CenturyLink Customer Reviews

We have been with Centurylink for years, and have been subjected to a continual decline in service. It has gotten to the point where the internet slows from 10 Mbps in the morning, to 5 Mbps in the early evening, and down to 0.25 Mbps at night. It appears they have over extended themselves with customers, with no upgrade to the infrastructure in our area!

I have, from day one, had problems with reliability. Weekly periods of slow response. Constant need to reset modem. Usually not close to paid - for speeds of 3 Mbps download and .75 Mbps upload. First month was lost with no up time. I was told it was my house line. Turned out to be overloaded server at the headquarters. I continually get ads for discounts for upgraded speeds but am told there are no plans to provide them in my area. Will never recommend CenturyLink to anyone.

Just got internet transferred from Medford and speed is horrible. Can’t stream Hulu during the day without pauses and trying to stream Amazon Prime movies at night is a straight up no-go. Constantly getting the Insufficient Bandwidth error message. Very frustrated and going to call CenturyLink tomorrow and tell them if they can’t do better, I’m going to cancel.

Internet has routine drops, slow access and crazy expensive for service speed - have to continually call them to get short term discounts applied, even though they guarantee pricing for life. Terrible service.

We do little more than Netflix and Amazon Prime. We are constantly plagued by slow download. DSL is less than great.

We lose WiFi connection at least once a day. My son is constantly booted out of his game. Constant lag, no power, movies will reload.

Opted for fiber internet through Centurylink and was told we would get 40 Mbps. Once installed we got 2 Mbps on a good day. When we tried to get out because it didn't match what we signed up for they would not allow us to without a step fee for breaking the contract.

The Internet connection is slow less than 1.5 Mbps and is unreliable. We can not use Netflix or other movies from DirecTV.

Started out OK but the price kept creeping up every month without reason. Quality and reliability kept going in the opposite direction. Now I'm having to switch away from CenturyLink.

The area we live in is outside of City. Our internet service is slow and spotty at best. When I call to complain, I am always assured I am getting the top speed available to me. Not true, as I often check online as to the speeds I am receiving. I would NEVER recommend this service to anyone.

Their service is pretty reliable but good luck trying to get anything done with their customer support. When I first signed up for them after hours of arguing, they had to send a tech out to the property to confirm Internet was available on my property. Years later I am currently in the same battle whether or not I can receive something higher than 1.5Mbps.

Terrible. So painfully slow. 10 years ago it was good. As the area has grown and more people have more devices their network has slowed to a crawl. CenturyLink refuses to upgrade their hardware because they say the density of customers is not large enough to warrant the expense. Yet in our area their system is maxed out. They cannot take on any more customers because the system won't support it. If you drop them, the next person on the wait list gets your spot. Regular mail is faster than their system.

After I switched to CenturyLink I began having problems with signal strength from their WiFi modem. Linked devices stop streaming, calls drop, messages appear that signal strength is weak and the current operation may not continue properly, etc. I called CenturyLink technical support, and they were really no help at all. They sent a new and improved modem, which actually was marginally worse than the first. When I told them that they ran a few tests from their end, which they said checked out so the problem must be location and placement at my end. I have had Internet provider modems and routers in the same location providing signal to devices in their same locations for fifteen years, or so, and this is the first time I've had weak signal issues. Nothing has changed except the modem and Internet provider, so how could it be my fault? The other providers were willing to send a technician for problems russet could not be resolved over the phone. I love DirecTV, but I will be dumping CenturyLink as soon as possible.

Speed is only up to 5 Mbps in this area and there apparently is no plan to improve that service. The internet service is not consistent. It seems like there are frequent, almost daily, service interruptions in the evening. It's a semi-rural area but still relatively heavily populated. I'm sure adding bandwidth would pay off for CenturyLink. But there is no move to improve in this area.

People on the phone are polite but apparently you cannot rely on your order going through. I have now had two orders for speed upgrade scheduled, then put on hold without any notice. So I have already had two days scheduled to stay home for half of the day for no reason and I had to call and check as to why no one has shown up both days. Not to mention the hours wasted on the phone calling about these issues. My experience with existing service has been reliable as long as I did not need any onsite tech support or want to change anything with the account. I'm very frustrated with trying to upgrade. In summary, if you can deal with the headache of hours on the phone trying to get what you need and potentially three or more attempts to get services set up the actual product of internet connectivity is actually good. Not sure it's worth the headache.

