Charter Communications - Looking for feedback/experiences

[Kipling]

Figured if I was going to post this anywhere, it'd be tech forum. If this is a bad thread or there is somewhere else to stick this, please delete/move.

Background information: I am moving this time next week to a university owned apartment complex. The school provides free wireless for all the complexes not on campus, however, I want something of my own/fast. From talking with the school, Charter Communications is already hooked up and they'd just have to turn it on etc. I ordered their "Ultra 60 mbps" package because like I said, I want fast.

The Question:I don't know anyone who has had Charter, so I can't ask for opinions. Anyone here have it? I've only ever had Qwest and Verizon.

Thanks.

[Gamefreak]

i have the charter 60 mbs/s and i had some problems at first because they gave me a modem/router that was not compatible with the max speed. took about 1 month to get the correct modem to get max speeds and it works wonders. haven't had any problems with charter for over a year now.

[Tymon]

It's probably the worst reviewed major cable service in the states, unfortunately.

They have bad support, go down a lot, do maintenance more than should be necessary, are slow, are prone to lag, and often don't give you compatible hardware.

[pugnax179]

people i know who have it say its either hit or miss

[Shojin]

Damn, is it really that bad? Was considering switching to it as Verizon is a fucking rip off in my area. I'm paying $35 (I think it just went up so prob around ~$38) for 3mbps down, plus phone line is required so an extra $12/13 or so totaling around $50. Charter offers 12mbps down in my area for $35... Eh.

[Gadritan]

I've had Charter for years, though not by choice. They've essentially monopolized cable internet in my area, but that's another story.

Basically, it's very much hit or miss. In some areas it's considered fantastic. In others, not so much.

As far as my experiences:

I can vouch for the absolutely horrendous customer support. Every. Single. Person. I've ever dealt with from Charter was extremely rude and ignorant.

You have to go way out of your way to get shit done (reporting to BBB, writing to my senators...wish I was fucking kidding).

I lose my connection about 2-3 times a day on average. It's generally for only a few minutes, though sometimes it can go on for hours. This is during prime weather conditions as well mind you.

There are periods of time for weeks on end where the download speed will suddenly drop from 35m to about .8m for 3-4hours at the exact same time every night. Contacting them makes no difference as they never have an explanation. The most recent issue was my upload speed declining to .1m with a DL of 5m at 10:45pm-1:45am every night for 2 weeks straight with absolutely no explanation or "fix."

They already got in a bit of trouble for selling off bandwidth to companies and restricting non-business customers bandwidth to approximately 1% of normal speed from midnight-noon for a couple of months.

Basically, if you have other options for cable ISP, take it. Unfortunately, they're the only cable provider in my area. As long as I'm reliant on high speeds for work, I'm pretty much fucked.

[Pyro]

I've got Charter and have no problems with their internet service and I can't remember the last time my internet was out in the last two and a half years. Regarding their television service, the channel quality is good and I also can't remember the last time my television went out. The only real gripe I have about them is that their HD-DVR sucks some seriously hairy balls. Obviously, based on the responses above, it is going to be hit or miss like someone else said. Maybe there are less blackies working for them in my area or something.

The only time I've ever had to contact customer support was for some billing questions.

[Gadritan]

I've got Charter and have no problems with their internet service and I can't remember the last time my internet was out in the last two and a half years. Regarding their television service, the channel quality is good and I also can't remember the last time my television went out.

Thought this was a perfect example of my previous post as far as my experiences:

Hurricane Irene comes through. Net and TV are perfect the entire time.

Yesterday, we got a normal thunderstorm that lasted about 30minutes. Net and TV were down for 6hrs. /shrug.

[Kipling]

Hmmm. I haven't heard anything bad from friends already there, so hopefully it works out. But yeah it is just internet I am getting. No contract, so I guess I can switch if it is horrendous.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[Moridam]

as far as internet service, they've been mostly reliable since i moved back to massachusetts a year ago, most of the outages in this apartment have been weather-related.

however, i also had charter in south carolina, and the service down there was atrocious, i had several outages every week for the whole ~3 years i lived there. not to mention where i lived, the cheapest package they had was 5mbit at $65/month. and, as gadritan said, their customer service is uniformly terrible, easily the worst i've ever had to deal with. i'd say go elsewhere, but i'm assuming charter is your only viable option so hopefully your area isn't one of the terrible ones!

[liggy 0]

they gave wrong/bad modems, out-source installers(who half-ass the job). said it was my end was wrong, tried to pull some b.s. with my wireless cockblocking my connection. i had to have maint come out a few times. last time i just told them to send out a supervisor. rewired all the mistakes the outsouce installers did and added an amp. (that wasn't installed, which was the real problem)

anyways from what i can tell, the people who does the intial installs halfass it or be REAL cheap if they outsource the installs.

customer service has always been good to me, even hooked it up with free service when i had to downgrade because i couldnt afford the old plans i had in place.
every service guy i had from charter are pretty cool, if your straight with them. even hooked it up when i gave em soda n shit.
no problems with service since when they super came to correct all the bad install job.

still wish i vios was in my area though ;/

[Shojin]

So after considering switching to Charter from Verizon, because I was paying $34/mo for 3 Mbps DSL from Verizon and Charter sent me a letter saying 13 Mbps was $35 from them, I called up Verizon to ask them about available services to me because their shitty website 'service finder' never works for my area and always asks me to call them. Turns out, the 15 Mbps DSL package from them is $35. One fucking dollar more. I had to double check to make sure the rep wasn't fucking with me. So needless to say I switched to that. I do find it amusing that Verizon never once contacted me or even sent me offers for the upgrade service, and that their website app never worked for me whenever I would try to look at upgrades for my area.

Fucking Verizon. Been having some issues since Irene (occasional disconnects and speed gets limited sometimes) but assuming they're dealt with looks like I'll be able to avoid Charter, which from reading this thread seems like a good thing.