Due to the fact that it would be "easier" for a region to only have 1 or 2 service providers, many cities make laws that develop legal monopolies in these cities. Cincinnati is one of them. Most people who live in Cincinnati and the surrounding areas have 2 options, Cincinnati Bell or Time Warner. Each company has a side range of packages from slow to soul-crushingly slow.
Due to the internet becoming a need in modern society and a legal monopolies, Cincinnati Bell and Time Warner can afford to be terrible. This allows them to have horrible customer service and rising prices without repercussions.
This is clearly a problem, so why isn't it fixed? Service providers like Comcast, Verison, and Time Warner are the #2 biggest "donators" to politicians in the country, behind military weapon companies.

This is the worst service I have ever encountered. The bills were never the same; the customer service folks did not speak English even a little - they simply tried to repeat your claim to my great frustration, since they often did it wrong; the promises made by the salesperson were outright lies that, when asked about with the customer service people who were available in person, were admitted to as being lies; AND - here's the kicker - it didn't work. Shows froze all the time. Not sometimes, not everyone once in a while - all the time. Every show for a year - froze. Didn't matter if it was recorded, or was being watched, or whatever. DID. NOT. WORK. Four separate technicians could not fix. One suggested I just wait until fiber optic was available to my door - at the beginning I was told fiber optics was already to my door. LIES! After a year of attempts to get it to work - there internet speeds are good so I kept trying to keep that service and put up with a lot - went to Direct TV. NOW, everything works all the time. How they can sell this service is beyond me. It does not work, they can't fix it, their bills are always wrong, and their salespeople lie. If this was not a utility with semi-monopoly powers, they would be out of business.
Also, while in line to return the equipment, everything that I experienced had been experienced by everyone else in line (3 people) who were also returning their equipment. We all just sadly laughed and shook our heads.

Amazing.

Cincinnati Bell is disgracing the city of Cincinnati by using their name. They do not care about their customers at all and their customer service team demonstrates that on a consistent basis. The operators only function out of a scripted manual and don't use any basic sense of taking care of customers. I have fought battles with them since the day I was dumb enough to accept their service. Lately they have taken on the practice of not providing me the services that they have never missed a single beat in charging me for. In fact, I am pretty certain that they dump tons of money in having a billing team that will steal every penny it can from the customer. Yet they invest mere pennies into their customer service teams. These folks can not ensure to get you your full service when restoring it. It has happened to me multiple times. First time I was told a tech had to come to my home. It took days for that and he told me when he came out that it is due to the fact that the operators are incompetent and never put in the correct codes to restore services.

He had to call and walk the operator through how to do their job. Every time it has happened since they want to send a tech out and I refuse. I have to go through the whole story with them and spend hours on the phone forcing them to get my correct service on. This last time my internet was never restored. I then had to go through countless emails and phone calls to get it fixed. I said I was going to go with TWC offer cause it would give me better services at a cheaper price. For some reason I let one of them talk me into keeping my service with them even though it was still slower internet, because they can't match TWC which is crazy they admit inferiority instead of bettering their service, they couldn't even match the movie channel I was getting for free. But they got their price under TWC, I guess I got what I paid for, crappy service from a crappy company. I was told that by 4/6 at 5pm all of my service upgrades would be complete. They lied and I didn't have all my upgrades. I had to call in again and they essentially blew me off by saying someone would call me and no one ever did.

I was ignored all night, they didn't listen to my call back number and claimed to have the wrong one. I have asked countless times to talk to the CEO who has all this advertising about how he cares about the community. You can't get a call from anyone there who can actually affect change and make decisions. They are a bunch of crooks and liars. They have never followed through on any reasonable expectations. They simply don't care about fixing the issues that lie within their customer service teams. They put forth zero effort on taking care of their customers and improving the experiences we have . Truly the worst customer service ever and led by someone who places absolutely zero value on the customer.

