Charter High Speed Cable Internet: South Carolina

Before I explain our discontent w/ our high speed internet service w/ Charter: please allow me to preface with our current home based computer set up.

We own one desktop (personal) and one laptop (business). We have a Motorola Surfboard cable modem that was provided to us by Charter over five years ago when we first hooked up our cable internet service with you. We also have a Netgear wireless router that we use for our laptop.

For more than five years we have been reasonably happy w/ our service w/ Charter. With the occasional hiccup or lack of service: our service has served us pretty well.

Four years ago we started a home based business that required the purchase of a laptop and wireless internet: so that we could have a computer dedicated primarily to our business while the children had one solely for their use.

Several weeks ago we noticed that we were having difficulty getting certain webpages to load. The pages appeared to be random, as did the time that they would not load. We attributed this primarily to heavy usage in our geographical area. Since it was not a consistant problem we didn't concern ourselves with it too terribly much, although it was an inconvenience.

On Sunday we returned from a short trip and found that we could not access many of our usual webpages: including but not limited to MSN, Hotmail, Yahoo, ESPN, etc. Again we attributed this problem w/ high usage and/or maintenance that we were not made aware of in advance.

Most of the websites that we could not access has not been a problem EXCEPT that we run a homebased business and have a website that we use to communicate only with the builder of our house that we are currently building 150 miles away in Georgia.

Our current customers know how to reach us by telephone but everyday that we can't access our business site: we risk losing business customers.

Of course the same goes for our home construction site: that is the primary communication tool for our builder and us. We post pictures there, so that we can discuss plans, changes and such. We could use email but we have found that by using one single site it makes communicating so much easier.

Yesterday we spent the majority of our day trying to trouble shoot our system since we still could not access those particular pages.

We bypassed the wireless modem with both the laptop and the desktop and had no luck. We powered down all components for several hours before bringing them back up in the correct order yet we had NO luck.

Yesterday afternoon we took all of the components to a local computer repair shop. Both the laptop and the desktop would open MSN, Yahoo, ESPN, etc using their DSL internet (which is offered by a local company: NOT Charter).

The company also checked all of the connections and saw nothing wrong with the connections required for the system to work correctly. We were told to come home and try to connect again.

Once home: we did exactly as expected and still had the same problems. We called the computer repair company back and they walked us through a few more things. Still nothing worked.

The computer repair tech said that there was another technician that worked there w/ the same problem. We were told by them that the problem ended up being that somehow his ISP number ended up blocked by certain sites: apparently some sites block particular ISP addresses that they think are doing malicious/hacking activities: which we are NOT. We are everyday, regular users. The repair tech told us to call Charter tech help to get our ISP address changed.

We immediately called Charter tech support. The Charter tech asked a lot of different questions and walked me through a few different steps such as going into safe mode and disabling McAfee. Nothing seemed to help. He also told me that he could not change the ISP address as directed by the other techician had suggested. The Charter tech said that all Charter ISPs are dynamic and change occasionally anyway: so our inability to bring up certain sites can't be Charter's problem.

This morning we called and had the local computer technician go over our situation again. He went over the same things that he did before: still nothing. He let me talk to a different technician at his shop who said that they are getting a lot of different calls from Charter customers about the same problems with MSN and Yahoo. He told us to go back to Charter with our problems.

I went into the local Charter office personally this morning. The two women at the desk said that they have gotten nearly 100 complaints about this same exact problem. The women said that they didn't know what was going on but they assured us that we weren't the only ones going through this problem and they suggested again that we contact Charter tech support yet again!

I logged onto Charter tech support from home to "chat" with a live technician who was less than helpful. He gave me the same exact instructions that we have gotten from all other techicians. He also said that it is not Charter's problem.

That technician also gave us a "free" upgrade to a higher speed connection (higher speed for the same amount that we are paying for what we have: that isn't working properly at the moment). He said in 30 minutes we would notice the higher speed. We haven't noticed any change. If anything it's gotten slower: all pages that we can load are loading slower.

We are so frustrated! It has now been two days since we were last able to access our business website. Everyday that we are unable to access that site is everyday that we are unable to fulfill orders. We are also not able to access our builders account.

We need this situation fixed as soon as possible. The ladies at the Charter office were adamant that this is Charter's problem. It's obvious that it is not McAfee's or our equipment's problem.

We would also like to add that our neighbor who uses Charter high speed internet has NO problems accessing the sites that we are unable to access.

We want to know what Charter is going to do to fix this problem. If it is not fixed as soon as possible we will be looking for another high speed internet company. At this rate we will be out of business in a matter of days . . . and there may be unresolved issues left during the construction of our new house.

This is simply unacceptable. We want someone from your company to fix this situation as soon as possible.

This is very obvious that it is your problem and no others. We would contact Yahoo and MSN ourselves: if we could even access their sites.

If this situation is not rectified by the end of the week we will be seeking an alternative provider.

Comment On This

per policy you cant run a business on residential acct anyway so you were subject to having your service completely disconnected