Tag Archive for: Charter Communications

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Charter Communications Still Sucks

In case you haven’t noticed, I am not a fan of Charter Communications. They have horrible customer service and high prices. If you haven’t gotten screwed by them yet, you’re about to. Over the weekend several sites broke stories about how Charter Communications will put a cap on bandwidth at 100gb a month starting on February 9th. Of course there was no announcement or anything on Charter’s website, and up to this point, there still isn’t. If you drill into the TOS, you will find that the terms have changed. If you look at number 13 you see how they added the cap to the terms of service.

So, if you are someone who likes to download a lot from iTunes, Amazon.com, watch movies and TV on Hulu and Netflix, play online games like World of Warcraft, do offsite backups with services like Mozy or Jungledisk, don’t be surprised if you use up your allotted bandwidth quickly. And of course Charter does not provide any sort of bandwidth meter tool to see how much you are using. At least Comcast provides a more reasonable 250gb a month cap. I really can’t wait to be done with Charter.

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KMOV and Charter Communications

There is a battle going on in St. Louis between the local CBS affiliate, KMOV, and a cable television provider Charter Communications. Normally, wherever there is Charter-bashing I am there. This time, I have to agree with Charter.

Here is the situation. KMOV has been in negotiations for 2 years on making Charter pay to carry its signal. Now their contract is up and Charter is going to stop carrying them on January 1st. KMOV tries to make their argument on their website. One of their main arguments, what they say isn’t right is this:

What they don’t tell you is they have been taking local programming for free and then charging you. Charter pays practically all cable networks for their signals, networks that are far less popular. But they don’t want to pay for local channels. That’s not right, it’s not fair and Charter knows it.

Here is the thing, and they said it right in that passage, Charter pays for cable networks. Those cable networks were created to fill a niche, and if you wanted to watch them, you had to pay for them. They pay for TBS, TNT, AMC, but not local affiliates, nor should they. The airwaves were given to the networks and in exchange they have certain duties to fulfill (airing local programming, public interest pieces, covering politics). Why should Charter have to pay for something that is available freely over the air with a pair of rabbit ears? People aren’t paying for Charter to watch local programming (well, some people who aren’t in signal range do, but that’s the very, very slim minority and they still receive more channels than the local channels). People pay Charter for those other channels. I think it’s ridiculous for KMOV to make Charter pay for programming that is supposed to be free to the people. KMOV is supposed to be acting in the interest of the public. How is making people pay (which is essentially what they are doing) in the interest of the public? Congress should have never given the airwaves to money-grubbing corporations. They belong to the people.

KMOV also states how Charter is paying for local affiliates in other cities, which I still don’t agree with, but if that’s the only reason they have, then I feel no reason to take their side. I don’t like defending Charter, especially since this will no doubt be a reason for them to increase cable fees, but they are right in this one. While I will be mad that the couple CBS shows I watch on KMOV won’t be available until it’s worked out, I think they have to do what they have to do. No one should have to pay for local affiliates. No matter what.

No matter if you agree or disagree with me, I do encourage you to make your voice heard to both Charter and KMOV.

Charter Communications offices: 314-965-0555
Charter Customer Service: 1-888-GET CHARTER (1-888-438-2427)
Charter E-mail:[email protected]

KMOV Contact Form

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More Reasons Why Charter Sucks

I’ve written before about my experiences with Charter. It hasn’t gotten any better. Recently we were having problems with our Charter Cable. We called and were able to get an appointment for someone to come out about 4 days later, which is actually quite amazing as Charter is known for making appointments a month out. The problem we were having is the cable box was losing the digital signal about every 5 minutes and cause the screen to go black and digitize for a few seconds. The cable guy came out, did his tests, and concluded the signal was too strong. Now, I’m not a technician, but this makes no sense to me because the problem was not happening anywhere else in the house and the two other boxes (one that was identical to the problem box) were fine. Well, he puts some splitter thing that lowers the signal on to the cable and then puts the old box back in says that should fix it. Surprise, it didn’t, but it didn’t happen again until after he left. We call Charter back and they wouldn’t send someone back out the same day when their first technician didn’t fix the problem to begin with. The next day they can have someone come out is the following Wednesday. This is 8 days without being able to watch anything on that TV because the box is bad.

