want a free ride, our slogan at the call center, “No Green, No Screen!” So if you don’t wanna pay your bill, we don’t wanna provide you with service!
Go with Qwest and have a download cap. You download too much on the internet, you are zapped down to zero and can’t even get online.
Go with Direct TV or Dish and you lose your precious Cable Bill of Rights that you like to keep waiving in my face!
Yes, we are going under. It’s very real, call the call center and we are being FORCED to try to sell you servivces you don’t have. If we don’t try to at least upsell you, we are being written up and there are several reps that have 30 day notices that if they don’t increase their sales, they are out of a job! The Broadstripe Forever package is $127.08+the cost of equipment – the whole slogan about $130 is totally false! The nice thing is that unlike Direct Tv or Dish you won’t have a rate increase. Here’s the crazy thing….I pay $130 for two cell phone lines. So for a little more, I’d have cable phone and internet. You folks in Seattle make a lot more than I do (woo hoo $10 an hour and that’s with shift premium).
You folks complain because of the taxes on your services. Here in my home town (a tiny desolate place where the call center is located) we don’t have a cable bill of rights. We don’t get $5 because a call center rep was supposidly rude to us. Comcast won’t invest in this little dinky area so Broadstripe is it. It’s not a monopoly, its just Comcast and the rest of the cable corporations know they won’t ever make their millions of dollars back once they sink it in for a new head end (where the transmissions come from). That’s the reason why out in your area, Comcast and Fios doesn’t want to invest.
I know it sucks for you because our call center closes at 7:00PM, but we are 3 hours ahead of you. Do you expect us to work until 1:00AM so we could be open until 10:00PM for you? Again, we don’t have the revenue coming in, whether its because you all are leaving us or because you have us and refuse to pay. How can we stay open and pay the call center reps wages and keep our pricing low and our service high?
All comments are more than welcome back!
Broadstripe is dying because it has a terrible reputation and continues to live up to it.
Regardless of poor customer support over the phone or poor technicians doing installs and repairs, Broadstripe has a terrible reputation and is going under for one simple reason;
The service its self is terrible. Connection drops, MASSIVE packet loss, speeds never even close to what you pay for.
All of us could deal with idiot techs and unhappy call center workers if the product we had was as advertised or at least WORKED all the time.
My breasts have gone dry because of broadstripe. The stress has just been TOO much.