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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Charter Communications Delivers Bad Service...Period.

This post may appear to be a little off the home phone services subject, but really it's just an extension on my original post on this blog that involved Charter Communications bad service. I wrote in that blog how our phone, cable, and Internet services were often interrupted due to the weather. 6 months after the original post, I'm here to tell you Charter sucks more than ever. Last week I was without Internet service for 5 days, and limited cable during that time (we did end up cancelling the phone service because it was horrible and no help or answers came from Charter's end.) We had some heavy rain during that period, but as I understand it, isn't the whole point of having cable is having everything wired so that you always have service in spite of weather (unlike satellite where rain could interfere with the signal.) Now if that was a random occurrence, I could understand, but EVERY time it rains, the cable has limited channels, and the Internet goes down for a period. This time was the worst ever, and it's not easy being without Internet when my wife and I rely on it for both online classes and work. Trying to contact Charter is another adventure. Most of the time, you deal with an operator that is obviously outsourced from another country, so the communication isn't top notch to begin with. Then once you go through the generic steps of unplugging and replugging in your modem or cable box, they set up for someone to come out and fix the problem. Problem being, every time someone comes out, it's a different contractor who really runs their own business and does work for Charter. Problem with that is, they all say the previous person hooked something up wrong, but really can't fix it themselves either. One time I was even told that I should get Charters "protection plan" so if anything goes wrong, I could get it fixed without paying. Paying to fix a service that the company should be providing? Horrible.

Since Charter does offer home phone service, we're providing this review of ALL Charter's services so everyone can be warned. If you somehow have GOOD experience with Charter, please share in comments, maybe all parts of the country aren't as bad, but Charter in Texas is horrible. Hopefully I'll soon be able to try out the Verizon Fios service and review it here, since I've heard they provide much better service overall.