Fioptics was installed on 2/23/16. The picture with the cable box was very good. The other 2 set with out a box was fuzzy. On 3/28 the router lost the signal from the modem.and I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a woman in the Philippines who I could hardly understand. On the 29th my 2 non-cable box set were showing heavy snow over a barely visible picture. This call was with a man in the Philippines . He was pretty understandable but he didn't understand me. I explained 4 times that my 2 non-box sets were snowy but the cable box set was fine. After the 4th time trying to get him to understand he decided to reboot my cable box. after about 15 minutes he asked how the picture was. I told him it was very good but that had nothing to do with the sets with the snowy picture. He started to tell me something else but I had had enough and hung up. I called Time Warner to install and over the next 7 days the cable box picture was pixelating and sound increasingly choppy.I am happy to be back with TWC without any problems. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND STAY AWAY FROM FIOPTICS.

No music channels work. There are "breaks" "pauses" on all music channels. Do not go with Cincy Bell!

In the beginning of 2016, Cincinnati Bell admitted to causing all "series recordings" to be worthless due to a DVR software upgrade that went wrong. Users had to delete ALL of their DVR series recordings, and then spend hours re-entering them. Unfortunately, numerous people did this, just to find that their new series setups also were flaky.

It has been several months and series recording on DVR is still not reliable. Cincinnati Bell will not come out and admit a problem, after already doing this once. I have spoken to them 4 times and given them specific channel/show examples, had it elevated to the engineer level (according to the service rep), and the only result is courtesy calls from associates who have no idea what I'm talking about, but are trying to appease me.

Cincinnati Bell Fioptics is the absolute worse service ever! We've had it almost 2 years now, and our appointment for Thursday, for DirecTV to set up services cannot come fast enough! We've literally gone 3 months now with only 2 of our 6 tvs working! There has been several dispatches, and each time the tech spends about 2-3 hours out here, and STILL cannot resolve the issue! Every time their "solution" is to just replace the set-top box and receiver. Most recently we had a technician out yesterday (the day before Super Bowl) to fix the bedroom tvs, and we explicitly told the technician that whatever he did, to make sure our main living room tv was still working as the Super Bowl is the next day. We wake up this morning to find out main, living room tv freezing every 5 mins after reboot, or just randomly rebooting on its own, and guess what, TODAY IS SUPER BOWL! Their technician broke one of our only 2 working tvs and just left! What in the hell?! We call technical support this morning demanding a dispatch to fix what their technician broke yesterday, and guess what?? No available appointments until TOMORROW, the day AFTER Super Bowl! Not acceptable at all, especially when their the reason our tv is now broke! We went ahead and had them cancel services now, and we're just going without cable until DirecTV comes out Thursday. They still have a long way to go with their Fioptics! Do NOT recommend!!!! I will also be referring my family who still has Fioptics, and has been having intermittent problems,to switch to DirecTV as well.

Sales lady talked to my husband, gave him the world if we switched. He being the person that believes anyone said yes. Once I was told I called her and started on the questions. Of course she made it sound wonderful but with further questions and adding what services I had with TWC the bill was adding up higher and higher. I said the only way I will switch is if you can match what I have with TWC and make the bill lower. She called back and stated it was a go and my bill would be $20 cheaper. I agreed to make the switch. First mistake! From the day I came home to Cinicinnati bell fioptics crap it has been nothing but a headache. The home phone rings twice, stops then rings again no number shows on caller ID and no one is ever there. I can call my own home and it goes to a vm and of course they say the phone works fine...
Second mistake. I listen to a lot of the music channels throughout the day so this was a feature that I had to have since I had it with TWC. Giant LIE sure you have all the channels sure they play music but if you enjoy listening to music this will driving you insane. It cuts in and out like someone is hitting mute every few seconds. Not enjoyable. Also if you change the channel after listening for a while it will actually say signal lost please reboot box. What kind of crock is this? I dont have time to reboot every time I change the channel! I acutally called today and talked to what I think was a person from another country since very hard to understand, and he informs me they admit they have had issues with this service...well do not tell people you provide this if it DOES NOT WORK! Of course he could not tell me when it would be fixed. Looking into the issue I found complaints back 7 months of this. I am guessing it will not be fixed soon!
Third mistake. The internet. Wow watching video is like I am back on dial up at some points. I complained about TWC at times for going down once in a while but this slow internet is constant with Cincinnati bell. Nothing like watching a video that plays for a couple seconds then pauses gets choppy skips plays and pauses again. I have flash backs to the 90s of hitting pause getting a drink to come back and see that 1/2 has loaded, go get another drink and finally I can watch the 5 min video of cats being jerks.
Its funny that I had TWC not try to keep me when we turned in our boxes only say "see you back soon" I thought that was cocky, now I understand. All to save $20 a month oh wait that was a lie too...that was a shock when my first bill came. My big savings of a couple dollars IS NOT WORTH it! The $20 savings must of meant a YEAR not a month.
I hope that you are the kind of person that will actually read this and take it to heart because I really wish I would of known all of this before I switched. I would of put my foot down and just said NO! If the sales lady Tracy talks your husband into this service ladies tell her she is a liar and do not switch!

