Qwest has aggravated me over and over again. If you want more of the skinny on why, check out my review on their customer service. But seeing as I am rating their cellular phone service here, I will give just the low down on that aspect.

You might ask why I use Qwest if I dislike them so much? Well, they are the local phone service in Colorado so rather than complicate my life, I went with them for the cell phone service as well.

Qwest is a result of the merger of a smaller internet network company (Qwest) and the larger phone company US West. And while US West wasn't great, they were much better than the company Qwest is today. Qwest provides telephone and internet services in mostly the Rocky Mountain/Western area, but also provides some network products outside including DSL, T1 lines, etc. While US West was only a telephone company and focused on doing better in that category, the new Qwest is broader, including network services, and now instead of focusing on service in a narrow category, has incredibly unsatisfactory service in a broad category of services.

While Qwest's customer service is still one of the worst I've ever seen, their cell phone service isn't too bad. I am paying about the same rate as other plans such as AT&T, Verizon, etc. ($29.99 for 300 weekday and 3000 weekend minutes). Their products (phones, etc) are getting better than they used to be and I usually have service in areas of Colorado that some other people do not...although lately I have noticed that when I leave the Denver/Springs/Fort Collins area I start roaming.

So as far as the functioning of my cell phone, I am pretty happy.

Where I am not happy, however, is trying to deal with switching plans, switching home addresses, etc. Qwest is made up of hundreds of departments, none of which communicate or work well together. They could not figure out how to switch over the billing from my home address in Boulder to my new address in Westminster. I was probably transferred about 10 times to finally be hung up on by the cellular phone customer service menu. I finally had to send an email to them asking them to switch the billing address.

On top of that, I switched my cell phone plan to my current one at the beginning of November. The customer service representative told me that it was all taken care of and would be effective the next day at 6 AM. That never happened. They continued to charge me almost $50 per month for the phone and when I finally caught it, I called up and found out that they had made the notes of the call in the computer but never switched my plan. Then they only credited my account $20 for all the trouble.

While I do like the product, the company is absolutely horrible and I am just waiting for the year to be up so I can switch my plan to someone who really can serve me. I've been burned so many times by this company that is almost impossible for me to say anything positive about them and that is why I do not recommend their services, even though I have been pretty satisfied by the functioning of my cellular phone and minutes.

I don't know what more I can say about the horrible service of this company, except that I am sorry if you cannot avoid them for telephone service because you live in their market. But if you can do anything to prevent them from taking over other areas or you can avoid using their services (cellular phone), please do so. And if you have had problems with them in the past, please make them known to the company because they need to know that I am not the only customer getting the run around.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 29.99