I apologize for how long this is, but I've had a LOT of problems with Charter. I started dealing with Charter Communications over 5 years ago. At that time we lived in Easley, South Carolina, and we had no problems with them. Our problems began when we moved to a new home. I've kept a detailed log on my blog of all of the problems we've had since moving to our new home, and things have only gotten worse. We are not Charter customers because we want to be. We're stuck with them because our only other option in this area is dialup, and since I work from my home office dialup is not an option.
I called to see if our service could be transferred, and I was told yes. I scheduled an appointment at our new location to have a tech arrive to turn on the service. We hadn't moved in fully yet, but we did have full access to the property, so we set up a time and date at the new house about 45 minutes away. I was told a tech would call me at least 2 hours in advance to make sure I was at the location because it was so far away.
When it came time for the first appointment I waited at the new home all day, but a tech never called or arrived. At 8pm I gave up and phoned Charter. We were told that the tech arrived at the house and reported that no one answered the door. Of course I kindly let the service rep know that my husband and I had been at the house all day, and not once did a van show nor did the tech call my phone to make sure someone would be at the location.
Whether they had scheduled to call me 2 hours in advance or not, Charter is supposed to call you at least 30 minutes before the appointment, and they're supposed to try to call a second time if they couldn't reach you. Of course I ranted over how I had to take the day off work to drive 45 minutes to sit all day waiting on a tech that never arrived, never called, nada.
I couldn't take another day off that week, and Charter will not install service on the weekend, so I arranged for my grandpa who owns the house we moved into to be at the house the next morning for an 8-12 appointment. Yet again, no tech arrived, no service got installed. I got the same report from the customer service rep about no one being home. I yet again asked why I wasn't called, and got a lame excuse that the tech tried to call but the number I gave was disconnected. I checked to make sure the number on the account was my correct number, and it was, confirmed the address yet again, and had it noted on my account that I would be getting some compensation for this.
A week went by before the next appointment was scheduled. We had already moved into the house, and since I had quit my job to move to the new location, I was there all day everyday. After another missed appointment, I called and gave them a large piece of my mind. I went through 5 levels of management before I reached the top, was given 6 months free service, and finally found out that the tech had been driving to the wrong place.
Now, our new house is in West Union. The Charter office is in Spartanburg which is two hours down state. The install tech was driving to Union, which is about 2 hours away from the Charter office in the OTHER DIRECTION. He was driving downstate, 4 hours away from us! Another tech was sent out that afternoon, to the right location. I was there when he arrived, which started a whole new problem.
I spent the day at home waiting on him, but about 15 min before the end of the appointment window he showed. He walked around my house for a good 30 minutes before coming to the door to tell me he couldn't install the service. He mumbled something about the power line running to the house being too low, said he needed 6 more inches of clearance to run the line, hopped back in his van and took off. I'm sure my face was umpteen shades of red at this point.
I immediately called Charter again and bypassed all the lower level reps reading straight out of the book, demanding to be put through to the highest authority in the office. I explained everything that had happened, found out I was actually talking to a nice, helpful woman. I was able to find out that the cable company has to have at least 8 inches of clearance below the power line. They aren't allowed to install the line in the ground any longer, and my power line was actually sitting lower than the state allows. We had to contact the power company to get things straightened out, so I took care of that the next day.
By the time the power company had things installed, it was 10 pm on Monday night, so first thing Tuesday morning I called Charter, this time directly dialing to the ext. Of the woman who had helped me the last time. She set up an appointment for an install tech to show up that afternoon, and I asked to go over my services before he arrived. I wanted to make sure nothing else had been screwed up in the system, considering everything else was.
She began going through the account with me, and I discovered that none of my information had been entered into the computer correctly, even my husbands name was listed backwards with his first as his last and last as his first, my address was still listed as Union, my phone was correct but had been updated 3 times, and my dispatch request form to install the service said I was receiving cable internet and basic cable tv service.
Since the switch from the old location had taken so long, the account had been closed out, and a new account had been opened. I explained to her that I had not ordered the services listed, and that the account shouldn't have been completely closed out because I was just moving the same service to a new location. I told her I still had all the equipment from the previous location, and that I had been told to give it to the install guy when he arrived.