Hard to watch a Netflix without dropping out. Have to reset the modem all the time. Service drops a lot. Very poor service.

While the customer service line is staffed with helpful, knowledgeable people... if you have to call them every couple months because of poor Internet connectivity, it doesn't matter.

When it works, it's great, but we have been experiencing increasing network disruptions and non-connectivity issues averaging roughly 2-3 hours a day over the past two to three months. As we are usually connected to the internet an average of 14-15 hours per day, that represents a significant and unacceptable amount of downtime. Currently paying $39.95/month for 20 Mbps, unlimited usage.

We pay for 20 Mbps service and usually are getting around 16 Mbps. No problem, but about a quarter of the time our service tests out much slower, 5-6 Mbps. At least once a month it shuts down completely. When l I call, they say "server problems".

I currently pay over $120 a month for 5 Mbps. I am a gamer and it takes hours and hours to download any game. I downloaded a 29 Gb game and it took about 30 hours. The overall service is unreliable and spotty throughout the day. I would not recommend to anyone.

I have never seen 3Mbps, average about 2 with low around 0.5. That's download speed, upload average is about 1. But I pay the same as those who get 40Mbps. Constantly Netflix will not load shows because it is too slow, that's with nothing else in the house connected. The only thing that I can reliably do is check Email.

Everything loads very slowly. My service drops at least once or twice a day. It is frustrating to be trying to watch a program or even just surfing the internet and to have to watch the little wheel go round and round. When I am watching a show and I have to go in at least once a day and reset settings to reconnect to internet. Price is too much. I had to bundle with phone service that jacked bill way up for a phone I never use. I use cell phone for all calls. So I get charged every month for a phone I never use and it had to come with long distance. I get free long distance on cell phone. Not happy camper at all.

For the last 4 years their internet service is all most useless. I have the DSL service at 1.5 Mbps but for the last week it's running at .3 Mbps. Excluding the overhead that's of 30% of the expected service. It's not enough for run Netflix, email is very slow, it take 5 or 6 seconds to open a message and Google is poor. At times, when opening a website, it just hangs up and won't connect. When contacted you get the run around ending with "your modem is receiving the proper sign" so there is nothing we will do. And they don't make any effort to research or investigate the problem. What's even worse they are the only provider for this area so they make no effort to resolve problems.

CenturyLink is, unfortunately, just about the only game in town. Other land line options in the area don't service our address - even though we are close to multiple vacation spots that draw hundreds of thousands of visitors yearly. Satellite is poorly reviewed and does not provide any "try before you buy" test period - which tells me they don't believe in their own services. CenturyLink service has always been unreliable for us, but over the past several months it has become ridiculously slow - when we could connect at all. All their service personnel will tell us is that there is congestion in the area. That's not my problem - yet they're happy to charge us $50 per month for this lousy service? I love Broadbandnow.com - so glad someone out there is monitoring the deplorable state of communications technology in many parts of the country. It's a pity we have almost no options here, and it does not appear that will change anytime soon. No wonder companies like CenturyLink provide lousy service and a poor product - there is no competitive incentive to do otherwise. Thank you Broadbandnow.com for at least putting all the research together for me so I could see where I stand - up to my neck in the proverbial alligators!

While up to 25 Mbps speed is advertised, we only get 700 kbps, less than 1Mbps. Service rep stated CenturyLink is looking at upgraded format for increased speed. I was told that 2years ago... still at 700 kbps speed. Almost non usable...sites keep timing out. Maybe satellite service will work.

Not reliable. Constant connection problems. Can not use WiFi and internet together. I have gone two to three weeks without service. Servers are not reliable, customer service gives you a sad service. Speed is okay but can not trust it to stay up constantly and cost is way to high for constant outages. For this reason, I would not recommend this service.

CenturyLink is the only option for my location so they have decided not to even try to bring anything faster to the area. Slowest speed I've had at any location in Minnesota or Iowa for the past 15 years. Like going back in time.

Worst experience with this place. They are cheap but you get what you pay for. When the service would work it was great, but there were a lot of outages, the customer service wasn't pleasant and they over charge for things you didn't ask for.

