I have the so called high speed internet from charter and pay $39.99 every month for 16Mbps, but here’s the problem it goes down constantly and is extremely choppy. I like to get work and or home work done at night usually between 12 am and 6 am, but for the second night in a row the internet is not working at all. Thank god I live in Riverside, California and I have access to the ATT Metro Free service from AT&T this is the service I am using to right this post on August 31st 2010 at 2 am. How sad is it that I have to use the AT&T free wireless service when I am paying $39.99 per month for the so called Charter high speed internet. I am seriously considering switching my service to ATT DSL, because this is ridiculous how often the service goes down with Charter, and the worse thing about it is Charter should give an automatic credit for the time down, but they don’t they make you call in and request it. I feel that they should also offer a courtesy notice letting their subscriber know if there is going to be scheduled maintenance or planed service outages. I am going to school right now and it is imperative that I have online access when I need it, so if anyone out there is experiencing the same issue with Charter’s inconsistent internet connection please post a comment below, also I would love to hear from you if you are subscribed to AT&T Internet DSL service please share your experience I really want to switch, but would like some feedback.
Charter VS AT&T Internet who do you think is better?
Thank you for reading and letting me vent.
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I have been with Charter Communications for 14 years . I didn’t start the Broadband Internet until they offered it about 10 years ago. I tried it then and after my year contract, I told them to turn it off and went to AT&T DSL. Charter was slow and choppy, very choppy.
I used AT&T DSL for 2 years(2 year contract) and then went back to Charter. AT&T would ALWAYS slow down after 3:00PM when everyone got home from school. It would not speed up until after 10:00PM every week night. Weekends were alright unless there was bad weather and I assume too many users on at the same time. AT&T would slow to a crawl.
I am still with Charter. Charter is still is choppy and slow. I have had their techs out many times and boy do they sub out to some real losers without people skills. I purposely sunk a 10 foot ground rod into my foundation at the point where the RG-6 cable comes into the house just so I had a great ground. The last idiot tech that came out actually told me to not touch anything he was in charge and took the ground off the 10 foot copper clad ground rod and added a stupid little clip-on ground to my Electrical box drilling holes into my houses wall.
Nothing has ever worked right, but they are faster, at times than AT&T was. So I picked the best of two evils. Would I switch if a new service was close that offered good high constant speed? You bet I would.
I gave my Mom a computer and I signed up for TIme Warner Cable. It’s service wasn’t too bad, but when I signed her up, I had to pay a $50.00 deposit for the equipment and also be a month ahead in payment. Meaning I always paid for the next month in advance. When the year of contract was over, we had them turn it off and the woman demanded that I pay another month and also told me that they don’t charge a deposit fee. I had to take them to small claims court and bring all of my documentation( I save everything) and I got it taken care of. They paid me back my 50 bucks and I did not have to pay an extra month. The judge or Arbitrator was angry and actually scolded the rep for Time Warner. My friends tell me Comcast is no better.
As far as I am concerned….ALL Cable Companies that I have dealt with or my friends have are nothing but scoundrels and thieves and liars. And there is no one watching the Hen House.
I would never sign a year or two year contract for any services ever again.
Randy, WOW it sounds like you have had a harder time with Charter than I have, and I thought I had it pretty bad. I would have to say though that my Charter service has been working pretty well these days, I am in Riverside California. Randy I would like to thank you for sharing your story with me and everyone who comes to RememberTheConsumer.com I appreciate the feed back. I hope one day customers like you and I will get the respect and service that we deserve from these cable companies. Good luck with your choppy Charter cable service and I hope things get better for you, and everyone else who pays with their hard earned money to use these monopolized services.
Sincerely: Michael Marchena
On Thurs, Jan 27, 2011 at exactly 12am midnight, my Charter internet went down. I did not get any advance warning/message about this but happening at EXACTLY at 12am is too coincidental. This was planned.
CHARTER DOES NOT INFORM ITS CUSTOMERS OF PLANNED OUTAGES.
At first, the Charter gateway was unpingable (cable modem was fine). For kicks I tried rebooting my cable modem anyway and then it would no longer make a connection.
After 10 minutes on the Charter Tech Support automated system and rebooting my cable modem (again) all 5 lights fired up and all was well again.
But I wasted a half hour. Thank God I didn’t have a long upload planned for that night because it would have certainly failed.
CHARTER SHOULD INFORM THEIR CUSTOMERS OF PLANNED OUTAGES.
Hey Robert and Angrydood, I completely agree with you both, and this has in fact happened to me many times since I have been with Charter. I would like to be notified by Charter if they are planning on disrupting my service or as they say planned outages. I did talk to tech support about this issue about a year ago, and he told me I could get notified if I signed up for the notifications in my account, so I did and I have never once been notified, so I guess its always going to be a pleasant surprise.
Thanks for sharing your frustration with me. I hope one day Charter will be kind enough to give us a heads up on planned outages, so that we do not waste our time trying to trouble shoot an issue that is out of our control and instead spend quality time with our families.
Interesting to stumble upon this website on the very day that my Charter internet craps out. While service here in New England is often good, I have had bad days and poor customer reps on the phone. Sure wish Charter offered some type of text alerts when there is an outage or planned maintenance; sure would save me a lot of time performing needless troubleshooting of my home network setup.