She said she would fix the account, but when she went to update the services I really wanted, the computer kept telling her that the services were not available in our area to new customers. We had the biggest value package (every channel) and 3 meg cable at our previous address. If the work order to switch our service had gone through correctly, we could have switched this over, but since the first rep dealing with the switch had completely closed the old account and created a new one for us, we were considered new customers at the new location, and the package wouldn't be offered to us.
By the time I ended my much needed hissy fit, I had the services I wanted listed on the account again, 3 more months of free TV service, and unlimited use of a modem without the stupid monthly 15.99 rental fee. As of this point, my service still hadn't been installed yet, but I had already received:
8 months Cable Internet free @ 3meg
6 year Cable TV free
Free modem rental for life of the service contract
Not bad huh? Now if I could just get my service installed! Finally that afternoon the tech showed up at the house, installed the service, and everything seemed fine. The lines were already ran under the house from the previous installation with another company that has long since gone out of business, so the lines were checked for quality, I was told they were in very good condition, and new ones didn't need to be ran. This meant I had to sign a waver saying that the tech told me the previous lines were in good condition and he didn't have to run additional ones.
Then he promptly wrote a receipt for me returning the old equipment from the previous location, and was on his way. My husband came home from work about an hour after the installation, and noticed that the equipment I had just returned as still sitting on the front porch in one of our chairs.
So, I yet again dialed up Charter, spoke with the one woman who was actually being helpful, and explained what had happened. I couldn't help but laugh considering everything else we'd been through, and she laughed right a long with me. She said "Oh hun, if you've got a receipt for the return, there's really nothing else to do. You can take it to your local office or throw it away. It really doesn't matter at this point." I said I didn't want to throw away perfectly good equipment, but our local office is 2 hours away, so she said to just put it to the side, and she would make a note on the account for another tech to swing by and pick it up later in the week. He would call to let me know when he would be in the area, so if I couldn't be home all I had to do was sit it out on the porch again for him.
The next Tuesday I still hadn't seen or heard from another tech, and the equipment was still sitting on top of my TV in my office waiting to be picked up. When I checked my mailbox I noticed I had an envelope from Charter, and on the front in big letters it was marked "In Violation: Open Immediately". I did as it instructed, ripped open the envelope and inside found a letter telling me I was in violation of state law for not returning unauthorized cable equipment followed by a bill for over $600! The bottom of the bill stated I had 7 days to return the equipment plus pay the "fine" or criminal charges would be faced.
I ran inside, called the number to the local office that was listed on the letter/bill and explained the situation. The guy on the other end didn't want to hear it. He basically told me he didn't care what had happened, all that matter was I still had the equipment, I was in violation of a law, I would return it, I would pay the huge fine, and I wouldn't be charged, or I could keep it, not pay the fine, and face jail.
I demanded the manager, listened to him tell me the same story, and then proceeded to let him have it. I said I would NOT go out of my way to drive 2 hours downstate to return equipment that I had a receipt for already returning, and they could send someone to pick it up immediately. I wasn't wasting my gas for their mess up. He told me there was no receipt for me returning any equipment, and that I would drive my "irate little XXX" down there immediately to return it.
I said I had a receipt for the return and would gladly fax him a copy, and had to argue with him just to get the fax number! I finally received the fax number, sent him a copy of the receipt I had been given, and he really couldn't say anything else to me. About an hour later a tech showed up at the house asking for the equipment. He gave me another receipt, faxed a copy of the receipt to the local office from my home office, and apologized for everything.
A couple months went by, and I was greatful to have everything up and running, but then my Internet started cutting in and out. To start with, I was just receiving spikes in my power levels. For those that aren't "tech savvy" most modems can only read signals between -13 to 13. Some can read up to 15 but there's no need for your signal to go that high. My signals were randomly spiking as high as 35. I called my tech guy and had him come out to look at it. He fixed it no problem and things were fine again.