The WiFi keeps going out when watching Sling, Netflix or any streaming channel, it also goes out when the only thing that is being used is the iPad. It is also very slow, lags all the time, constantly reloads whatever I am watching and it seems to do it at the most inconvenient times such as in the part of the show or movie that has just come to a really good scene. I have been researching other options in my area and will soon be switching to another company.

Slowing down over time. Service continues to have periods of a dismal speeds. After midnight the service improves to near 5 Mbps. During the day can be 1/10th of that. Paying for 6 Mbps which means they should be delivering 4.8 Mbps. On a good day, it might be 3 Mbps. Freeze on YouTube common now losing sound. Seams that have oversold system adding too many customers.

I purchased DSL from Centurylink in 2010 when I moved into my house at 1.5 Mbps which was and is the fastest they offer in my area. Speeds were good and could watch Netflix in HD. Sometime probably late 2011 or 2012 speeds started declining to the point now in 2017 where sometimes the data seems to stall out and then cannot watch Netflix at all or continually buffers every 5 minutes. I cannot stream YouTube or otherwise surf the net or send email. I have been told for years I am in a "bandwidth" exhausted area (IE they oversold) and also half the time the representative tells me they are "currently working on upgrading their network soon". They have been saying this canned response for years as well. Overall customer service itself is fairly good, sometimes get transferred 6+ times in one call because "they" can't handle it and need to transfer me, 2 times they transferred me to someone that cannot even "service" Texas customers... whatever that's supposed to mean. I have gotten some credit here and there for the low speeds, but not consistently, and not enough in my mind. Definitely not getting my $45/month (internet-only) worth for supposed 1.5 Mbps down and 0.7 Mbps up. Usually when I check down speed is actually not bad at 1.2 Mbps (especially for my rural area) but upload is non-existent (maybe 0.05-0.10 Mbps), so guessing I could get the data if the other end got the packet telling them to send it? So far, no viable alternatives in my area, except satellite and seems that it is hit or miss with getting good enough speeds based on reviews.

Would really not recommend CenturyLink. Promised 1.5 Mbps for an astoundingly high price, and still only receive roughly 0.5 on average. Service is also spotty and will go out often, and customer service is disappointing and often uninformed, at best.

Download speed .9 Mbps upload speed .50 and that's on a good day. We can't stream or even keep an Alexa unit connected. We also never know when the service will go down. If it were cheap it would be one thing but it's very expensive. Considering we pay for the service when it goes down it costs over one hundred dollars per month.

My download speeds were awful, usually around 1mbps or lower. It was impossible to download something if anyone else in the household is on their phone or laptop.

I had CenturyLink get me internet on Friday. First of all, you are expected to wait at your house the entire day. The guy who came to install was great, then he left. I have a 20 Mbps plan and rarely get above 5. I also have had to go and hard reset my router 8 times since Friday (it is Sunday so basically 2 days). So if you enjoy troubleshooting your own internet then enjoy.

The highest speed available in my area is 12 Mbps, which is what I pay for. However, I usually only get around 8 Mbps and my internet constantly quits working. I pay for the extra coverage, protection on all the lines, to include the lines in my home. Although CenturyLink has sent several techs out to my home, assuring me that nothing is wrong, no change or increased reliability has taken place. I would switch to a different provider, however, other providers are not available. The best part about the, not so amazing, internet that I pay for, is the constant decrease in speeds at night. After about 8 pm I can forget about trying to use my internet altogether, as the speed gets so slow that I can't get most browsers to open. Some might think that something is wrong with my computer, so I went down and purchased a new Omen system with a 1G internet connection. No change, the internet on this computer is the same as all the rest.

$45 a month gets me 7 Mbps download on a perfect day. Usually 3. Often 1. Upload is<1. No other provider available. No upgrade plans. The claim they have a 20 Mbps plan but fails to give it to anyone.

The service is slow and no matter how many times you call them, it doesn’t get any better. We are limited as to who we can have but I’m definitely going to find a better provider.

I had good DSL service at a decent price because it was "bundled" with DirecTV service which I have had for many years. After 12 months CenturyLink doubled my bill from $35 to $70 per month. I am not happy with that at all.

