Charter Communications

Charter Communications

Charter Communications in the Greenville / Spartanburg area.. Until Charter Communications gets serious about customer service and honest advertising, they will continue to lose their customer base here in the upstate. I would like to point out some examples.. Customer service: Ever since I moved here in the spring of 2001 and signed up with Charter, I experienced a cycle of unresolved issues regarding intermittent internet access and intermittent tv reception. I would have periods where I would have to call their customer support anywhere from 1-5 times a week to resolve the issue. Their policy in this area is they can't get anyone out here within 24 hours to look at it unless the cable tv is totally out. In all other cases, I have to wait 2 or 3 days before someone comes out, and by that time, the problem fixes itself. But when I come home from work that night, the problem arises again.

When someone does come out, the problem has already fixed itself, so the techs can find nothing wrong. If they would just send someone out within 24 hours of the call, chances would be better that a permanent solution can be found and I wouldn't have to keep calling them out every few days. But after close to 4 years of the same problems due to this endless cycle of poor customer service, I am

convinced this will never change. Missed appointments: As time went on, Charter has developed a reputation of not keeping appointments. I would call on a Friday night explaining that my cable/internet is "totally out" so they would come out within 24 hours. They said they would be out here Saturday afternoon, but no one showed. I call them that night to find out why, and they tell me "I show you cancelling your appointment", which wasn't true. I told them I never cancelled and they tell me they will get someone out Tuesday. The problem fixed itself again Monday night, so a Tuesday apointment was of no use for me, but I let them come out anyway. I told them what happened, and they checked it out and claim everything is fine.

This has happened frequently over the past year. I would call to make an appointment and they won't show, then claim that I cancelled the appointment when I didn't. I am not the only customer experiencing these problems, because my neighbors have had the same experiences. Many have switched to satellite and DSL. And another turn off to Charter was customer service's attitude that they are always right and the customer is always wrong. Despite what their computer screen says, I never cancelled any of these appointments, but the representetive is convinced otherwise, and they let you know! They have a seemingly rotten attitude, and if they continue to treat their customers in this manner, it will be a disaster for their company. False advertising: They claim they provide "internet service", which is a false claim for a couple of reasons. Number one, Charter has a growing list of outgoing ports they are blocking. If you are a Charter customer, you cannot host yor own e-mail server, webserver, p2p, or any server for that matter. Eventually, Charter will block themselves into extinction and the only thing you will be allowed to do is surf the web using a browser. Secondly, they do not fulfill their promise on bandwidth, and if you use too much of it, they will throttle your bandwidth down. If you are paying for 3 MB service and you use too much, they can throttle you down to 312, or whatever. They claim they provide "high speed" internet access, which is false.

Even though they advertise a 3mb service, you will never see bandwidth at those speeds for the reasons I already mentioned, and take into account that the more subscribers there are on your node, the slower your connection will become. They claim that they will buy back your satellite dish if you subscribe to Charter cable. What they don't tell you is, they only pay you like $12.95. They also make false claims in their commercials that "dish is a disease" and that your dish service will go out whenever it rains. After 2 months of being with dish AND dsl, and having quite a few heavy rain storms during the period, I have never experienced any signal loss due to weather, including snow and ice. And Charter is making these claims while their own service goes out several times a week even on bright, sunny days! Why Directv and Dish Network doesn't sue Charter for false claims like this is beyond me. 2 months ago I switched to a dish service and a dsl service, and I could not be happier. Excellent customer service from both, more content, more reliablility, CRYSTAL CLEAR audio and video from dish, EXTREMELY FAST AND RELIABLE dsl service, and a cheaper price. Over the past several months, more and more dishes are going up and more dsl subscriptions are being bought in the neighborhood here because they now have the option of getting tv and internet from newly established services in our area that treat their customers with reliablility and respect.

If a company loses respect and trust from their customers, it is a recipe for disaster for their market share, and this will lead to Charter's demise. If any of this doesn't convince potential customers out there to look somehwere else for service, go look at the stock chart for CHTR and tell me what you think, or go look

at other complaints customers have posted about this company. Randy

Aka: "Bigfootbuilt" Randy H

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