It's no secret that Internet service providers fall squarely within "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" territory.

Whether it's a monthly bill that goes up $20 every three months for seemingly no reason, connections that sputter out right in the middle of a video, or customer support that is less than helpful, nearly everyone has a story about how ISPs have made life difficult. We asked Ars readers to share their most distressing tales of Internet woe a few days ago, promising to detail the responses in a follow-up article. More than 300 comments came in—let's take a look at some of the more intriguing ones.

Pricing horrors, data caps, and little competition

High prices are bad enough… couple that with data caps, and you have a recipe for unhappy customers.

"I live in the country and have to use HomeFusion," Ars reader jokabomo wrote. HomeFusion is a Verizon Wireless service for people without good wired Internet. "I pay $120/month for 30GB. Even worse, Comcast has fiber down the main road but wants to charge $20,000 to run it the 800ft to my house!"

At least paying a lot of money guarantees good customer service, right? Oh, wait.

"My wife and I pay Comcast in excess of $200 a month for cable and Internet (this is without PPV events or On-Demand movie rentals)," wrote Kilroy420. "Every time there is a problem with our service, Comcast CSRs seem to imply I should be grateful they are taking my call and that I am allowing them to take my money for lack of services rendered. Never mind how confusing their billing statements can be. Service charges and taxes cover the monthly billing statements like a disease.

"I really wish policy changes would allow users to pay cable companies only for the channels they want. It would at least make dealing with Comcast more palatable."

A commenter named Michael Bushnell reported a bizarre series of bills from Time Warner in Charlotte, NC. Installation problems initially left him without TV service. A technician fixed things but accidentally upgraded the service beyond the basic channels Bushnell wanted:

A couple of days later, I start receiving bills in the mail from TWC. First, I received one for $78. Then one for $100. Then I received one for $145. Then I received another for $128. Then another for $45, and finally one for $15. At this point I'm like WTF? I had to actually go to the local TWC office to get them to sort this out. Come to find out, what happened was that when the second guy came out, he did something that bumped me up to regular cable. They also tried to charge me for the digital adapters, even though by US law they are supposed to be free until 2015. I had to make two trips out there to get it all settled, and finally I resorted to recording the conversation with the manager where they told me that my bill would be X $/mo. I'm still waiting to see if my next bill matches what I have them on record as saying it will be. I hate TWC and would dump them in a second if a better alternative was available.

Inflexible policies, general incompetence

South Park recently lampooned the inflexibility demonstrated by Internet companies who are secure in the knowledge that customers often literally have no other choice for reasonably fast broadband.

Sadly, the cartoon very much reflected reality.

One of many frustrated consumers, CQLanik described how Time Warner Cable has made it hard for him to use his own modem.

"To escape the $6.00 a month charge for 'renting' a modem that was free for the previous five years, I bought my own," CQLanik wrote. "Unfortunately, they have locked out any and all port forwarding, making it impossible for me to run my home FTP server, something which worked just fine before I bought my own modem. Hours on the phone with tech support had them tell me that if I were renting the modem from them, they'd fix that with no problem, but because it's mine any settings changes have to be made by me. This is, of course, very nearly impossible since DOCSIS doesn't allow end user configuration changes.

"And then the next month they upped my bill by an extra $6.00/month without explaining why."

Commenter thekaj related a story from a co-worker "who got suckered into Clearwire, same as me. She signed up for the service, which was a two-year commitment at the time (not sure if that's still the case). Within a month, the tower closest to her went down, and her already crappy connection went down to zero. Clearwire informed her that it would be 12-16 months before the tower would be repaired.

"They told her they'd comp her for some amount less than that time she was without service at home. She informed them that she'd rather just cancel, since she now needed to sign up with some other ISP. They refused, claiming that it would be an early cancellation, and she'd basically get charged for the full two years. Fortunately, she's a contracts paralegal, so she sat there with their own contract, explaining to them that they were the ones who weren't living up to their end of the deal, and she was well within her rights to terminate the contract."

Clearwire eventually relented but only grudgingly. "They tried to claim that since you can take the modem anywhere there's power, she could just use it somewhere else," thekaj wrote. "It was surreal to have someone claim that even though you signed up for a home ISP, which they couldn't provide, they thought that going someplace else to get your Internet connection for over a year of your two-year contract was a reasonable expectation."

General incompetence is also a scourge for some Internet customers. (OK, maybe more than some.)

"Went from Comcast to Time Warner when I moved from New Hampshire to Dallas, TX. I will never complain about Comcast again," dbmarketing wrote. "Time Warner has, in my short relationship with them, managed to screw up every possible thing that can be screwed up in a customer relationship: name, address, billing, random shut offs because someone else didn't pay their bill, you name it.

"Yet, despite this, they are still better than AT&T—who not only couldn't figure out where I lived, but also told me they offered services to my location. When the box finally arrived, [the company] said 'Oh wait, never mind, we don't actually offer services—but if you want, you can pay for us to hook you up.' That isn't even the best part! The best part? When my bill arrived it was in another person's name because that person was in the process of canceling their service, and they recycled the account number to me—and sent me the unpaid portions of the other person's bill! When I pointed this out to the friendly call agent, she said I was lying—then confirmed it—and then asked me what the problem was. She actually asked me if I'd like to pay the bill to which I said 'NO!'

"So yeah, our Internet monopolies suck completely and must end."

Also on the "incompetence" ledger, commenter Wordlet's home Internet was repeatedly disconnected by cable technicians who unplugged the wrong cable.

"When I was still living with my parents, there were a few months where we would occasionally get our Cox Internet disconnected for no apparent reason," Wordlet wrote. "We'd call them up, and they'd come out and fix it by fiddling with something in the cable box in front of our house. After the third time, I decided I'd see what was up and try to fix it myself. The lock was cracked so I was able to pull the covering off without a problem. I noticed one of the cables was unplugged, and it was the one labeled for my neighbor's house who had recently moved out. After plugging it back in, we had Internet again. So I figured they were just mislabeled, a problem sure, but nobody's going to come out and unplug it—again—are they? That'd be silly right? Nope.

"A week later, a truck (without any markings indicating the person worked for Cox) pulled up in front of our house, and after it pulled away I had no Internet again. So, I grabbed some wire cutters, went out to the box, removed every label for the entire neighborhood, and plugged my cable back in. Problem solved. Never had any more issues after that."

The big picture

Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. But the US Internet market suffers from a severe lack of competition, which leads to bad service and frustrated consumers who would choose a different ISP if only they could.

Ars commenter chipmunkofdoom2 proposed a solution: municipal fiber networks that can be used by multiple ISPs.

"The whole problem to me is the asinine practice of building redundant infrastructure. Every ISP that wants to service an area must build out a network that is likely very similar to the competitor's network that's already in place," the commenter wrote. "The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the municipalities and have consumers choose their ISP, with service delivered on the municipal fiber lines. Many states have electricity policies like this so we know this can work. The problem again is stated above, consumer satisfaction with the status quo and lobbying power by the major telecoms. Since consumers have grown ever more weary to taxation and government spending, it is likely that they will look at the fiber or cable available to them and say 'Meh, good enough' as long as it keeps spending and taxes down."

A nationwide fix certainly is nowhere near coming to fruition, but in the meantime, some cities are doing what they can to build fiber networks and improve competition. Perhaps if we repeat this article five years from now, everyone will talk about how amazing their new ISP is. Unlikely, probably, but a home Internet user can dream.

Listing image by Dimension Films.