About a week later, the digital cable on the TV started doing weird things. If you tried to watch a movie on the digital channels, PPV, or On Demand, you could watch about 5 minutes and the signal would start to cut out. Yet again I called to have a tech come out. Our usual tech wasn't available, so another one came in his place.
The guy crawled under the house, and after about an hour came back out. He said he needed to replace a few lines that were bad, and that should fix it up. I watched him cut cable off the truck, grab a few gadgets from the back, and head back under the house.in about 30 minutes he was back out, said the signals looked good, and was on his way. The cable was working fine, then later that night started cutting out again, so I called Charter and was told that it was an issue that was being resolved on their end. Apparently it had been the whole time, and the guy hadn't needed to change the lines under our house.
So the next day I decided I wanted to plant a few flowers. I kept all my gardening stuff inside the cellar door, so when i opened it to grab my stuff, I was surprised to find all the brand new cable the guy had cut off the truck the day before laying under my house. It wasn't installed anywhere. All the old lines were still hanging down like they had been before. My husband came home from work, I told him about the coax cable, and he crawled under the house to investigate.
What did he find? There's a hole dug out under the middle of the house that used to be an old cellar. There are a couple wooden steps that go down into it. Apparently the guy had crawled down into the dugout cellar, smoked on his crack pipe, crawled back out, dropped the crack pipe in the process, and went on his merry little way.
I called Charter and let them have it again giving the name of the tech who had came out, but I don't think anything was done about it. After the crack pipe incident, we didn't have anymore problems for awhile. Yeah we had the occasional Internet drop, or channels not coming in, but nothing major for a few months. Things were fine until my signal spikes started happening again.
Charter replaced my modem, and that didn't fix it. Over a course of 8 months I had many techs in and out of here, but my signal spikes were getting worse. What really baffled me was the fact that it didn't happen all the time. My signals would start spiking around 8am and the spike would continue until about 10. Everything would be fine until about 5 or 6 pm and it would start all over. The spiking would stop just in time to go to bed. Even worse, this would only happen on certain days of the week, at certain times of the month. I would call techs out, but I always heard the same thing from the techs. They just couldn't find anything wrong with my service.
My husband was getting really frustrated because he does a lot of online gaming. He would get frustrated, throw the mouse, settle on the couch to watch some tv, and then the tv started cutting out on him. My husband finally started calling Charter, and that's a big step for him. He basically refuses to deal with tech support and leaves it all up to me. The first tech that came out told us it had to be the lines under the house, but since I had signed a waiver saying we didn't want the lines replaced, he couldn't touch them.
Woah, wait a sec? I signed a waiver saying you couldn't touch them? When? Then I thought back to the install guy and the waiver I signed saying he said the lines under the house were fine and didn't need changed. I did a little research and discovered that Charter's policy had since changed, and under the new policy, the waiver I originally signed just to say he didn't change the lines because they didn't need it now also means that they can't go back under the house and change out the bad lines unless I pay 4.99 a month for wire maintenance on those lines.
But still, even if the guy couldn't touch the lines under my house, I swore this didn't make since. My modem and my cable tv are on two separate lines. With the tv AND the internet cutting out, this proved something else was going on. The line to my modem isn't under the house. Since my office is the front room of my house, and it has no cable access line, AND I wanted a dedicated line for the modem, the quick fix was to run a coax line across the front porch and hide it under the bottom piece of siding. Then it runs through the front door, around my wall and to the modem. This line was practically brand new, only about a year old, and in no way connected to the TVs and the lines under the house. So tell me again how they're connected?
So I called Charter yet again! I asked that yet another tech come out to my house to fix the problem. I started chatting with the phone rep and he informed me that my log was extremely long (duh) and that I should have been given a credit every single time my service cut out and they received a call from me. So, after we set up a new appointment, he said he would go through my logs and call me back with the amount I would be credited. I never got credited for it.
