- Report: #320084
Complaint Review: Charter Communications Bay City Michigan - Houghton Lake Michigan
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Charter Communications Bay City Michigan
www.charter.com Houghton Lake, 48629 Michigan, U.S.A.
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Charter Communications, Bay City, Michigan Charter unable to deliver 10meg bandwidth to customer. Houghton Lake Michigan
I ordered Charter's 10 meg internet service. Before this I was using their 3 meg broadband service and had no problems, but when they had a promotion I thought this would be a good time to upgrade. The salesman quickly appeared at my doorstep and signed me up for the 10 meg service. He made a few phone calls and after a few minutes told me I now had the new bandwidth and left. I booted up my computer and using Charter's speedtest site I determined that I only had 2 meg bandwidth! Less than I had before the change. I called Charter customer service, they put me on the phone with a tech and I explained the problem. He told me my modem was incapable of anything over 5 megs and told me I should drive 30 miles to West Branch, MI where they have a branch office and pick up one of their leased modems that was capable of handling 10 meg service and install that and see if it fixed the problem, it didn't.
I then called customer service and scheduled a technician to come to the house and fix the problem. The technician was scheduled for a two hour time slot between 10 and 12 oclock AM to arrive and look into my situation. At 12:15 I called customer service and informed them that the technician had not arrived yet and the man on the other end told me to wait another 20 minutes or so and give him a call if they didn't not show. He informed me that they are supposed to call if they are going to be late but perhaps he was in a bad cell phone area. At 12:40 I received a call from Charter stating the technician was on the way and would be there in about 20 minutes. At about 1:05 PM the technician arrived and checked all the usual things but could not find the problem. He went to the box outside and began putting rubber grommets on the connections to make them water proof, even though it was inside a box and under my evestrough where it was already water proof. He then rerouted a cable from the electrical conduit because he said Charter doesn't want them to tie their cable to the power company's equipment anymore. He then put a "pad" inline on one of the cables in the box to attenuate the signal, closed everything up and told me he couldn't find anything wrong and that I was to keep my eye on it and call them back if it didn't improve. He had me sign a form on his little hand held computer device, which he said was just a form to say he had been there and looked things over.
After a time I checked to see if my bandwidth had improved at all. It didn't. At times my bandwidth would go as low as 1.2 meg and then maybe jump back up to 5 or 6 megs for short periods of time before dropping back down again. I then called customer service again that night when nothing got better and they again scheduled a technician to come back out on my next day off work. The technician arrived just within the two hour time slot's expiration and did some checks to see that I indeed was having the problem I said I was. When he determined that I definately had a slow connection he called a telephone number on my phone, they did some checks and even though everything checked out good (ie; no noise on the line and no lost packets) he, nor the person on the phone could figure out why the connection could not go higher than 2 megs or so. The person on the phone then determined that perhaps they had a problem with their provider, which I believe was Arroya, or Arroyo or Aurora or something to that affect and that he would have to get ahold of his supervisor about this one on monday (it was friday) and he did a few checks in the connection box and said he was sorry he couldn't do more and thrust a small hand held computer device with a form for me to sign with a stylus, just stating that he had been there. I read the form this time and it stated that I was satisfied with the work done. I took the stylus and wrote on it that I was not satisfied, he took it from me and then left.
I contacted the salesperson who sold me the contract and he said that there was nothing that they could do, but he would come over and give me 5 coupons worth 5 months of internet service and I could watch to see if things would improve over that time period. The problem is...I want my 10 meg service, but I now have less service than I did before I signed up for it and it doesn't appear anything will change for a long while. Can someone help me out there?
Ken
Houghton Lake, Michigan
U.S.A.
Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Charter Communications
I then called customer service and scheduled a technician to come to the house and fix the problem. The technician was scheduled for a two hour time slot between 10 and 12 oclock AM to arrive and look into my situation. At 12:15 I called customer service and informed them that the technician had not arrived yet and the man on the other end told me to wait another 20 minutes or so and give him a call if they didn't not show. He informed me that they are supposed to call if they are going to be late but perhaps he was in a bad cell phone area. At 12:40 I received a call from Charter stating the technician was on the way and would be there in about 20 minutes. At about 1:05 PM the technician arrived and checked all the usual things but could not find the problem. He went to the box outside and began putting rubber grommets on the connections to make them water proof, even though it was inside a box and under my evestrough where it was already water proof. He then rerouted a cable from the electrical conduit because he said Charter doesn't want them to tie their cable to the power company's equipment anymore. He then put a "pad" inline on one of the cables in the box to attenuate the signal, closed everything up and told me he couldn't find anything wrong and that I was to keep my eye on it and call them back if it didn't improve. He had me sign a form on his little hand held computer device, which he said was just a form to say he had been there and looked things over.
After a time I checked to see if my bandwidth had improved at all. It didn't. At times my bandwidth would go as low as 1.2 meg and then maybe jump back up to 5 or 6 megs for short periods of time before dropping back down again. I then called customer service again that night when nothing got better and they again scheduled a technician to come back out on my next day off work. The technician arrived just within the two hour time slot's expiration and did some checks to see that I indeed was having the problem I said I was. When he determined that I definately had a slow connection he called a telephone number on my phone, they did some checks and even though everything checked out good (ie; no noise on the line and no lost packets) he, nor the person on the phone could figure out why the connection could not go higher than 2 megs or so. The person on the phone then determined that perhaps they had a problem with their provider, which I believe was Arroya, or Arroyo or Aurora or something to that affect and that he would have to get ahold of his supervisor about this one on monday (it was friday) and he did a few checks in the connection box and said he was sorry he couldn't do more and thrust a small hand held computer device with a form for me to sign with a stylus, just stating that he had been there. I read the form this time and it stated that I was satisfied with the work done. I took the stylus and wrote on it that I was not satisfied, he took it from me and then left.
I contacted the salesperson who sold me the contract and he said that there was nothing that they could do, but he would come over and give me 5 coupons worth 5 months of internet service and I could watch to see if things would improve over that time period. The problem is...I want my 10 meg service, but I now have less service than I did before I signed up for it and it doesn't appear anything will change for a long while. Can someone help me out there?
Ken
Houghton Lake, Michigan
U.S.A.
Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Charter Communications
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Matt
Rapid City,Michigan,
U.S.A.
10 meg service
#2UPDATE Employee
Wed, August 20, 2008
I am sorry you have had this trouble. Who was your sales rep? I work with these guys, let me forward this to his supervisor to get it taken care of. This is not proper business and we routinely provide faster service than we bill for. Let me follow up on this and get it fixed for you. Please contact me at 800-968-5221 ext.13821.
Sandy From Wi
Fond Du Lac, WI 54935,Wisconsin,
U.S.A.
Bad For Business
#3UPDATE EX-employee responds
Tue, April 08, 2008
Charter Communication gives business a bad name. I shudder at the thought of calling "customer service" and speaking with "Lisa"! I worked as a call center supervisor for this company for less than a year way before they went overseas with their call centers -- and they were having customer service issues then that even as a supervisor I could not resolve. Credits back to the customer are capped per month, etc. I.E. Billing system is paid ahead, not in arrears, so the customer will prepay their bill when any billing changes occur. So, if you changed your service mid billing cycle, you will get pre-billed 45 days out. Prior to going overseas, the call centers did a pretty good job at explaining this to customers, but holy cow not anymore. I too have experienced the same level of frustration with billing questions and trying to resolve service problems. I will say the local office has been good to deal with and know that customers are extremely frustrated. I contacted my state senator in WI to please bring jobs back to US, and also break the monoply up for Charter for cable TV. The only way to ensure customer service is through competition!!!!! Right now they just flat out don't have to care and it is obvious they don't. This excludes the well meaning remaining US employees who want to offer customer service, but can't -- unbelievable. Thank you for this forum.