Thank you for sharing your experience, I also had some issues in the past with Charter Internet, but they have since fixed the problems, so I would recommend Charter to my friends and family.
Hey Blogger,When you write some blogs and share with us,that is hard work for you but sharing makes you happy right?
good luck and cheers!
Yes it is a lot of work, but I feel it is important to share my experiences and get feed back from other consumers, so that we can spread the word about how businesses are treating their customers, and give credit where it is due as well as make people aware of bad business practice. Thanks for your comment
Status update for my Charter Internet speed, for the last two days it has been very slow and choppy. I don’t think they will ever figure out what the issue is, but I am going to stay optimistic, because when it does work good it works good, I just wish it could work good all the time, and not just 60 to 70 percent of the time.
Status update on Charter Internet: My internet service has been working pretty good for the last week, so I think they have resolved my issue. I just want to say thank you to the good people at Charter for resolving my issue, and to Eric Ketzer for taking the time to help me. If my internet service continues to perform like it has been for the last week, I will have to write an article about Charter Internet in the positive feed back section of this site.
Update: Charter finally came back out and fixed the problem between September 5 through the 7th, I am not sure on the exact date, because they came out a few time between these days, but that’s not important. What is important is that my internet has been performing slightly better, but it is still to soon to say the problem has been completely cleared up, so as of right now everything seems OK, but I will be posting updates to confirm that it stays this way. I want to personally thank Eric Ketzer for all of his help in resolving this issue, and at this point I would recommend Charter services since they have done everything it seems in their power to help me resolve my internet problem.
Ok so here is the status update for the connection problems I have been experiencing with Charter Internet. I had an appointment set up for September 2nd 2010 and I missed 2 out of the three automated confirmation calls, so the appointment was canceled, so I called Charter and rescheduled. Today is September 3rd, 2010 and the technician showed up to my house on time and it was the same tech that was here two days ago. This guy is a really nice guy and I truly believe he is trying to resolve the issue, so to make a long story short the technician tells me he thinks it might be a problem coming down the pipe meaning it is not my modem or my homes wiring and is more than likely a problem on the poll some where down the line. The technician set up for someone to come back down later today at around 4:00 p.m. to try and locate the problem down the pipe or line. I do not know if anyone came back to fix the problem or not but it is 10: 40 p.m. and the connection still seems the same as far as the lag time and slow response when opening a web page.
Oh yeah the tech told me that my signal comes in strong but when it tries to communicate back out for a request that is where the problem is; I am not sure exactly what this means, but I do know it is very annoying when I am supposed to be getting high speed internet. A friend was over at my house and he has Charter Inter net service at his house and he does not have these issues I have so I know there is a possibility that one day I may get what I am paying for, but for now I will keep my fingers crossed and hope the problem will get resolved.
So here is where I am with Charter: Eric Ketzer is a manager for Charter communications and has been extremely helpful. I spoke to Eric today and he was able to explain what is going on with my service. I have an appointment tomorrow with a lead technician and I am crossing my fingers and hoping this issue will finally be resolved. I would also like to say to Eric Ketzer thank you for all your effort and help I did not expect to get help this fast and I almost lost faith in Charter, but now I feel a lot better and hope we get this resolved.
Thank you Sir
Hello,
My name is Eric Ketzer, and I am a Manager with Charter. We are very sorry to hear that your Internet connection has been unstable and would like to help you get this resolved. Please send us an e-mail to Umatter2Charter@chartercom.com with the name, address, and phone number on the account. Also, please put Charter Eric in the Subject line and include a link to this article.
We look forward to restoring your Internet service.
Eric Ketzer
Charter
Social Media Communications Manager
http://www.charter.com/Umatter2Charter
(Copy of email I sent back to Eric)
Eric, Thank you for the quick response, I have been a charter internet customer for over 5 years now, and up till about a year ago I have always been satisfied with the speed and service of your internet. I did have two technicians come to my house yesterday August 31 2010 and even though they where extremely nice and professional they where unsuccessful in fixing my issue. While the two technicians were here at my home, my internet service of course worked perfectly fine and they even thought they found the problem and fixed it, but by 8:30 pm my internet was back to its normal intermittence and slow response. I then decided to call tech support again and as usual the tech support said my internet was working fine, so I have started recording my computer screen to show the techs when they come back, and I am almost certain they will be back how the lag time compared to the speed test is contradictory. I really do not want to switch service and would like to stay with Charter, but if this is not resolve I will have no other choice, because I can easily live without TV, but I am devastated when I have no online access. Thank you for your help and I hope we can get this issue resolved.
Please email me back with your contact number, Thank you and have a great day.
Remember The Consumer
I would like add that even though I am having issues with the service itself, the technicians at Charter have been very helpful and professional, except for one female technician I spoke briefly with on August 31st 2010, so far who did not want to or even attempt to help me, and pawned me off to another tech, after I had already explained my whole situation to her, she said “ok please hold while I look into this” and then out of no where a male technician answered, and I had to reexplain my whole issue again, although this was extremely frustrating the second rep was very helpful and professional as usual.
I did not get the second reps name, but would like to say thank you.