Service works pretty well most of the time as long as you don't make any changes. Tried to upgrade to 25Mbps and after 4 days and 7 calls to Customer Service and Tech Support was finally able to get my service working properly (downgraded back to original speed), total waste of time. Bill was wrong for next 3 months so after another 4 calls to billing it was finally fixed. Called back to get a static IP address, guess what - the same issue. I'm currently on hold after my 6th call to tell them to just cancel the whole thing. This is horrible, I have wasted about 6 hours of my time and they still can't figure it out. I get passed from Tech Support (who says the order isn't complete) back to Billing (who says the order is fine to talk to tech support). Tech Support tried to give me a static IP and tell me I don't need the Subnet Mask or Default Gateway. Wish we had any other provider in the area because I would switch in a heartbeat. Don't use CenturyLink if you can help it.

We switched to CenturyLink and could not be happier. It is so much faster, has never cut out and had the best installation customer service. The price is also great.

So, we're paying CenturyLink for 25Mbps, but only receiving 6Mbps service. Granted my speed is 25Mbps in the mornings, but by the afternoon I'm between 5-8Mbps. Shouldn't they prorate my bill if they are going to throttle my connection speeds? Customer Service is a joke, always throwing the disclaimer that if it is my line that's the problem and the service call is $85. They know they have overstretched their ability to provide quality service and reliability.

Great appreciation to the tech who was incredibly personable & informative while assisting us connect our service today. He was very diligent & professional with his problem solving, having to address unique obstacles in our residence as well as our outside property. CenturyLink is very fortunate to have such a positive & capable representative. Thank you again!

CenturyLink's Business Solution with VPN and Internet are the best in the industry.

Been waiting for CenturyLink's fiber optics in my area for over 5 years and the fastest speed they offer me is 20Mbps. Painfully slow but reliable I guess.

I struggle but because this company is caring and understanding, they have worked with me a lot! Everyone I’ve ever talk to is very kind to me, our Internet is always working and I couldn’t be happier. This company has made a lifelong customer with me.

I spoke to them via phone to begin internet services with CenturyLink. Tech was polite, friendly and very helpful. He was highly attentive and had a great attitude. He made me aware of available discounts but was not pushy with the sale. He asked questions to determine the best plan for me and waived my installation fee for purchasing the modem. He explained the plan and bill clearly and accurately. He really was a delight to work with and the experience made me even happier I made the decision to switch! Thank you and keep up the great work!

CenturyLink is a good ISP, if you live a mile away from their main box then you'll get 20Mbps, but if you live more then a mile then you won't get fast speeds, and they do have good customer service, good value and good modems.

Internet is very slow and the top speed is 12 Mbps in 2019. Terrible internet, ok customer service.

CenturyLink gives us one price and sticks with it. We have yet to experience a problem with our internet connection. Haven't needed to use Customer Service beyond installation, so I can't give it a rating, but we're super happy that we finally got to switch to CenturyLink!

CenturyLink service is amazing and tech spent extra time making sure my disabled Mom in a nursing home could call her family! Awesome service! Highly recommended!

I contacted Century Link and I have great service. I don't have unexpected over the data limits anymore and the same price every month. I'm very happy with CenturyLink. I'll never go to any other service, I want to keep CenturyLink for life. Thank you for your honest service.

We have had CenturyLink for several years because that is all that is available in our area. Within the last few months, service has declined to the point of extreme frustration. Techs are courteous but when they leave the service, it is seldom improved and the frustrating part is the phone numbers they leave to contact them never result in return calls to provide updates. Download speeds meet the promised speed when it works, but upload speed reminds us of dial-up. If we had a choice we would go to some other service.

Always slow, have to call them every two months because my speed slows down every couple of months. Customer service people are nice but their integration between departments make for longer than needed times to resolve issues. Paying $100 bucks a month for 20-25 Mbps but normally don’t get that. They are lucky I don’t have another choice.

I have 40Mbps service in Benson and love it. Always consistent speeds and very good for first-person shooters.. very low latency and great speeds.

I switched to CenturyLink and had no issues and I'm using it for the Xbox One to play online. The service I got from CenturyLink was far greater than my previous ISP.

Generally reliable but slow.

