“Live Better with Charter” = THE Worst Cable System EVER!

I HATE Charter Communications.

I hate them so much that I got out of bed this morning at 4:30 am to write this post after my Godd@mned On Demand service became screwed up....yet again. I underlined “On Demand” because this time it was the problem rather than my bundled internet or phone service; meaning = if it’s not one thing that wrong it’s another.

Now, I’ve had just about EVERY kind of Cable/Satellite and Dish service at one time or another and Charter is without question THE worst cable company/service I have ever had...period!

I’ve had Comcast Cable, DirecTV, DishNetwork, (a couple of others whose names I don’t recall presently); heck I’ve even had the old Primestar 4 ft. dish that you have to have installed in your yard and none of them even approximated the level of frustration Charter has put me thru.


I’ve been stuck with my current Charter account for about 3 years now. I had them before I switched to DishNetwork because frankly they were the only game in town at the time. Then when DN came along switched, and the only reason I decided to switch back to them from DishNetwork was because Charter offered broadband internet service where DishNetwork offered no kind of internet service at all at the time. And although I understand that now DishNetwork does indeed have internet service available it’s not that simple an adjustment.

There are other issues involved; the price is almost triple what I pay on Charter, there’s some...”question” about whether it is/was available in my area (yet), and even if it was available there were some reinstallation issues. A friend who works at DN told me they’d have to re-install DN and knock thru the brick wall in the front of my apartment rather than just re-hookup the old Satellite Dish that’s still on my roof. My building manager isn’t about to wouldn’t allow some Cable/Satellite company to start knocking holes into the brick walls of my apartment and frankly I don’t blame him.



The Problems

At least 3 times a month I have to call customer service at Charter about:

On Demand not working properly or not working at all.

A occasional cable outage (usually around 4am)...and when you attempt to call customer service (good luck) at that hour (if anybody with a pulse answers) they’ll usually tell you, “Oh, don’t worry, we’re doing ‘routine maintenance’ in your area until 6am” Routine maintenance? Every freakin’ month? When the hell is whatever’s wrong gonna be fixed.

Then there’s another charmer: the “required” “monthly” emergency broadcast signal test, when supposedly once a month Charter is required to test the system. It’s SO ANNOYING. It doesn’t matter what you’re watching; a pay-per-view movie, On Demand, or a regular program the screen goes completely green, and that seriously cringe inducing ERRRRRRRRRR!!!! civil defense tone at a VERY loud level sounds, and the writing on the screen flashes and tells you this is a required monthly test and you cannot change the channel (you can only hurriedly scramble to find the mute button) while the really loud annoying tone blares on....

But the even more annoying thing is that it happened 2 or 3 times a month, (or more some months) every month.



Picture Quality

When I first got Charter their commercials used to say, “we have a ‘100 % digital platform’ for our customers” and this was before HD. I’m not sure what kind of puffery they were trying to imply, but not all my channels were crystal clear and sharp—in fact some were downright grainy.

So then you call up good ol’ customer service, they send out some repairman (in a day or two) “between 12PM and 4PM” to have a look at it and after a few minutes he tries to baffle me with BS saying something akin to, (paraphrasing Dr. Emmett Brown of Back to the Future, and Tony Soprano) “Well sir...it seems that somehow your Flux Capacitor and the gahaxagogen have been framed up by your ramistan” And when asked what that means it said, he’d “have to do a reinstall” because my “lines have been fouled” and “ the signal is weak.”

Really? Why is it that my signal’s “weak” now when it was fine all along before. And why did Charter charge me AN ADDITIONAL reinstallation fee ($50) when I switched back to them—they didn’t have to perform any kind of real physical task (other than 2 minutes of providing “more improved cable”), they simply restarted my service yet I get hosed for $50 bucks...again, and now this idiot wants to do another “reinstall” and he has to “go thru the brick wall” in the front of my apartment just as the DN guy suggested?

I was so frustrated and angry that I just asked him to leave, and then I called Vontage, but (of course) they weren’t available in my area. The weird thing is after a day or so the channels were all fine on their own—so no need for a costly (and invasive) reinstall at all. Then about 6 months later I had problem with my picture quality again; the pictures would sometimes “black-flash” and “mosaic” themselves out, (similarly to when you change the channel and it takes a second or two for the picture to come back on). This would sometimes go days without happening, and then at other times it would happen a dozen times a day for indiscriminate periods of time.

I called in another repairman. This time (a different guy) used a signal measuring meter (whereas the other guy din’t) and he assured me that while my signal could be stronger, it was strong enough to provide satisfactory service—so it was sort of an impasse. Again, with a day or so it cleared up and there haven’t been any picture quality problems in 6 month.




...more to come....



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