So I made an appointment for the tech to arrive on March 2nd. Well, the appointment was from 8am-noon.By 12:30 I was wondering where the tech was. I called Charter again to see why the tech hadn't arrived. I gave the woman my confirmation # for the appointment and she put me on hold. As I sat there waiting on hold, listening to the cheesy elevator song that repeats itself over and over, and yes I mean ONE song that repeats over and over, I thought to myself, please God don't let this be happening again. Why me? Do I have some big mark on my forehead that says Charter has to give me the short end of every stick?
Alas, the woman came back on the phone to tell me there was a problem. She kindly explained that the appointment had been entered into the computer for the wrong date. Okay, that's not so bad, I'm thinking what, they put it in for the 3rd instead of the 2nd? No! They set the appointment for March 2nd, but 2008!!! The nice lady sent an email to the dispatch office explaining my problem, and I had a tech at my house within 2 hours.
When the tech arrived, it turns out I know him. I explained everything that's been happening, showed him how I had to fix my modem myself (that's a whole different story, but a quick fix with a toothpick prying the prongs back up and I have my Ethernet working again), gave him the spiel about the modem being on a separate dedicated line, and waited patiently while he took a look outside. Fifteen minutes later he came inside laughing. I guess the puzzled look on my face was enough to make him explain.
Apparently there were a couple problems with the lines. It all started with the splitter on the box on the outside of the house. Like I said, we have two lines, one to the modem, one to the tvs. The splitter inside the box was a 5 way splitter, and each had its own cable coming out of it. One went to the modem, and the other 4 went under the house. When he crawled under the house, he found that the 4 other lines each had additional splitters on them, which were then routed into other lines, back together again, and into a jumbled mess until eventually 1 individual line ran back inside the house. From the line inside the house, there was a 2 way splitter, one line going to each tv.
Now, I don't know about other locations, but here, if Charter uses a splitter anywhere on your line, it has a little label that says "Charter Communications" on the back of it. Every single one of the splitters under the house had this label. This means that my original lines HAD been changed by a CHARTER person. His explanation was that basically none of the other techs wanted to fool with actually fixing the signals at the pole, so instead they would just add a couple splitters and another couple lines into the jumble. If you know anything about signals and splitters you know there's a loss of signal every time you have to use another splitter. This is why it's best to have your modem on a dedicated line.
It only took the cable guy about an hour to remove all of the useless splitters, fix the lines the way they really should be, switch the splitter in the box to a two way, and adjust the lines at the pole. Results? It fixed the problem for a couple weeks, but on March 18th I had to call Charter again about their On Demand service this time.
We ordered a movie from On Demand. NINE MINUTES into the movie, the picture and sound started blipping out again. When I say blipping I mean the picture completely goes out, comes back in, we lose sound, the picture then gets pixelated and starts flashing in and out. You can't watch it, much less actually pay attention to what's going on in a movie with it cutting in and out. My hubby immediately got mad and decided to call Charter yet again. He was on the phone with the service rep all of about 2 minutes before he got fed up with her less than adequate knowledge of the On Demand service and threw the phone at me.
I re-explained the problem to the woman. I basically said the movie was cutting out again, I wasn't paying $3.99 for something I couldn't watch, and I'm sick of this happening all the time. I yet again made sure to tell her this is a nightly and weekend thing that doesn't happen during the hours a tech would come out, so I've been dealing with the problem for 3 years. I also explained that it wasn't just PPV movies that give us problems. This happens on basically all the digital channels, but worse on the movie package channels and On Demand.
Our conversation was mainly her asking me a lot of questions that made no sense. She asked me to repeat the problem at least a dozen times, then she kept asking me what channel we were watching. I kept explaining that I wasn't watching a channel because it was a movie we had rented from the On Demand service, not the regular PPV channels. She continued to ask me "well what channel is On Demand" even after I explained the service to her in detail. I finally gave up and said you can access it through the menu or channel 999, and she promptly said "Oh, that's not a channel mam. You rented a movie from On Demand." I wanted to slap her through the phone!
Me - I wasn't watching a movie from any channel. I was trying to watch a movie I ordered on On Demand from the PPV section.
SR - And what channel is that?
