Charter Communications Internet Service Consumer Reviews - Page 3

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA -- Let me start by saying I had been with Charter when it was TCI cable, for anyone in the Birmingham knows that was long ago. I had purchased High-Speed Internet service through TCI and when Charter took over I thought this would be great and it was until last year. I recently got married and my step-daughter and wife moved in so I thought instead of all of us on one computer I would network and we all could be on bad mistake. Once I got the service set up I seen a big drop in my speed - I had 5mbs. So I thought cable problem called Charter. I spoke to a very helpful lady named Becky.

They sent a tech out two days after Christmas. They looked over the system and told me I had to purchase their network router to keep my signal from dropping. 199.99 which I wasn't about to do. So I called back and got Becky again. She was happy to cancel my service. However she did try to get me to stay with them. I went on to BellSouth and it couldn't be better. Now here comes the worst part. January 5th Charter called, wanted to know if I would like a DVR free for two months. I spoke to my wife and we agreed. They came out and had a big ugly brown box called MOXI!!! (STAY AWAY FROM THEM.)

It worked good for the first week then went out. Called them, a tech came, replaced the box - same kind of MOXI, said they sometimes overheat and had to be replaced. So I thought it was good, no few so I was happy. I got my first bill in February, 29.89 for the MOXI. I called Charter right then. They told me I had two MOXI boxes on my account and they charge 14.95 for both. I told them "No I only have one. The other one was gone. It overheated." They were nice and said they would credit my bill. Told me to only pay my normal service. I was fine until March. I got a call at work. My wife said the MOXI box is telling us to call C/S a problem with the box.

I called them from work and they said we owed 14.95 for a fee to keep the box working. We didn't pay it last month. I told them we are supposed to have it free for two months. They looked into and credit our bill service back on. Good I thought April-May no problems. June 1st the box went out, called Charter again after 9 tech. 10 boxes later we finally got a new box. Oh did I mention in 3-week time frame. I just got my June bill the other day. 296.87. I thought who order so many pay-per-view? Come to find out they charged us 25.00 per tech to bring out a box.

So I told them they could close my account and come pick up the boxes. The lady told me on the phone a 50.00 charge per box pick up so. I was calm. I asked to speak to a supervisor. He came on the phone, name Jon. I asked him about the 50.00 charge. He said it is in their policy. I said it shows nowhere on the web page or any paperwork I have. He gave me this long web page address and showed it to me. I was like "Well hell, it isn't even on the charter.com or charter.net page." So I said "I will bring both boxes to the place and you can credit my bill 50.00 a box for me having to take off work and bring them to you."

He said it couldn't do that. So I gave him an option - I bring them and I get 100.00 credit or they come pick them up for free, or I was going to throw them away. He told me he would have a service tech get them tomorrow. I will see if they show up and pick up our boxes. Please stay away from Charter.

LAKEVILLE, MINNESOTA -- They should change their name to Charter Noncommunication. I was solicited by phone from one of Charter's fine representatives on how I could save money by switching over to their telephone service. It sounded like a good deal at the time. But since that time, Charter has COST ME MONEY! The representative and I set up a date and time for one of their service (sic) technicians to show up to install the required equipment. This was to be on a Friday between 1:00-5:00 PM. That meant I had to take a half a day of work off. Well, the technician never showed up or called.

I left town for the weekend, and when I returned home Sunday night my son came over and informed me that I had no phone service. Picked up the phone, and sure enough it was dead. I called my original phone service provider on Monday from work to inquire as to why my phone service was turned off. They told me that Charter had taken possession of my phone number. So I called Charter and asked how they could take possession of my phone number without first confirming that the equipment required was installed. They had no explanation.

Then I asked why their technician never showed up that Friday. The Charter representative said that the service call had been cancelled. And I asked by whom? They were unable to answer that question. So the Charter representative then said that they would set up an "Emergency Service Call" to get my phone service restored. But the earliest that they could have technician come out was that next Tuesday (emergency service call?). So we agreed to that Tuesday between 1:00-5:00 PM. Another half day of work. Well you guessed it! The technician never should up!

