Internet and utilities in Worcester (Gardner: sales, apartment, lease)

[Beardog2]

Hello!

I'm going to be moving to Worcester in the coming months. Does anyone have a recommendation for the cheapest possible reliable internet service? I only need internet, so don't want a package with phone, tv, etc. Any good frugal hacks for getting internet service?

Also looking for a good oil provider, and if there are any options for electrical service, I'm interested in that too.

Thank you,
Beardog

[LilyLeftTheValley]

I'll pipe in only because it's been almost half a day and no responses...

We're in Gardner, which is 40 minutes north and west of Worchester. Our options are limited with Verizon, and usual offerings from Comcast and Dish. Your options and experiences with services in Worchester may vary from ours, also depending on your internet usage.

We rent, so no Dish per lease. Even though Verizon has phone service here, they have not yet put FIOS in over 90% of this small city for reasons their sale staff could not explain. Our only alternative was Comcast because we game, so the local wifi web services (more on this below) can't cut it.

Concerning cheaper:
If you are trying to frugal budget, libraries have free wifi.

You can also take advantage of the wifi networks available, but they are limited on time per day with the free option. There are a few providers that will allow for a "wifi only" plan, where you do not have a hookup and are using the overall wifi coverage of that area. Depending on the company, there are free (which only lasts a few hours/day); daily, weekly and monthly plans. If you are like us, and you watch shows and movies through the internet or game, know that the wifi only services in this area are spotty, and do not handle heavy use times well at all. Worchester may be different as it is a much larger city.

If you get service with a company that is part of one of these networks, you will get a login as part of your plan that you can use anywhere that network serves. Good for pinch usage here and there when you're not at home if you don't have a smart phone.

Alternately, there is the Verizon Jetpack which you can get even if you do not have a phone plan with Verizon. You will still have to have a contract with them for the data plan. Our apartment was not ready in time, so for the two week overlap when my spouse stayed at a fill in, he tried a JetPack. $10 for the device, and we picked the near top tier data plan (ours was just over $40/mo.) because I would still be in NJ, and we planned to skype every night plus his usual gaming/show watching. The benefit to such is it works on all xG networks, so it will just find whatever is available from Verizon's networks and use that.

He hit the cap within a week because their set up is inconsistently faulty. The Jetpack drops signal often, and your total usage when there is a drop can jump for no reason at all. It's like the device sometimes kept humming away ticking up data use even though there was no signal. Because we did not have a phone plan with them, we had to pay the contract cancellation fee because Verizon refused to acknowledge their system of tracking usage was broken. So it turned out to not be a cheaper method at all. Again, because you are in Worchester, YMMV.

Concerning Comcast:
If you are unfortunate enough to wind up with xfinity/Comcast, get ready to be bombarded with market bait and switch information dissemination.

You will have a devil of a time explaining to the salesperson (they are no longer customer support first in helping with your install, everything is about driving sales), you will have to explain more than once WHY you do not want a double or triple package.

If you do not own a TV or landline phone, there is a high chance whomever you speak to will be shocked that such a thing is possible. (I wish I was kidding.) If you get a very sales driven person on the phone, they will outright refuse to tell you ALL the plans available for internet only, and will try to explain that used TVs aren't expensive, or that a landline phone is good in emergencies (the latter of which false because when the signal is down and/or if you have a non battery backup box=no phone unlike copper wire).

We had to go online to get the info. If you try to sign up for it online, you will find they go out of their way to make it difficult to see all the packages they offer. You will have to sign up for an account to see them all. They also have some plans that look cheaper, but have a data cap or such buried in the fine print, so it's actually much cheaper to get the same speed for $5/+ more a month. Some of the names (like the Boost plans) are similar, so read everything twice.

We have a 25M package for $40 a month, no cap. Without fail, at last one night a week, around 2 or 3am, speed drops or they do a shut off because of badly planned maintenance. If it goes down completely, you're looking at anywhere from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours of downtime. If you're always asleep then, you'll never notice.

We chose the home set up, which they charged a small fee for sending us cables we didn't need. We still had to call Tech Support because it wasn't running the day it was supposed to start. Took three hours on the phone before it did.

Sadly, Comcast has earned its crappy reputation in spades with us.



Good luck with your move and whatever your choose.

[Beardog2]

Hello, LilyLeftTheValley!

Thanks for taking the time to respond. From what I've heard from many sources, xFinity/Comcast is not rated highly. The area I'm moving to doesn't have FIOS either, so I'm in the same boat as you are in Gardner. I've never heard of the wifi only plan, so I'll have to look into that further. I would only be using it as a backup to whatever other phone plan I have, so it might work out nicely.

Again, thanks for your help.



Beardog2

[MrsBrady11]

Most people in Worcester have Xfinity, Charter or Verizon. We have Verizon DSL and pay about $40 a month. I called Verizon I was told that there were no plans as of yet for Fios.
LilyLeftThe Valley, all great info but please forgive me for being an ass but those of us that live in Worcester are peeved when people call it Worchester.

[LilyLeftTheValley]

Originally Posted by MrsBrady11

Most people in Worcester have Xfinity, Charter or Verizon. We have Verizon DSL and pay about $40 a month. I called Verizon I was told that there were no plans as of yet for Fios.
LilyLeftThe Valley, all great info but please forgive me for being an ass but those of us that live in Worcester are peeved when people call it Worchester.

Sorry! I know better, but fouled up anyhoo. You're not being an ass at all when correcting my poor spelling. I will do my level best not to make that mistake again in the future.

(When I went to a national convention for a service organization I belonged to in undergrad, the folks that went to college there all pronounced it "Woostah" or "Woosteh". I'm still getting used to the locals who call our wee city Gahdneh.)

[MrsBrady11]

Originally Posted by LilyLeftTheValley

Sorry! I know better, but fouled up anyhoo. You're not being an ass at all when correcting my poor spelling. I will do my level best not to make that mistake again in the future.

(When I went to a national convention for a service organization I belonged to in undergrad, the folks that went to college there all pronounced it "Woostah" or "Woosteh". I'm still getting used to the locals who call our wee city Gahdneh.)

You're forgiven, lol. They're still calling it Woostah and the kids call it The Woo.

[Cloudship]

Worcester has Charter for cable and Internet. While I don't know of anyone who is a fan of theirs, I think they rate higher than Comcast for service. I know FIOS is available in some places, but not others. I don't know which ones, though. As for Verizon DSL, keep in mind some parts of Worcester have some of the oldest telephone infrastructure in the nation. Depending on where you are it could be terrible, or it could be great if they have replaced the wires recently. So you won't really know what works until you know exactly where you are going to be moving to.