I live in a rural area with a "guaranteed" speed of 10Mbps, actual observed is closer to .9-1 Mbps. The highest I have ever seen was 1.1 Mbps. This makes it impossible to do more than 1 task involving internet service at once - you can Netflix, but any social media or internet access from your phone slows to a crawl. I could handle the slow internet, but not false advertising. I also canceled a "plan" I was on for landline and internet, for $95, which I was told was a better deal than just internet. (I've had this plan for about 2 years) I canceled just to get internet only today, and my bill dropped to $36 - so much for a better price with the bundle. During the cancellation call, I had to turn down offers to upgrade and bundle 8 times from 2 different reps and had to be forceful, to get them to stop offering.

speedof.me shows 34Mbps and every single Mbps promised at 10 Mbps plan. One router up high in the center of the house provides this service to 4 pcs (wireless) with all of it sporting ASUS 4x4 802.11AC Wireless-AC3100 PCIe Adapter (PCE-AC88). I was sure wireless wouldn't work, as well as cat5 but I tried both and were both averaging the same latency and DL/UL speeds. Unreal! Not a stutter in any game or movie. I'm genuinely impressed!

We have the 40Mbps service and when it’s not buffering, it’s great. Unfortunately it buffers a lot! I’ve tried turning off WIFI on devices not being used and reducing TV resolution to improve it, but it appears to be on their end. Cable is looking better even at the increased price.

It started badly when they "forgot" to actually send the modem. It went downhill from there. The connection is on average about .5 Mbps for their 25 Mbps. The service struggles to even load their own website. I appreciate them having service out here, just wish it was faster than dial-up especially given the cost and promises.

If you're looking for reliable internet for an affordable price, CenturyLink is the place to be. $45/mo for 80 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. Thought about going with other Fiber services, but they wanted 60 days for construction to run fiber from my alley into my home, no thank you! Ordered CenturyLink service, and the next day there was a tech in my home doing the install, and by noon I had reliable internet that has never skipped a beat. Cannot recommend CenturyLink enough, especially if you don't want to pay the ridiculous price for coax.

Internet speeds range from .5 to at most 4 Mbps. Extremely slow and frustrating.

We have been Century Tel/CenturyLink customers for 50 years. The internet service is very inconsistent and at times very, very slow. Have to reboot on a regular basis. I have called tech support, and customer service (who are always very nice) several times. Problems continue. I have security cameras that run on the internet so it is very disturbing when cameras go offline and I cannot monitor my home. It happens when I am out of town and have no way to reboot my modem as I am not physically there. I have had modems replaced, and repairmen at my home. Problems continue. I can usually get things back up and running but it takes a lot of time and is very frustrating. Every month when I get my bill I feel very annoyed. I cannot even give one star. I really wish someone who could do something about this would take action. By the looks of the other reviews, this is not an isolated problem.

The only reason we have them is that they are the only provider in our area. Constant lag in games, loading in between movies, and I can't have more than one tv on because it starts lagging and glitching.

The tech did a great job of trying to find me good deals to stay with CenturyLink. I was already committed to a 12-month contract for the other service, so I was not in a position to take advantage of the offered deals. I will call them back in a year. I consistently got the internet speed I paid for, but the price per Mb was high for today's standards. Within the past 6 months have had to rest modem almost daily, generally due to CenturyLink DNS would quit responding to requests (traceroute shows the network still connected, dig shows no DNS response). In all fairness, that could be a local issue. Phone service was great, but you get a lot of scam calls on a landline.

I absolutely can not stand CenturyLink wireless internet! It is very slow! It takes forever to download anything! Movies freeze and buffer every single time! My son can’t play hardly anything in his Xbox because it freezes or can’t download! But what's worst is I am in an area where I can’t get anything else!

I've had CenturyLink for years, (over 10, and before this for 5 years). It's the only option for internet in this area. There is no consistency of support, upgrades, etc. Speeds for their DSL service spike constantly making downloading anything difficult without re-downloading and repairs to files. When support is contacted, they run you through the same tired things anyone can do without the assistance of someone reading a script which does not do anything. I do notice after a phone call to customer service, a spike in reliability for the first 7 days, then it drops off again. They say they don't throttle customers but consistent testing shows otherwise.