So I go to work on Wednesday and call Charter and asked why the technician never showed up. (here's where the calliope music fades in). The Charter representative said that technician tried to call me to make sure I was home. And when he couldn't through, he decided not to make the service call. I asked the Charter representative that if had no phone service, how could he contact me? (dead silence). The Charter representative then said that they would set up an "Emergency Service Call". And if I wait by the phone, they would call back in an hour to confirm the service call.

Well, I waited for four hours until they were turning off the lights and the janitors were coming through at work. So I went home. Thursday morning I go to work, and there's a voice mail. It's a Charter representative instructing me to call an 800 number to schedule an "Emergency Service Call". I call the number, and talk to a Charter representative. They assured me that a service technician WILL BE THERE at 4:00 PM on Friday. Guess again! Never showed up! So I call Charter at 5:00 PM to ask why the tech never showed up. They had no explanation!

So here it is, Saturday. I've had no phone service for almost a week! And Charter can't get their act together to get me reconnected. Oh! And my phone number they have possession of? They can't seem to find it now! But what really ticks me off is, that phone number is my home business number. So if they can't find my original phone number, they have to assign me a new phone number. And that means all my business documents have to be reprinted with the new phone number. So remember people, you DO NOT win with Charter. You LOSE!

DENTON, TEXAS -- My ordeal with Charter started when I moved into a new apartment and tried to set up cable internet service. I was told by a customer service rep that I could use the self-installation kit. I chose to do so and was told that the kit would be shipped and should arrive with my first bill.

My first bill, for $44.34, arrives a few days later and I wait a few more days to receive the kit. When no kit arrives I call in to see if I could get a tracking number. The customer service representative tells me that the kit has been shipped, but there is no tracking number. She goes on to say that the shipping can take 7-10 business days and that if the kit does not arrive by then to call in.

The kit does not arrive within the 10 business days so I call again. This time I am told that the self-installation kits are not shipped, that I am to schedule a time to pick it up from my local office. I then go down to my local office, where I am informed that the self-installation kit cannot even be used at my apartment and that I will need to have it installed by a technician. I am also told that I will be credited for the 15 days that I do not have service.

My internet finally gets installed and is working. I think everything is worked out until I receive my next bill, which shows an outstanding amount of $44.34. I call customer service yet again and argue the case. The representative says that she will mark the $44.34 as disputed, so I pay the rest of the bill. Again I think that everything has worked out.

I receive my next month's bill which again shows a past due amount of $44.34. So I call yet again. This time, the representative puts me on hold while she actually processes the due credit of $22.12. I then ask when the remainder of the bill is due (including the past due amount minus the credit) and I am told that it is due in ten days on the 15th.

That day I receive a call from a collection agency! I think that may be the whole credit thing had not posted in all of the systems yet, so I explain the whole story to the collection agent. He tells me that he will flag my account so it shows that I have an agreement with customer service. Two days later my internet service is turned off and I receive calls from the collection agency.

I call in to customer service as soon as I get home and explain the situation. For some reason, when I ask for a manager, I am transferred to technical support. I explain the situation again and get transferred back to customer service, where I again ask for a manager. I have to ask four times before I am actually transferred to a manager. And finally, the situation is resolved after three months of trying... or at least we'll see when I get my next bill.

NATIONWIDE -- I'm a single mom and had lost my job from a company I had worked for 10 years. (Back ground information.) In July, I have seen an advertisement for telephone, cable and internet for $110.00 a month. I called and signed up for this service. I was told someone would come out a hook everything up, that someone would be here between 8-1, someone came around 6pm that night. I was okay with that, the person came in and did what they had to do.

Later on I was having computer problems and ran into the same problem. "We will be there sometime in between 8-5." - never saw them in the meantime; I keep getting bills from Bellsouth. Well since I sign with Charter, I was not going to pay Bellsouth. One day when I came home while looking for a job and my phone was disconnected.

