Charter sucks.

[Meatwad]

I am starting to believe that charter is the worst ISP by far. Only other option is DSL which I am leaning more and more toward signing up.

Cant even play AH, webpages hardly load either.

surprise surprise, the "call center" for this area is down too.



Did you know charter refuses to give out their numbers of local offices. If I want to talk to the local office here, I have to drive up there. They wont even give out their own telephone number, instead they give out the 800 number to a call center out of state that is taken by someone with broken english.

Ought to throw a brick through their local office window.


charter sucks.


From West Coast - USA to YOU
Hop Host LOSS Rcv Sent Best Avg Worst
0 pax-edge-01.inet.qwest.net 0% 60 60 0.38 1.94 77.69
1 svl-core-01.inet.qwest.net 0% 60 60 0.71 0.86 1.50
2 ??? 100% 0 60 0.00 0.00 0.00
3 kcm-edge-01.inet.qwest.net 0% 60 60 38.99 39.23 44.81
4 65.116.32.190 4% 58 60 52.06 52.62 54.87
5 24-217-58-81.dhcp.stls.mo.charter.com 0% 60 60 53.44 57.12 161.59
6 24.217.3.10 7% 56 60 51.90 53.94 99.96
7 24-217-4-194.dhcp.stls.mo.charter.com 2% 59 60 53.66 53.99 55.81
8 24-217-4-202.dhcp.stls.mo.charter.com 2% 59 60 53.35 53.63 54.32
9 75-129-240-10.dhcp.mtvr.il.charter.com 0% 60 60 60.92 62.30 64.55

[Maverick]

If you can afford it, sign up for DSL. You'll like the speed and way it works. You might want to beef up your security on your system when you do. A decent firewall will help a great deal.

[REP0MAN]

Where did that plot come from? It makes little sense.

I don't work for Charter but for a competitor, Cox. I know with Cox, if you file an Executive Level complaint, it becomes this biggest pain in the arse for people like me. Reason being; I have to put your problem above anything else on my agenda for the time being, even outages. I don't say that as a bad thing though, don't get me wrong. I find the most pleasure in my job by fixing these network issues for customers like yourself. People who have these sorts of issues are very happy when the issues are gone and are generally thankful for the work we put in fixing the problem. The hard part is them getting in touch with us.

I seriously doubt that Charter has nothing in place similar to our policy. Start calling someone other than the 11 dollar an hour tech support idiot. Ask for a supervisor or send a letter (I know, its not as easy as coming here and complaining) to someone on the VP level in your area. I assure you, if your problems are really causing problems as you indicate, they will WANT to know what is going on in their network. ISPs, especially the size of Charter, don't become successful by shrugging off network issues and snickering at customers who have problems. Put some effort into contacting someone on a higher level and I bet you will see some sort of results.

-OR- yeah, you could always switch to DSL and all your problems will vanish.

[Meatwad]

Turns out they are having ANOTHER outage. Usually they have an outage once every couple of weeks. Used to have comcast and had a small outage once during the year and a half I had them


needless to say, im checking into dsl

[Reschke]

I will not say they are the best but for me in this area they certainly are better than the DSL options here and it works great.

Download Speed      4.59Mbps     Upload Speed     0.3Mbps

This was on http://www.broadband.org/speed_test.html using my Charter cable modem here in the Birmingham, AL area.

Here is the next one I just did and I just posted where I live up above.



Here is the other information for where the server I tested to is located.

1/1/2008 8:04 PM GMT     71.12.184.97     4760 kb/s     485 kb/s     85 ms     Portland, OR     ~ 2050 mi     Close

[Fulmar]

I have Charter, mainly because I'm outside ATT's DSL range.  Anyways, the lack of competition in Wisconsin is apparent.  They can pretty much charge whatever they want for high speed.  And they fight damn hard to try and keep city contracts, not allowing competitors in areas.

They're expensive, their Tech support is hit or miss.  They use both US and Indian call centers.  But service has been good at least.  No real outages.

[REP0MAN]

Originally posted by Meatwad
Turns out they are having ANOTHER outage. Usually they have an outage once every couple of weeks. Used to have comcast and had a small outage once during the year and a half I had them


needless to say, im checking into dsl

I hope you come to the realization that DSL is just as outage prone as Cable. Both technologies are buried or hung on poles, in the elements, with electronic equipment riddled throughout the line. It is bound to break. Temperature swings in the Midwest are detrimental to the quality of the plant in the ground or on a strand. Cold temps swinging to warm temps through the year expand and contract cable lines and Telco lines. No technology is safe from the this problem. Outages happen. I make a healthy living clearing outages. My counterparts in the DSL world work longer hours, deal with much older wire and, sadly, make more money than I do.

Try contacting someone higher up the food chain and I'll bet something gets done about it.

[REP0MAN]

Originally posted by Fulmar
And they fight damn hard to try and keep city contracts, not allowing competitors in areas.

Cable and telco companies don't fight for "contracts" from city or town governments. Telecommunications companies pay franchise fees to local governments to be able to operate in their respective cities. The only reason another telecom company is not in your area is due to their reluctance to pay franchise fees or your local government not allowing them to operate there.

The only time a telecom will have a contract, and subsequently "fight damn hard" for one, is in a residential community such as an apartment complex, condo complex or Home Owners Association type of community. Even then, they are subjected to local government franchise fees.

[rpm]

You might also check out wireless isp's. The speeds have really gone up. I can connect at 10Mbps using my AT&T cellphone in modem mode. They have small usb "buds" out now that are just plug and surf.

[cav58d]

If you think the internet is bad, than you gotta see the Digital Cable.  I've replaced more boxes than I care to recall, and it seems technical problems are now a weekly occourance.

[Tac]

I used to work for charter a couple of years ago.

Dirtiest company i've seen. Their software was so out-dated that it ran in DOS and looked like DOS... it had so many issues and glitches half the time we ended up writing stuff down in pen and paper and passing it to our supervisors to complete the job order (which they did not of course since they barely knew what was going on).

They subcontract ALL of their work orders which creates endless amounts of issues with incompatible equipment, horrible work done at the client's home, contractors scamming both ends of the candle (charging us for 4 hours work when he had been in client's house 10 minutes and then charging client for the boxes he was supposed to give to the clients for free and keeping that money) and if that was not enough; they even subcontract their customer service and some logistics to very low quality companies which have in the recent years outsourced themselves to india (reason why i left).

So next time you have a problem with charter its probably because:

- the IT american techs are overworked and working with old equipment
- the techs going to your house are mostly dishonest (they are hired because they are the cheapest), clueless and will give you old equipment (some of which isnt even charter's)
- the dispatch people that communicate with the outsourced techs are from india
- the customer service agents are from india as well but have to go through an overworked layer of US-based agents to get approval to replace equipment and such.
- the software used in all ends of the company fails constantly and requires rote memorization of codes (if i remember right there were about 45 acronym codes to memorize since we had to type them in... you wonder why you told the indian guy on the phone you needed a new HD box and instead the tech showed up with a replacement control remote? a code was typed in wrong!!)


in short....


lose charter as quick as you can and get something else.

[Fulmar]

Originally posted by REP0MAN
Cable and telco companies don't fight for "contracts" from city or town governments. Telecommunications companies pay franchise fees to local governments to be able to operate in their respective cities. The only reason another telecom company is not in your area is due to their reluctance to pay franchise fees or your local government not allowing them to operate there.

I stand corrected.  I had to look up the newspaper article from our area and misread about that they wanted to strip the fees away.....away from the municipalities and make it controlled by the state.