And didn't Comcast deny throttling, too, until they were caught red-handed?

So is it just me or is having a twitter account the new corporate taking it seriously?

How about having your actual CSR staff satisfy customers rather than have your customers deal with CSR, have the problem magnified by the (poor) interaction, then drive customers to an alternate platform to have to restate their problem all over again hoping to get the service and resolution they should have received in the first place?

Maybe those people monitoring twitter could monitor the CSRs? Or maybe call in anonymously and see what your customers actually have to go through when dealing with your regular service channels.

It seems to me what they're really saying is, "we don't throttle data, we merely give you the option to spend more money buying our products and services if you choose to do more with your internet than we think is appropriate."

NOT

"we're here to help you resolve your problems."

@SkokieGuy: Came here to say this.

"Block" and "throttle" are not the same thing. She denied the company does something, but it's not what they're being accused of.

@SkokieGuy: Agreed. It's pretty much a message in a bottle. You can "@" whomever you want but they don't have to say anything back. I'm 0/2 regarding tweetbacks from The Man (other companies).

Might as well just call, at least they have to actively get rid of you rather than just passively ignore you.

"doesn't block lawful Internet traffic on its network"

Key word: lawful. The only time my internet gets throttled with Comcast is when I'm downloading torrents. XBoxLive, Wii, w0w, and any other web usage has always been a constant 8mb for me. I wonder if Qwest is similar.

@bones11: Shame that they're still blocking legal torrents, though, eh?

Again, this is complete BS. YouTube takes minutes to load a single video, yet everything else loads just fine. Also, the neighbor's Comcast DSL loads YouTube just fine.

Coincidence? I think not.

Qwest sucks.

I'm a Qwest DSL subscriber and I've never had any problems other than it took an hour or two to get everything set up right (on their end) when I first got my DSL. I've never experienced any throttling or "blocking" of anything, not even while torrenting large files, downloading all of the Microsoft software from MSDNAA (my school subscribes to it), and regular internet usage.

I've been a longtime Qwest DSL customer, and knock on wood, have never had a problem with the service that wasn't my own doing.

Furthermore, my torrents download quickly without hosing other users on my connection.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm using the same "Qwest" that other people love to complain about?

I have Qwest DSL, and I live near the serving office. My experience with it is that, If I click on a 5 minute YouTube, I can expect it to take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to download. I suppose it's not Qwest that throttles back my connection -- it must be an OC192 internet backbone somewhere that can't handle that much of a load.

@Mykie Gunderson: I'm the same as you. I have Qwest 7Mb D/L and while I don't really get the full 7 it is pretty close and I haven't noticed anything too out of the ordinary.

The only thing I did notice was when I was using OpenDNS. For some reason that made things run ridiculously slow and I was always resetting my router. Didn't appear to be Qwest's doings, though.

@Shane Morton:
You don't get the full 7 due to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) overhead. Connections go over ATM to the central office and then to the ISP of your choice.

[en.wikipedia.org]

@pecan 3.14159265:
I'd like to know how much you think $30 should buy you. the number I keep hearing is hundreds of gigabytes (my guess is in the 300 GB range). I consider myself and my roommate heavy users and we are usually around 18 GB per month down. I can't even imagine how we could approach 300 GB in a month. Unlike TWC's very low caps, Qwest's "soft" cap is very reasonable.

What always bothers me is the freeloaders who think they're entitled to anything they want for little or no money. But it costs money to add backbone capacity by lighting up fiber to the Internet backbone, and Qwest's fiber network is a part of that backbone. If Qwest had to provide every user with terabytes of data per month, everyone's cost would go up. I don't wish to subsidize freeloaders.

What the talktoqwest people have said is that if someone needs terabytes of data per month, they have other classes of services to provide that, albeit at higher cost.

Golly Qwest of late has really convinced me that they are truly, deeply and madly in love with me. Just last week I got a personal note from their CEO thanking me for being a great customer. And now I can twit them with my wants and desires? I'm smitten!

So...if Qwest isn't throttling (or bottling, or blocking, or kindly helping you make sure your router dosen't get overwhelmed), why is it built in to their ToS? I have a 1.5 and 7 connection in two cities and both will mysterioso slow 30-60 mins or so in to a large data transfer like BT that had been running at capacity. Just saying. Never had time to do an honest analysis but even if I did and could document it, would it matter? I can't even get the phone services CSR's to add call forwarding ala carte without a congressional inquiry.

I want to give a shout out to Windstream for already having this!
[twitter.com]

FYI Qwest just replied to my contact about problems with streaming internet, stating that I wasn't under some overuse throttle. They said:
However, I would like you to know I have been working with our technical support group and they have spoken with our engineers, we know there is a problem with YouTube streaming (possibly others but haven't had as many complaints), but our side doesn't seem to be causing the issue. We have attempted contact with various parties to see if we can isolate an issue and help be part of the resolution. I know that doesn't fix things, but I hope it helps.

Twitter and other online customer service "answers" don't do any good when people are calling about DSL or ISP connection problems. It's just a good way to justify laying off call center workers.