I called Charter and they said that they never hook up my phone line. Which, I couldn't understand because I was paying over $110.00 a month. So, I paid Bellsouth and got hook back until Charter could come out and get my phones going which I thought had been going since July. In the meantime I got a job. Well, when they came out they messed up my cable. Well, when they came to fix the cable, my cat got missing, I called Animal Control and talked to one of their officer. (If you need his name I've got it.)

Well in the meantime I got another bill from Bellsouth. I email them that I had already told them I was with Charter, which my phone didn't work. Saturday after I came home from work got out of my car I heard a sick meow. I start looking and open up the lock on the door under my house. My cat had been under there for 6 days are so without food. It was about dead. There had not been anyone else around my house. Maybe it wasn't the cable people, maybe a fairy, did that to my cat.

It was Halloween when I talk to a customer service rep. for Charter. His name was William Howard and about as much help as putting out a fire with gasoline. Well, On Saturday night about 2:30 the power went out. I went for my 9mm and to call 911. Guess what??? My phone wouldn't work. So, for 30 min I stay in the closet with my weapon pulled. My cell was in the living room. I finally went after it and called 911. I have tried to reach the CEO of Charter and no one will let me.

I wouldn't buy stock in Charter. They think they can treat people however, that they have the market corner. I never have felt so used, violated and screwed and it wasn't with my permission that'€™s why I fell like I've been raped. If you are not careful you could be the next victim! Why is the government letting Charter Communication be a monopoly?

FREEDOM, CALIFORNIA -- My experience with Charter Communications has been a horrible one. I am receiving 394kbps download speed and 264Kbps upload speed. I am paying however for 5mg and not even getting close to it. Their customer service department is very rude when you want to be credited for something you are not receiving, we have barely gotten any credit to our account for this horrible speed we are now receiving.

We have had a work order in now for over three weeks, we were told it is a balance problem in our cable line, which they installed themselves and so far what they have done to fix it is give us a new modem, even though there was nothing wrong with the old one, the new modem has actually helped slow down our speed. We have been stood up now three times from their tech's. We have set up appts and no one shows or calls other than the tech who replaced the modem two weeks ago who admitted he knew nothing about the cable lines which is what they sent him out for.

Again today we were promised someone would come out to fix the cable line balance problem and here it is 10:00PM and I don't think they are going to show, even though I called at 5:30PM and was told that they are 15 mins away and will be to you within the hour.

Again no call and no show and of course it's the weekend now so I guess it's back to being on the phone Monday morning for several hours again for about the 7th time now, which is about how long it takes (several hours) to go through their phone system explaining the situation to several different people before they can figure out who they would like to send you to for some kind of an answer and new appt.

If I could I would drop them in a second like I finally did with my Charter Cable TV service and switched to Dish Network. But Charter Communications is the only High Speed Provider in our area, sad for us. Dish Network shocked me, we scheduled an appt, and they called beforehand and actually showed up on time, they were so nice and professional, it was such a wonderful change and we are actually getting what we are paying for. We run our own business and know that customer service is extremely important to keep your business going and we use the internet on a daily basis to keep our business going.

I haven't a clue as to how Charter got as big as they are because with the attitude and service we have received as soon as another service is able to come to this town I can't possibly see how anyone in their right mind would choice to stay with them, I know for sure I won't be. Sad to say my experience is not over yet with Charter, hopefully within the next week they can fix this problem and we can go back to having about half the speed we pay for which has pretty much been the case for the last 5 years and half the speed is so much better than the snail speed and lag we are receiving now.

WHITTIER, CALIFORNIA -- Charter Communications should really be re-named because they do NOT know how to communicate. They increased our introductory price of $29.99 to $49.99, after they did a complete switch-over across the board by discontinuing contracts. No contracts usually means a good thing, but to be honest, I would have rather had a contract that ensured a lower price, than to pay a ridiculous amount every month without contract.

Unfortunately, 3 or 4 months after they raised our price to $49.99, they increased it AGAIN, to $54.99. We had to call them to make sure our price did not go up to $54.99. Paying fifty bucks for internet is ridiculous, but another 5 bucks, no matter how small it may seem, was NOT going to happen.

