Charter Communications (Cable service)

A couple main points I'm going to cover first.

• Service up-time
• Automated service
• Tech Support
• Pricing

first, the up-time. Or lack thereof. Ok, I'm recently back from Afghanistan so the internet being down is nothing new to me. We would lose service for weeks sometimes but this is not Afghanistan, nor some other poor country. We've been doing this internet thing in the US for quite some time now.
I've had Charter for about 3 maybe 4 weeks now. I've lost service for more than an entire day 3 times now. A whole 24 hours. Once was for 2 and a half days over Memorial Day weekend. I get it, holiday weekend, nobody wants to work. Well my internet needs to.
I'll just mention the repeated quick internet outages that happen throughout almost everyday. No more detail needed on those.

The automated service. Or, once again, lack thereof. Basically, you're forced to go through the steps of resetting your modem every time you call them for tech support. I tried to hit zero to skip it. It responds with "I don't think we need an agent, we can fix this" and proceeded to tell me how to reset my modem. Awesome.

Technical support. Mmm mmmm, they are awesome. Only one time(out of 6 or 7 calls) have I gotten someone I could understand fully and had a good deal of knowledge as to how to fix my problem, etc. It's not that their tech support is tasked out to India or some other place that frequently gets these support center jobs for cheap. It's just that everyone either slurs(badly), has a strooong accent, or just can't speak well. This last guy spoke weird. I can't really explain it further, because I don't know how. He also got rude when I asked him to stop breathing into the phone(never had a tech support person do that before lol).

The pricing isn't HORRIBLE but it's just not that great. I don't need to go into too much detail on this either, but it irritates me so I mentioned it.

Yeah Charter is a rip off pricing wise and their service was down about twice a month when I had it a couple years ago.

I have charter, they were a problem until my father called them and threatend to move to someone else. They increased our speed and dropped the price.

It must be the area your in because Charter is rarely down for me, speed isn't an issue. Customer service though is semi sucky. Its not the best I have to say that but I've gotten free stuff out of there service center (free cable boxes) just for bringing attention to there issues.

Then again my parents have Time Warner and they have multiple issues, yet same service just 5 miles away has no issues from another friends house.

Might be bad cables in the area that they should fix. Also isn't there a 24 hour rule for fixing the service?

No, there definitely is not a 24hour rule. Not for them at least.

i've had charter for the last three years they have been fairly good no complaints here i have had to ***** at them to get my way and price sometimes but over all good

Twigglish, do this and you will get a english speaking english person!
Call charter
Press 9 many times (over 10)
Tell them you are very disappointed with charter and get a lot of grief
Depending on how they take it, They will give you free stuff!

I did this and I got free 10meg service and all the channels they offer for a year! Its been over a year since I have done this and I still have 10 meg service.

GrimX9 said:

Twigglish, do this and you will get a english speaking english person!
Call charter
Press 9 many times (over 10)
Tell them you are very disappointed with charter and get a lot of grief
Depending on how they take it, They will give you free stuff!

I did this and I got free 10meg service and all the channels they offer for a year! Its been over a year since I have done this and I still have 10 meg service.

Click to expand...

That seems ridiculous. But guarantee I'll be doing that tomorrow.

Twigglish said:

That seems ridiculous. But guarantee I'll be doing that tomorrow.

Click to expand...

I guarantee it is true, the 99999999999999999 works because people in my house then say "wtf are you doing to the phone" and then I nearly immediately get to a operator who is English.

We will see tomorrow
If I get a free upgrade to 10mb service, you're getting a whopping $5 via PayPal

I could write 3 pages of complaints with charter over the last few years! My last bout with them I ended up filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the problem was resolved within a week after 6 months of Internet issues. I actually started logging my down time and got it deducted from my bill. But there is no amount of money worth the aggravation of the Internet connection just dropping and having to go through the torturous tech support calls! One thing I did learn after the 15Th time I had to call tech support, cluck like a chicken when the automated wench asks you how to direct your call. She says "I'm sorry I didn't understand you, could you please repeat it" so I cluck again and it connects you to a human, usually someone who doesn't speak English but at least you don't have to spend 20 minutes going through the same process again and again. I'm just waiting for FIOS to become available and charter can kiss my ***!

My problems with charter were solved with a new cable. The old one from centurytel was causing problems. It is with anything though, you get good results and bad results from anything.

Twigglish: There may be a 2 dollar switching fee

GrimX9 said:

Twigglish, do this and you will get a english speaking english person!
Call charter
Press 9 many times (over 10)
Tell them you are very disappointed with charter and get a lot of grief
Depending on how they take it, They will give you free stuff!

I did this and I got free 10meg service and all the channels they offer for a year! Its been over a year since I have done this and I still have 10 meg service.

Click to expand...

I expressed my grief for nearly a year and had legitimate complaints and I didn't get ****! I bet they don't do anything for you Twigglish! All I wanted was the service I was paying for! Charter is a horrible company and it is real bad in the Worcester MA area, the worst customer service in the world! I'm not one of those people who complain at the drop of a hat either, I put up with a lot and these guys drove me to my breaking point.

Should have tried 99999999999999999, maybe retain some of your sanity. Don't worry, I already lost mine

GrimX9 said:

Should have tried 99999999999999999, maybe retain some of your sanity. Don't worry, I already lost mine

Click to expand...

Don't worry, I'm sure there will be a next time!
And sanity is over rated nowadays!

I've been with Charter Cable high speed internet for over ten years. I had Windows 95 on my computer and 98 just came out a few months earlier.

They'll slowly jack up your price until you go in and gripe to them about it. Then they'll lower it for a year or two then creep it back up after the deal expires.

I've got it for $35/mo @5Mbit speed. Fast enough for me to download OS DVD .iso and watch streaming video.

The main annoyance with them is they desperately keep calling you trying to set you up with a bundle about once a week.

Dapman02 said:

I have charter, they were a problem until my father called them and threatend to move to someone else. They increased our speed and dropped the price.

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^ This is what my brother does. We've had pretty much the same issues regarding Charter and my brother has bitched at them a lot. He's managed to get some good deals out of it at times. It really sucks out limited the options are for things like this.. I think my area is limited to Charter(crap), Verizon DSL(slow), and FIOS(expensive).

Melan said:

^ This is what my brother does. We've had pretty much the same issues regarding Charter and my brother has bitched at them a lot. He's managed to get some good deals out of it at times. It really sucks out limited the options are for things like this.. I think my area is limited to Charter(crap), Verizon DSL(slow), and FIOS(expensive).

Click to expand...

Are you in the I.E.(high desert)?
Charter does suck. When I first got it, 3 days after it was installed the phone service goes out. The next day, internet doesn't work. Then tv doesn't work. The tv service is crap here. Like every 5-10 minutes the picture seems to freeze for a second or two, all the time! No amount of complaining or anything has worked so far. Will try the 999999 thing next time though.

Wow. I didn't realize there was such a following for the "Charter sucks donkey balls" group.

i noticed that when i bought my own modem i didnt have the drop out problems.
although occasionaly the service would just be gone. i was able to get $35 for a year when i moved, i cancelled the old service and then resigned up after i moved a little while later.