Complaint Review: Charter Communications

Charter Communications is like what AOL is to dial-up. I was so tired of having to deal with them. My service was always on the fritz. It was even down 6 days during superbowl weekend, and I had planned a party. I was pissed too because there had been no storms or anything; the weather was perfect.

Anyway, whenever I called them up to report an outage, which was frequent, I would always get a sales pitch for their new telephone package which has unlimited calling in the US plus all the standard features for a whopping 35$ plus misc taxes and fees per month.

So, between growing fed up with them on the phone, them never crediting my account for the time my service was out(and they know when it was cause they keep a detailed Station Log of when a customer calls, probably for quality assurance), them always promoting their stupid phone service, all of the outages, and the increase in my billing looming in the distance, I cancelled my digital cable package with them and chose a satellite system for my service. Which, by the way, has not experienced an outage to date.

Well, with that done, I was still stuck with them for my cable internet, which was completely opposite of the digital cable, meaning that it was up and running 99% of the time. When I finally did experience problems with my internet connection, I once again called Charter's Customer Service, and they once again made me hate being on the phone with them.

After going through the process of trying to get credited back money I paid to them during my outage, I found out they had still debited the full amount for one month of digital cable service from my bank account. As it turned out, they didn't cancel my service the day I called in to cancel, Oh NO. They waited 4 days later until after a new billing period began. So upon that news, I told them to cancel my cable internet service, because I was tired of having to pay for high charges for crappy service.

Now, here's how to get yourself out of the Charter Trap. First, cancel everything. And don't let them transfer you to another department, or try to act nice and knock off charges or do something nice to compensate you. These customer service reps. are explictly trained to deal with people and those that aren't will just transfer you to someone who is skilled at keeping you from cancelling (sound like AOL yet?). The only department you should call is the cancellation department the next time you call charter. If you don't you will continue to help them rip you, and everyone else who has them, OFF.

Second, you'll need new service (or not if you don't want it).

I priced different plans in my area. Cause that is what it all depends on really. Some people are just stuck with charter, and that is sad. Lucky for me, I had other options. What you need to do is get DSL(if you can). I found a plan with SBC for the same speed as charter's cable internet service for $35 less than charter's standard $55/3Megabyte.

The downside is that SBC will also have you at least purchase their basic phone service to get their DSL. If there are other DSL carriers in the area you can get with and not get stuck with paying for a phone line to your house, for the love of pete, DO IT! You should really read up on DSL too before you select the speed you will pay for. See, the closer to the DSL switch in your area you are, the faster the speed gets.

After you have got your Internet Connection up and running, you can have a low cost, Voice over IP phone service that will do everything charter's phone service does. But you get a little bonus! You can pick your area code! So, not only do you save money, but your family can too if you pick an area code they live in. Vonage and Packet 8 are pretty good, but Packet 8 is about 5 bucks cheaper than Vonage. Oh, and not only do you get a good deal, they also send you a router with multiple (3 usually) ethernet connections so that all of your computers in your house can get on the same internet connection for web browsing.

Finally Satellite TV isn't a bad option to cable, but that has always been common knowledge. Direct TV and some other competitor comapanies are around the same price as charters TV cable service. You will have to decide what suits your lifestlye more as well, because I don't think you can get VOD which is big with Charter, but both of them have the DVR. Being that they only slighty different in prices and services I would say they cancel each other out.

Ready for your monthy savings without Charter? Here are the numbers.

Charter My Plan
Phone 35/mo Packet 8 VOIP 20/mo
Internet 55/mo Covad DSL 20/mo
Cable TV 50/mo Satellite TV 50/mo
-------------- ------------------
$140 per month $90 per month
(plus your family
saves by you picking
their area code)

CHARTER RIP OFF FEE: $50 per month
$600 per year

Just so you know, Charter would never tell you "Your losing money if you don't go with us," because if they did they would be lying. Have a Great Weekend!

V/R
Staff Sergeant Stephen Griffth
United States Air Force
Computer Communications Systems Controller

Stephen
Scott AFB IL, Illinois
U.S.A.

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