Anyway, we got fed up, and called to ask them to lower our bill, and even after speaking to the representative and supervisor, nothing came of it. The supervisor also told me that "we do not HAVE to offer anything to customers," which I stopped her in her tracks to tell her that they pick and choose who they offer lower prices to. Then we got into an argument, which at the end just gave me grounds to move on to a competitor.

A basic round-up of why you should NOT go with Charter goes as follows: Why would you pay $54.99 for internet service when you can go with other companies for WAY less? Even if you like their internet service, their customer service is terrible. They did not do ANYTHING to keep us. Every single time we have called, they tried to sell us on something else that was expensive, even though we called to lower our bills. Don't waste your time with their short gimmick of an introductory price. Other companies at least offer a whole 12 months!!! I honestly believe this is a failing company that couldn't care less about their customers.

GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA -- Me and my husband scheduled an appointment for Internet to be installed at our house. The appointment was made for a Saturday between 8 and 10. My husband called Charter at 10 to see where the installation man was and they said we had the wrong address. So they fixed our address and said we had to wait until the next Saturday now.

Well come Saturday at the end appointment time my husband called again and they still had the wrong address. I ended up calling the manager and speaking with him about the service that we had received and he apologized and said he was going to try to get it set up for the very next day. He did call us back that night and told us that he tries but the dispatch hadn't answered him yet so they ended up being able to come out on Monday from 10 to 12.

Come 12:05 the guy still wasn't here and my husband called. The lady on the other end said he's going to be there at one. Come 1:05 the dude still isn't here. My husband calls and cancels because we both had things to do. The guy showed up 30 minutes later and wasn't even aware the service had been cancelled. Yesterday I called another manager and I was telling him what happened and he was just acting like he was tired of talking to me and wasn't helpful at all.

My husband called this morning to make an appointment for Sunday at 8 and while I was at school I got a call from a lady who said we changed your appointment to today at 3... so I called Charter to cancel the appointment and they told me I couldn't because my name wasn't on the account. I told them if they showed up on my property I was going to call the police and report trespassing. They still wouldn't cancel the appointment and we didn't even make it. Needless to say my husband just called and chewed them out. We will now be doing our business with AT&T.

FORT WORTH, TEXAS -- I have had charter for many years for my TV and Internet service. Until recently I would have the occasional problem but it was normally remedied in a few hours or at most a day. Overall, I was happy with them. But the last couple of weeks my internet service has been slow to non-existent. This may be a coincidence but the problems seem to have started when they rolled out the free speed upgrade to everyone. I put in a call to charter on Friday 3/19/2010, described my problem, did the usual modem power off, wait 30 seconds, take the wireless router out of the equation etc.

In the end I agreed to a tech appt. between 10-12 on Sunday, 3/21/2010. On Saturday we get an automated call that our appointment was for 8-10 Sunday. OK, mistake 1. But the guy comes the next morning and replaces a cable. At first it seemed better although I was not getting what I am paying for which is the 8 mb, upgraded from 5 mb. After the tech left I did some speed tests and it averaged less than 5 mb. But from research I have done this is typical, things seem to work better after powering off and on, but soon returns to the previous behavior.

I talked to about 5 different people yesterday. The tech said I could need to upgrade to a faster speed. Umm, I am not getting what I am paying for now, you want me to pay more? One person told me to take all my PCs in for a diagnostics? So it is more likely that every PC in my house is the problem rather than yours? The next person scheduled another appt for Tuesday. I argued that the tech should come back, but she said they had no more appointments for that day. I asked for a supervisor.

The supervisor just wanted to argue that it was my equipment's fault but did eventually transfer me to someone who seemed helpful, but as soon as they had me power off the modem and it would not go ready again she was unable to help. She noted there was an outage in my area and I would need to call back. The final person who seemed really helpful said the outage was not in my area and agreed that tech should come back and would get the tech to do a rollback and would check with me in 30 minutes to be sure I had been contacted and also would check with me throughout the day, and then... wait for it... nothing after that.