The customer and cable/internet service from Cincinnati Bell (Fioptics) is awful. I live out in Anderson Township. First of all, their customer service is a joke and they are all foreigners who you can't understand. They pass you from person to person in hopes you will hang up since they have no idea what they are doing. They will put you on hold for 45 minutes even. They just tell you-reset your modem which does no good since the modem isnt the problem. Its beyond frustrating. Then their internet service is very slow and the network is always congested and overloaded. I can never get the download speeds I was promised. They insist fiber is faster, but it isnt. The cable is just as bad. They are always taking away channels supposedly due to costs but yet Time Warner doesnt get rid of any. Bell doesn't even carry all of the local channels like Antenna tv or Get Tv. Many times, the HD channels freeze up when you go to change the channel. It also pixelates and goes out a lot. The 720p channels look like poor quality streaming video. The dvr boxes never work right or record whole shows either. I do not recommend them at all. You sure don't get the services you pay for.

Cincinnati Bell Fioptics sucks. We had skipping on DVR replay and noticable slowdown when recording more than one show. My father was so upset that football games would freeze in the middle of a play, he ordered DirectTV. No problem with that service. Finally, I got sick of pixelated recordings, I had a tech come out. He told me it was the box, but they wouldn't give us an updated box because our area all had to be on the old box. I escalated to a supervisor. Same answer--I was told the company would go bankrupt if it swapped out all the boxes with defective software, so we'd just have to deal with the jumping/leaping/pixelating recordings until Fioptics got around to updating our area's equipment. I complained to the FCC, the PUC, the Consumer Protection Agency, the Attorney General of Kentucky, and the mayor of my town, stating that Cincinnati Fioptics was charging people in my area for a service it knew it could not provide. The PUC got attention, and a tech came out to replace our box with the new, supposedly wonderful Entone box. Okay. The first day I recorded two shows--they pixellated. Then I recorded a third show--it was great. Then, overnight, Fioptics' system "slipped," and I no longer had full DVR. After two hours on the phone and two reboots, the DVR worked--for 24 hours. Now I can't fastforward, pause, or rewind on live TV--all DVR functions. A few programs have recorded. I'm not optimistic what I will find. Cincinnati Bell needs to work out how to be a 21st century company, rather than operating as if they are providing service in the age of the dinosaurs. Otherwise, it will go the way of the dinosaurs.

For the past several years I have been using Cincinnati Bell Zoomtown services. For the past several years it has been getting slower and slower. I have called support many times (located in Manila, Philippines), trying to resolve my slowness/frequent outage issues. Every time I call, they have me go through the same process over and over, reset the modem, check the connections, etc. I have replaced the modem and cables twice, had a tech come to the house 6 times in the past year, all I have in return for all my frustration is excuses.
The support desk and the technicians know that there is nothing they can do about it. Zoomtown does not have the bandwidth...period. The management knows it, the help desk knows it, the technicians know it, and the entire neighborhood knows it.
Yet they continue to sell subscriptions to their horrible service. The price goes up; the quality consistently goes down, year after year.
There are many other things I can say,, but will leave it at that.

You may ask,, "Why do you stay with them." Because, I have no choice! Cable is not available where I live, and wireless Internet is not available because of some law that prevents AT&T from competing with Cincinnati Bell in our area (according to the AT&T representative.) So, they have got you, and they know it.
If you have almost any other reasonable option, take it. You will regret it, if you choose Zoomtown.