Whenever I call CS, they transfer me and then hang up in the process. My internet speed is throttled 90% of the time. They are not reliable. Right now I'm using my phone data to write this review because the internet is too slow for even basic things like loading a website. I have reset my router twice today and called CS and I'm still only getting a download speed of .07 Mbps. .07 is the slowest internet speed I've ever used, but I've come to expect it from this company.

But I have to say both times I needed help the tech was amazing and spent hours with me helping and most patient till it gets resolved. Was very impressed.

We used to have reliability issues with CenturyLink, but after fixing some electrical issues (a bad DIY job from the previous owner of our old house) that I believe was intermittently causing brief power interruptions or surges to the modem, that was mostly resolved. Since then, we only had one other problem, where we had our speed slow down to 1Mbps (supposed to be 8). I called support on Friday evening (9 pm) and they had a tech out Saturday morning before 10 am and fixed us up quickly. They replaced some cables and we have been running at full speed since then, with no more unreliability. The tech support was very patient and helpful, both on phone support and the technician sent to our home.

Very unreliable. I live in a sparsely populated rural area where I have no alternative but satellite that is very expensive. 1.5 Mbps is all CenturyLink offers. It is adequate for Netflix and web surfing when it works. It is often as slow as .2 Mbps which is useless. Customer service is terrible. It is impossible to get a straight answer about plans to upgrade service or to learn why it is so slow.

Poor Customer service but the internet is good for what I use it for at the moment. In a few months, I'll be needing broadband/fiber optic internet hoping it will be an option for me soon.

I consider myself a fair reviewer and wish to fully explore all aspects of a company before making a final decision, but CenturyLink has truly proved to be the worst experience one could have with an internet provider. The customer service CAN be good, but most of the times you'll receive help from someone inexperienced or ignorant. The price is decent, but for the services provided, it is not good value. The internet connection is spotty and slow, though I'm paying for a good modem/router and 25MB of speed, the most I ever got was 10MB anywhere in our 2 bedroom apartment. I also had horrible experiences with setup AND cancellation of services, where we scheduled a setup TWICE and no one came by TWICE, we had to call three different customer service representatives before someone finally switched our internet on and we were able to use it. Took a WEEK after we moved in. Then, when we cancelled our service we needed to extend the cancellation period so I had to open a new account since my roommate moved out to extend our internet for just one week, where I asked if the charges were prorated and they insisted it was- they then proceeded to charge me for the full $45 a month PLUS the prorated fees AND the next month's $45. I ONLY NEEDED INTERNET FOR ONE WEEK. They claim that the price will change when I set up the disconnect but I have zero trusts in this company to think that will actually happen. Cannot complain enough about this service and the little help we got,

The bill is too high for internet only, I have no phone or TV. Customer service is good.

Streaming movies are consistently stuttering and we only stream to one tv at a time. CenturyLink said the bandwidth would be more than ample for our needs. That has not been the case.

I have it for 14 years and it's getting worse on quality and dependable also pricing. Put it like this: my satellite TV gives us more dependable service than CenturyLink internet. Daily loss of internet, sometimes weekly. Actually hit a high today on download speed 2.95 Mbps for about 5min. No system upgrade in sight and they tell me we are on an exhaust line. The only option is satellite internet, could they be any worse?

Paying for 10mbs but actually getting 4-6Mbps. TV buffers, phone voice over WiFi is garbled and intermittent, internet drops out then resumes.

Unlike the rest of the modern world, my husband and I cannot stream anything. Using an internet speed test, I got a 1.9 Mbps. After a discussion with customer service two weeks ago, they promised us a new modem (which we were purchasing full out). It has yet to arrive. They told my husband that we should be getting up to 29 Mbps. That is laughable. I can't stream anything. We were able to reduce our bill from $99 a month to about $55. The $55 isn't worth it.

Every thing was good until recently, getting 9+ Mbps download. Suddenly my service has become almost unusable. Had 5 attempts to fix the problem and their answer was to turn my speed down. To quote one of the techs, "the slower the speed, the less errors you will have". CenturyLink says all they guarantee is 80% of the 10 Mbps that I am paying for. I am not getting but 7 Mbps download and even I can figure that is 70%. No upgrades in the future!!