The kicker... they have already applied a $35 service charge, plus taxes and fees to my next statement. Conclusion, widely varying degrees of knowledge about their jobs. Shifting the blame to the consumer and making promises they don't keep seems to be the standard operating procedure.

LAWRENCEVILLE -- Charter has become such a problem for me and my household. I could type a book on how lax the CS is, how little they care about they entirely unacceptable service they provide, the detrimental monopoly they hold over my community, and the absolutely irritating hours of phone calls I have suffered because I cannot get Comcast or any other ISP (because they hold the rights to my area). I'm sure Charter has a very lengthy book on my service calls, and I care very little at this point, save that they are the only ISP/cable provider I am allowed to choose from. I love OMMORP's, and just basically surfing. I didn't buy a 3k pc to sit in my room and talk to customer support.

I am a tech (by trade) and refuse to have the 6th tech (who btw, fyi, is independently contracted, and smoked weed in my backyard while he thought I wasn't looking) come out, yet again, to tell me there's a service outage in my area. Unacceptable, Charter! I highly suggest you think twice before inviting this company into your home for a contracted amount of time. You will leave unsatisfied, disconnected at hours of the night when you cannot even receive tech support (charter is not 24/7, so you know), and generally left with no option but to be a real turd on the phone with someone whose job it is to be a real turd to you.

Charter sucks, and I'd be the first on a wagon train right into Comcast land. (I have Comcast at my second home, and have been very pleased... so why can't I have it here???). Get over yourselves, Charter... I can't wait until ATT, Comcast, Direct, buys you out, because you're a dying breed of hypocrites and businessmen that crashed in the 1920's. There are no excuses here, except for "outages in my area", or disturbances in the force. I call, they reset, and then apologize for the inconvenience. Over and over and over... and then refuse to reimburse me anything but the "minutes" I was out of service.

I have completely refused this offer, and asked for the month (since this is a nightly occurrence, to which I always get the same answer). I experience this nightly. I cannot spend my entire night waiting in a queue line. I get scolded for calling in, and complaining about something I "didn't make them aware of when it began, or at every occurrence thereafter". Do human beings even have time for that? Really!!! This is an ISP. And a ridiculous mess of one.

Please research the company you entrust your livelihood to (let's be real, people, the internet is the future of enterprise). I grew up with satellite, and frankly, I don't really see the difference, save for that those techs and billing idiots (yeah, enjoy your 6.50 per hour, jerk). I can't WAIT until Comcast buys out my area. :-D

MCDONOUGH, GEORGIA -- 1 year ago almost to the day I closed on and moved into my new home. During the setup of all my utilities I ran into a problem getting Cable Internet from my local provider (Charter). Which I thought was weird because I moved into a neighborhood quite literally one mile from where I had previously lived and had Charter's 100mbps internet. After researching the issue a little and talking to Charter I was told that I am 400ft from a tap, which is considered unserviceable. In fact my neighborhood of over 60 homes and just as many lots waiting for construction has no access to cable internet of television at all.

I live just south of Atlanta in a pretty big town, not like I live in the sticks so I was extremely shocked that 1) Charter didn't already have cable run to this neighborhood and 2) that I was getting such a run around trying to get someone, anyone from Charter to take a look at the neighborhood and see about getting me and my neighbors TV and internet. I have called Charter's corporate number to see if I can get the ball rolling on this (I realize these things take time). I was told that all inquiries of this nature have to go through my local Charter office which is actually 5 miles from my house.

So I drove there and I was told they would have a site survey of my neighborhood to see what they could do. That was last March and I never heard anything back. So about 2 weeks before Christmas of 2013 I went back to my local Charter office to try to get some answers. I was given the same story about sending a site survey team to take a look. I was sure to leave my Name and contact information, and I also asked if I could please get a call with the site survey team's determination. I have yet to hear anything again.

After having been a Charter customer at my 2 previous addresses (both in the same city I currently live in) for 4 years I have to say that I am Extremely disappointed in Charter for giving a once loyal customer, and a person trying to get services for themselves and their neighbors this poorly. Is there anyone out there that has experience with this situation that can walk me through getting the ball rolling on this problem?