I had Fioptics installed in May 2015. From the very beginning, I regretted my decision. Every half hour or so the sound fads out for a few seconds. (This is on all 4 of my tvs, so I know its not my actual tv). Quite often their is a delay between sound and picture. My DVR freezes up several times per day. Many times when I try to change channels, the TV completely freezes up and I have to turn the HDR box off and back on in order to get my TV to work again. I can't rewind and start a show over unless I'm on the main tv that they chose. This also includes backing the program up if I missed something. Also, it won't let me pause a show unless I'm on the main TV. This is VERY VERY outdated technology. My issues are issues that people haven't seen in years. Complete waste of money.

The internet is not any faster than it was before I switched.

The salesperson quoted me a certain monthly price for the first year. This price didn't include taxes and other federal charges. The base price he quoted me was $5 less than Cincinnati Bell is charging me. I spent over an hour arguing with them until they finally said, well even though we say this price covers everything except those charges, we actually don't include the modem fee of $5 in the base package. What? That's dishonest!!!! They said even though it's not a tax or federal charge, we put it on your paper bill under the taxes so that's why its not included.

Thank goodness I don't have a contract. Directv is coming out to my house next week to rehook up my service. Cincinnati Bell can take their outdated equipment.

My lawn has been tore up since January and I now have three large bare spots where they dug to put in fioptics lines in. I have tried to call CBTS on this and they can never get me to anyone that knows anything about it. I would like this fixed ASAP!

OMG. I decided to switch from TWC to CB because I am not familiar with Charter Cable??? On Monday Jan 19 I had an uneventful installation. The tech was prompt, friendly, everything was fine. I was pleased with first day. Then next day, Jan 20 I went home to find I had no service. I called customer service, the lady I spoke with was very professional, and apologetic. She sent a tech right out, and within a couple of hours the problem was resolved. No big deal, things happen. The next day, Jan 21, same thing all over. I called customer service to speak to someone across the pond this time and was told I would have to wait til next day for a service tech. This was unacceptable, because I had to work and was not going to be home. I was hot under the collar by now and demanded to speak to a supervisor. I was on hold, happen to see a CB truck parked outside. I went out and asked the gentleman for help. After approx 1 hour, he switched out modem, and once again, I had service. Oh, it does not stop there. Next day, I went to watch shows I recorded, no go. Called customer service AGAIN, 3 rd day in a row. Spoke to women that helped me out day 1. She had me unplug my cable box, wait 45 seconds, and plugged it back. The box reset, and I was able to watch one of the shows I recorded. I erased American Idol :( You be the judge whether you decide to take a chance with CB. I guess I will put them on speed dial :) LOL

I just spent over $150 in the fall to have my lawn redone. A few weeks ago a crew came in to install the Fioptics cables in our subdivision. They have destroyed a portion of our front lawn. A man asked me when I pulled into my driveway one day if he could leave his machine parked out in front of our house. I told him it wouldn't be a problem. I wrongfully assumed he meant in the street in front of our house. I came home later that night to find it parked in our grass. My wife asked them the next day to please not leave the machine in our yard. They acknowledged and we thought that was the end of it. I noticed the next day it was still there, and the day after. I went out and asked the man why he continued to leave the machine in our grass when my wife told them we didn't want it there. He informed me that it was broke down and they would move it whenever they could. When they did move it, oil had leaked all over the grass in the area where it was sitting and destroyed the lawn. They heaped cat litter over the area and left it that way. There are holes all over the grass, and they also left a 5x5 sheet of plywood on the grass for days. We have pictures on my wife's cell phone that I will be glad to share. On the other side of the driveway, they left a tarp covered with dirt and grass which ruined the grass on that side as well. To make matters worse, they cut the Time Warner Cable lines at least three times throughout the week, which poses a problem as my wife works from home. Come to find out from the neighbors, the houses on the street (except ours), were given gift cards to a local restaurant because of their inconveniences and the mess.

We have had in Fairfield ,Ohio several repairs in my yard from water main broken,electric main broken and have to have main line replaced. Today I get home find another large hole in my yard now to have the electric main line replaced.we didn't want c bell fiber optics on our property .now we have this nice.
.

We had Fioptics TV, Internet and Phone installed in Feb. 2014. We made the switch based on the excellent reliability of Zoomtown DSL which we had for several years.

