I admit I pay my bills either right when they are due or a few days after because I travel frequently for my job. Therefore, I always use the phone pay line to call in my payments to Charter Communications. I made payment for $45 one day because I was called and told that this was a remaining past due balance. I paid it just to clear it up but wanted to know why, when I called and was told what my balance was, it didn't include the $45. I got all kinds of explanations about how their automated system sometimes wasn't updated etc. How lame of an excuse. Anyway I paid that and knew the next bill was coming up in about two weeks. I was called two more times by Charter in the next two days asking for the same $45 which I explained I had paid and provided the confirmation number. There were no notes in the system indicating my payment, even when I gave them the approval code I was told they can't look anything up by that, that is simply for mine and my bank's reference. I explained that I was not paying it again and they would simply have to wait for it to hit my statement that I didn't want to get hit twice. A week later my cable, internet and phone were turned off. I called and got the same story, no payment. I went to my bank who showed me all payments in holding patterns and this was one of them, only to have been returned to my account because Charter never forwarded the paperwork to the bank to complete the transaction. They will only hold it a week then return it to your account. I was furious. I called Charter and explained what my bank told them, they really didn't care. "sorry maam we have no notes so we can't validate what you're stating. We're sorry for the inconvenience however."
Anyway, the next bill came due, I called it in, this time it was $163 which I paid by customer service on the phone with my debit card. I received calls from Charter a week later saying they needed payment. I explained I had paid, gave them the confirmation number, again no notes and that does no good with charter. Why give these numbers out if you can't use them as a reference of payment? That makes no sense! I went round and round with many customer service folks, supervisors, etc having been hung up on no less than 4 times. I explained over and over that I would not RE-pay this amount. They needed to figure out where their discrepancy was!
I was in Florida that next week for work when my husband called to tell me the cable had again been shut off. That evening I made no less than 17 calls to Charter, I kid you not. I was so angry and they didn't like my attitude and kept hanging up on me, no profanity was used on my part. I continued to ask for supervisors or managers only to have to go through all of the information time and time again. When I told one of the supervisors that once I got this cleared up I was never doing business with them again he said "oooh, scary!" and hung up on me! A supervisor no less! Next call got me to another supervisor after more information giving and 20 more minutes and this supervisor proceeded to treat me like a deadbeat. Told me, very smugly, that if I paid my bills I wouldn't have this problem and "I've figured this out maam, I'm showing that your payment came back for insufficient funds." I was mortified and appalled and told him that I had just been online in my bank statement and had I bounced the payment my account balance would be negative which it very much was not. He was very very rude, insinuating that I had bounced the payment and that type of behavior would "not fly" with Charter.
Since I was getting no where with all of the calls I was making I decided to go online to find out who I could email in the corporate office of Charter. I proceeded to email every single contact address I could find summarizing my issues and treatment by charter. I then left voice mails for every phone number I could find as well. To my surpise, (it was after 9:00 pm by this time) one person answered live, he was a corporate attorney for Charter. I proceeded to tell him all that I had been through with his company, for some reason he asked me if I resided in Texas, guess they have a lot of trouble like this there! I told him no, that I was from South Carolina and went on to tell him names of people I'd spoken to, etc and also told him that when I could get back home I would get a bank statement and was going to bring legal action against them for their actions. He sympathized with me, told me he would work on the issue but it may not be for a day or two because he was working on a project but gave me all of his contact information etc. I wasn't worried about waiting a day or so because tv is not all that important to me.
The next morning I woke up and called my husband back home to give him a wake up call. I received a message that "this line has been disconnected." Now I'm very concerned, I couldn't believe they had the nerve to turn off my phone when if only I could get back home I could validate that I had paid! I then emailed the corp. Attorney I had spoken with the previous evening and told him that my 12 year old would be home from school by himself with no phone for emergency that afternoon and that this now needed to be rectified immediately, no waiting! I received a call from their corporate office (which I had already dealt with by the way several times and wasn't given any better treatment, they REFUSED to send me a listing of all payments I'd made to them to ensure that my payments were being posted to the correct account) This time I spoke with the manager of the person I had previously spoken to in corporate and explained all of his behavior as well as the refusal to send me my payments in writing. She said she would look into all of the issues and in the meantime have everything turned back on. She called me a while later and got my voice mail stating that she discovered what the issue was and to call her back. When I spoke with her again I was told that the agent that took my payment typed my checking account number in backwards and that's why it was returned showing as "insufficient funds" All of that for their screw up! I told her I wanted all balances on my account waived and for the next month as well for all of the time and aggravation spent with their company not to mention abuse and derogatory remarks. She proceeded to tell me she could only credit one month and that would be it or nothing. Not very apologetic for all I'd been through either.
I received a simple card in the mail two months later saying how much they appreciate their customers and are so sorry for any inconvenience. After all I'd been through, big deal!
I wish those were the only issues, on numerous occaisions I've called to schedule techs to come out to assist with internet issues. Each time I called I got a different story as to when they were scheduled, some were cancelled for no reason what so ever. Who cares if I waiting around for four hours for them? Certainly not Charter communications.
They clearly need TRAINING and much better management if they ever want to show some type of customer centricity, otherwise, as far as I'm concered it is the lowest class vendor I have EVER worked with.
Lyn
Lyman, South Carolina
U.S.A.
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