I've had nothing but problems dealing with US Worst since I moved into their service area in 1991. I admit I am a bit of an unusual customer, running a small ISP out of my home, but I'm constantly running into problems where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, much less the fingers and toes.

A couple of years ago, I tried to help the situation by getting a trunk line run into a channel bank, but can't afford to keep that up --- it's silly that they charge more for a trunk line, which uses fewer resources than individual pots lines. I switched back to pots lines (a process which took from March to October, and which, to their credit, they have credited me over $4000 for the delay). The switch changed my phone bill from $1200+/month to about $600/month. Since I did so, user complaints about line noise have increased dramatically --- to levels above what I had before I put in the trunk line (and they never went away, even with the trunk line and running twisted pair right up to the connecter going into the modem).

None of this comes close to the run around I've gotten the last few days. Two of the lines aren't working out of the 23 I have in the hunt group. To start with, they can't even figure out which phone numbers are associated with the lines: they sent out one guy Thursday morning; he couldn't figure them out, so he bumped up to another group. I waited all day for him (taking the entire day off work, instead of just coming in late as I'd planned) --- he finally showed up around 5 or 6 and he couldn't figure it out either. He called in a whole new trouble ticket to be worked on Saturday in "special circuits" division. I waited all morning Saturday without hearing from anyone, and finally called in around 1pm or so to check status, only to be told "we fixed that yesterday --- it was a cable problem". They *hadn't* *even* *called* *to* *tell* *me* *or* *even* *left* *a* *note*! I checked, and of course, the two lines were still dead. She put in another ticket for Sunday and managed to get a few errands done before the whole day was wasted. I was generous on Sunday and waited until 5:30pm to call in, as it had a 6pm due time, and got "oh yes, they're still coming". Not. Monday morning (today) I got a call on my cell phone from a tech saying she needed to come in --- I said I was at work in Hillsboro and couldn't be there until after 5pm and she said she'd notify the later shift. When I got home a little after 5, as promised, there was a message on my home answering machine --- at about 2:20pm saying to call back by 4:15, even though the earlier tech had called my cell phone. I called the repair center to check on the status, and they said they couldn't get anyone out tonight, it would have to be tomorrow. We'll see...

I'm completely fed up with this outfit. Don't let them try to claim their service record has improved just because we didn't have the storms last winter we did the year before. They suck.