For the first two months it worked well. Starting in May it began to slow down, both internet and TV, in the early evening.
For the last week now it stops working altogether after midnight and needs to be "Retrained" (power off Zyxel and ZTE for 5 minutes) in the morning. This is unacceptable.

Is there any to get this thing to work reliably?

​I switched from Time Warner to Cincinnati Bell this month. The internet was too slow, so I called back as the technician advised to repartition to 20 mb internet and 30 mb t.v. The technician told me this could be done from the central office and there was no need for anyone to come out. However, even after speaking with a supervisor, they told me someone would have to come out and check my wiring. I scheduled an appt for 8-12 today. They never showed. So after wasting one of my two weekend days, I called them to find out why they never showed, and they said they took care of it from the central office at 10:30 am today. No need for someone to come out. Exactly opposite what the supervisor on the phone told me this week. They wasted my time for nothing. No apologies. Just a bunch of excuses. Wow, the lady just told me they would credit $22 a month of internet service to my account. Thanks. T.V. in my room isn't working, says to contact service provider. I'm overwhelmed at this point by the good service from Cincinnati Bell. Almost as bad as Time Warner charging me for a wireless router I never had.

You don't get a second chance at first impressions, and Cincinnati Bell's Fioptics services have been less than promised. Remote controls do not turn on fioptic box - ONLY manual on/off at the box itself. Picture is extremely slow to "load" Picture freezes and pixilates. Remote requires three to five attempts to activate any function.

I have had this service for less than 72 hours. It is a miserable service for TV.

There was a crew in our area yesterday. May 1st that destroyed plants in thr front yard and used our water ta apparently clean off their tools leaving a large mess between our home and the neighbors house.
1. no notificatin that they would move plants, if so we wouls have moved them prior to them coming.
2. used oue water and garden hose without permission, matting down the grass, some kind of gray stains in the grass. Water stii standing in the area.

SO WHY WOULD WE OR THE NEIGHBORS BE INTERESTED IN HOOKING UP TO YOUR SYSTEM???
PHOTOS TO FOLLOW.
J. DANIELS ALREADY CONTACTED SUB CONTRACTER BUT HAVE NOT HEARD A WORD
MIKE MAYFIELD
1417 LELA LANE
MILFORD, OH. 45150
CELL 513-237-0126

I was told that if I switch from Insightbb.com to Zoomtown.com I was going to save a lot of money and I would have a better service. I was told that the technician who came to install the fioptics would switch my e-mails, addresses and even send a message to all my contatcs advising them of my new e-mail. Well the technician came and install the internet and the t.v. but he knew nothing about the e-mail, he said that was not part of his job to call technical support, which happens to be in the Philippines. I have spent over 2 weeks trying to make the so-called "true-switch"; have talked to numerous technical support agents and have spent hours with them and the switch was not done. Now I get a call from them telling me that the true-switch can not be made because my old provider is not compatible with Zoomtown!!! How can Cincinnati Bell go around selling a service they won't provide!!! They new I was with Insight before. I was told to just forward my emails to my new one!!! This is not acceptable and it is lack of integrity.

I was making the switch to Fioptics on Sat. Feb. 26th, the technician came out at noon to do the install, So started my problems. He was at the pole on the road for an hour, then came in the house to install the internet, cable and phone. after spending four hours in my house on sat eve. he said he was done, no information on how things worked, IE, remote control, Email, and channel setup. He was actually on his way out the door, and my wife said our phone was not working. He came back in, brought his tools back out, tested the phone line, said "Uh, it was working an hour ago" I said well it's not now! after another HOUR, he said I need to go down the street and check the main distribution box. He came back 15 min. later, said they would have a different crew repair it Monday morning. Well, this monday morning has come and gone, they say now it will be tommorrow. And my TV, the package I signed up for, $110mo. Well, I'm missing 11 channels I am supposed to have, after calling INDIA, they had me on the phone for 35min. just figuring out who, and where I was!!! This is final !!! I'm sticking with INSIGHT!!! Anyone reading this, DO NOT GO TO CINCINNATI BELL. IT IS A RIP-OFF BIG TIME...