Does this sound familiar? This is exactly what Charter has been doing to me, with my bills paid one or two months in advance.
Charter has not sent a current bill to me in over two months. Charter refuses to document (in witting) installation fees, and to document reasons for "late fees" or document demands for collection, or to document reasons for assigning me to a credit collection agency.
When Charter customer service is contacted to resolve issues, all communications are ignored and the customer is connected to India or the Philippines.
Charter fails to resolve issues in all aspects of customer service, and never follows through to a resolution.
One of the most recent allegations involves failure to bill customers in a timely fashion, the customer does not receive the bill and the bill is not paid. Charter then commences late fees and refers the customer's account to collection agencies. If a customer attempts to resolve these billing issues, Charter ignores the customer and blocks communication with it's own accounting department; threatens to blacken the customer's credit report if excessive "acceleration fees" are not paid immediately using credit card over the telephone.
When Charter sends these "collection / disconnection notices" no explanation of the amount demanded is provided to the customer. Charter frequently claims that the bills are not received because the post office has lost the customer's mail. Strong suspicion suggests that Charter "targets" customers by deliberately withholding bills, then demanding late fees, reconnection charges, and other fees to increase it's own profit margins. The company essentially "threatens" customers into paying these excessive fees by creating fear of credit history damage.
Further, other alleged deceptive business practices include advertising "bundle" pricing. When the customer accepts the bundle and equipment is installed, charter then charges hidden installation costs and raises the price far beyond the advertised price.in other instances it has been reported (and witnessed) that installer technicians have disabled / disconnected customer VCR units, claiming that programming can only be recorded by leasing digital video recorders from Charter Communications. Of course any programming may be recorded using a normal VCR, and the digital video recorder units are completely unnecessary. The installers seem to be trained to target customers who are unfamiliar with video equipment in order to take advantage and increase revenues.
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