Me - (at this point I was getting REALLY pissed) Look, you must not know about the services you're offering support for. On Demand is an additional service received with Digital Cable. We have the biggest value package, so we get the service free. You access the service through channel 999 or by going to the menu and choosing On Demand. There is a PPV section. I ordered a movie from that PPV section. There isn't a channel number for the movie because it isn't on a channel.
She went through the whole process of resetting my converter box even though I explained it wouldn't work, then she got mad at me because I couldn't go back to the On Demand menu after she reset it! It takes 15-30 minutes for the On Demand menu to be accessible after resetting the box, but she couldn't get it through her head when I was explaining it in talk even a child could understand. I tried to access On Demand and read to her the message it gave me saying my On Demand service would be restored in 15-30 minutes. She said to me "Well there's your problem mam. You don't have service. You must have been disconnected for non payment."
Nothing I said to the woman could get it through her head that I had my services and a 0 balance on my account, but she just didn't know about any of the services she was being paid to help me with. She finally hung up on me, and when I called back I was able to speak to someone who set up another appointment for me then credited my account for the movie. The tech did arrive and fix the problem.
We didn't have many problems other than the typical drop in service for a couple hours randomly throughout the day that we'd learned to live wth for about a year, but then this past March things started messing up again. Our downstream power level was spiking through the roof again.
The tech came back out and changed out my modem, but he gave me a dinosaur Surfboard 4100 model. Modems typically are only really good for 2-3 years. So, I had another tech come out, and he was nice enough to exchange it for another Ambit. I made sure I got a new one straight out of the box that doesn't already have previous problems with not being flashed correctly and stuff like that. So, he tells me the problems weren't at my house or between my house to the pole. They were on the main line running down my road, so I would need a line tech. He two-wayed a line tech who promised to be at my house that evening and left.
I spent 3 months trying to get a line tech out to my house to inspect the main line. Everytime I would call either a. They would send a normal tech who didn't know anything about it or b. My appointment would be randomly canceled without any notice.
I finally got a phone call from someone at the corporate office telling me the problem would be resolved. Finally we got a line monitor set up for 48 hours. Then, we started discussing all the canceled appointments.By this time we were on 10 mb cable internet, but we hadn't received our full 10 mb service once since we upgraded. We were only receiving 5 mb service, so he told me he would make a note to credit my account for the months of service we didn't receive, but Charter policy is they can't credit the account until everything is resolved.
Another month went by with techs coming and going, and nothing was getting fixed. My downstream receive power level was spiking in the 30s again, and I had one tech tell me I was actually lieing to him because it wasn't possible for the signal to spike that high. I showed him over 50 screen shots I'd taken to prove it, but he still tried to tell me there was nothing wrong with our service.
By the end of July techs stopped coming out when I called all together. All appointments made were simply canceled without notice.By the end of August I was so fed up with everything that I gave up trying to get it fixed. I got in touch with someone again at the corporate office, and I was told no appointments had been scheduled and that the corporate office's log of my problems stated the issue had been fixed and cased closed.
I let them know the problems weren't fixed and were actually worse and was told that my best route was to probably just cancel my service with them. Then he tried to tell me any further problems we're experiencing must be due to problems with our computers and software. I explained that not only do we have 4 personal computers in our home, but that I run a computer repair business. There is no way every computer that is connected to the internet in this house be it one of my own or a customer's has the same problems. He hung up on me.
We gave up trying to fix the problem. We dropped our 10 mb service back down to 5 mb because we weren't paying that much for something that didn't work. When our digital channels started cutting out to the point where we couldn't watch any of them longer than 5 minutes we dropped our digital cable and opted for basic channels. I never received a credit for the many months it didn't work, but when we changed back to 5 meg things started working again for the most part.
My signal still spikes sporatically on the weekends, and I still lose service between 10am-12:30pm & 5:30pm-7pm everyday. We finally got another tech to come out a couple weeks ago because a tree fell during some high winds taking the cable line down with it, but he didn't fix any of the other issues we're still experiencing.
I wouldn't recommend Charter Communications to ANYONE. They have poor service, poor customer service, and techs who don't know how to do their jobs.
Jennifer
West Union, South Carolina
U.S.A.
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