Brighthouse Changes Headache

Now that I have my equipment working perfectly for our home Internet, next comes getting a faster speed without burning a whole in our bank account...

Last summer Verizon Wireless offered a bundled deal with Brighthouse to get Road Runner Turbo with 30Mps download and 2Mps upload which is just slightly better than what we had for $5 more per month. I didn't take it then, but was looking for it recently after experiencing a lagging connection to YouTube. Since my wife and I are working from home full time, I believe that faster service would be appreciated.

I first called Brighthouse last week to see if they could do a similar deal to what Verizon offered last summer. They explained to me that our current Internet plan was discontinued and we would have to get Lightning. The problem is that the customer service representative told me that I would lose my discount and continued to try to tell me how I should bundle my television and Internet for a better deal. We are still 6 months from the end of our DirecTV contract so bundling doesn't make sense at this time.

So I decided to check back with Verizon Wireless to see if they could offer a better deal. On Verizon's website they didn't show Brighthouse, but showed an awesome deal with Xfinity. Unfortunately I was looking at it late Saturday night and unfortunately when I called nobody was answering the phone and unfortunately they were not working on Sunday either. And finally found that unfortunately, Brighthouse is the only service available in our neighborhood as it was confirmed when I stopped by a local Verizon Wireless store to find that they no longer offer bundled service with Brighthouse.

From that point I proceeded to call billing for Brighthouse. The representative from Brighthouse was polite until he boasted that they were the best Internet connection. No, they are the only choice by default makes them the best... and the worst at the same time. We went over the bundle options again because going to Lightning 60 would increase our bill from $54/month to $92/month.

The bundle promotions offer 1 HD DVR and 2 converters for the other televisions. We have whole home DVR service with 4 DVR's through DIRECTV, so this would be a downgrade unless we could get a whole home DVR with receivers in 2 rooms. That would drive our price up further than we want to spend for switching away from DIRECTV. As I mentioned, the customer service representative was nice and did his part well, but I hung up the phone very frustrated. A couple of minutes after I received an automated survey call.

On the survey call, I gave a decent rate for the friendliness of the customer service representative, but gave 0's for the next 6 questions. Then the automated system quickly told me that there was a problem and "call back later."

WTF! The survey called me and it wants me to call back later? Then my phone rang again from another unfamiliar 855 number different from the survey phone number. It was a lady from a Brighthouse promotion department. She was trying to offer me a better deal on a bundle for Brighthouse than what the customer service representative was offering me by about $30. The problem occurred when I told her that I wanted whole home DVR and 2 more receivers.

This promotional representative told me that I would have to contact customer service for additional receivers and whole home DVR service. At this point I was burning up even further, but instead of hanging up I asked if she could do anything for only Internet for me.