I was off for a few days last week so I decided to head to the Charter office to exchange boxes myself, still keeping the Wednesday appointment in case the box switch didn’t work. So, now I’m driving out of my way to fix a problem with their equipment myself. Awesome. I get to the office and there is quite a line. Most of the people in front of me are there to complain about billing. The lady that was working was extremely rude to the customers with billing questions. She even told one guy that the previous Charter employee he talked to lied to him! Wow. Nice way to salvage the reputation of your failing company, tell customers that the employees lie to customers. I don’t believe the previous Charter person did lie, because it was about a package that I had seen advertised quite often, yet the lady in the office refused to believe the price and called the customer and other employees liars. I really can’t believe this company. Finally, it’s my turn in line and the lady is just as rude to me as the other customers. I get my box and take it home.

I hook it up and follow the directions on the sheet they gave me to reset the box so it knows what channels to get. I got 3 channels. I call Charter. They send a signal to reset. I still get 3 channels. 2 hours later I call back, the lady sends a signal and tells me I will have to wait until my Wednesday appointment. I tell them this is unacceptable because after going to replace their equipment because they didn’t send one on the technician’s truck before, I deserve someone out that day. She says they can have someone out the next day. I ask to talk to her supervisor so she puts me on hold. She comes back about 10 minutes later and asks for some information, like where the box is, the serial number on the box, etc. She finds out, by asking this, that the new box wasn’t put into the system under our account. So, dubmass bitchy lady at the office didn’t even do her job right. Then again, neither did the first Charter person I talked to. You’d think that would be a standard question they would ask to make sure the equipment is in the system, especially if it’s obvious you’re not getting a signal to your box.

Charter is a completely useless company. Rumor has it they will be filing for bankruptcy soon. As if that’s hard to believe.

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Charter Really Sucks

I’m really fed up with Charter Communications. I’ve heard the horror stories of Comcast and even my experiences with Mediacom haven’t been that great, but Charter really gets under my skin. The past few days my 5mbit internet connection has been going really really slow. Painfully slow. I’ve run several speed tests on several different computers (a Windows Vista box, an Ubuntu box and my MacBook) and each time the speed registers at less than 1mbit. So, I’m paying over $40 per month for service that is only delivering less than 20% of what I’m supposed to be receiving? (Not to mention the fact that I’ve never gotten my whole 5mbit connection and most times it’s as if i pay for 5mbit but they only deliver 3). That doesn’t sound to fair to me. I’ve checked all the cable connections in the house to see if there might be a loose cable somewhere and haven’t found anything. So what do I do? If it doesn’t clear up on it’s own over the next couple days I will have to call and deal with an hour of a recorded voice telling me to power-cycle my modem, restart my computer, disconnect my router, stuff I’ve already done, then I’ll have to deal with the technician who will have me do the exact same things the recorded voice told me to do before they finally accept that it’s their problem and schedule an appointment to come look at it. Of course, I won’t be expecting to see an actual technician for at least 3 weeks after I set up the appointment, because that’s how Charter operates. It’s no surprise they’ve gotten a failing grade and thousands of complaints from the Better Business Bureau. So, you may be asking, why don’t I switch? The answer is simple; the Sherman Anti-Trust Act apparently doesn’t protect my city from giving a monopoly to Charter. There are no other cable companies or internet service providers (unless I want dial-up). The only high-speed net access is through Charter. I can’t wait for the day that AT&T comes into St. Peters and starts offering video and internet services. That will be a great day in the lives of many Charter Communications customers.