Charter Communications

Wow, so much for that!
While I would have never called myself a fanboy of Charter, I certainly never had any issues with them.
Until today.
After having my service off for 6 months while living with a roommate who already had service in her name, I decided to get service again when I bought my own house.
Apparently this was a mistake.
My service was established December 2^nd, and I shortly thereafter received my first bill explaining that $ 69.98 was due December 30^th. No worries. Makes sense, right?
Well, today I received a phone call from 305−509−6801 telling me that not only was my bill delinquent $ 69.98, but that I owed another $ 30 already. What the fuck? I laughed at the guy when he asked for my payment info, and told him to go fuck himself; clearly he was running some sort of scam, you know, the shit they report on the news every so often, because not only did I only owe $ 69.98 according to my bill, but it also wasn’t due for another week!
But, heart racing and worried to death that I’d somehow forgotten something and managed to ruin my perfect payment history for every account I have, I called the automated 1877 number to get my balance information.
The automated system verified that I was almost $ 70 delinquent. What the fuck? I paid the $ 110 over the phone as I ran around my house looking for my bill. What the hell was going on?
When I found it, I was enraged; I wasn’t crazy, and I, indeed, only owed $ 69.98 and it was NOT yet due. Sooo… I called customer service and was quickly connected to «Robin.»
“Robin” called me a liar over the phone.
–She said that I was sent TWO bills, not just one. FALSE.
–She said that $ 69.98 was due yesterday, not on the 30^th. FALSE.
Sick of her disrespect and ballsy attitude, I hung up. Flabbergasted, I called back since I knew I would talk to a different agent.
The next woman I spoke to verified that indeed, there was some kind of total fuck up on Charter’s end, and she at least offered an apology for the bullshit Robin (also identified as «M26» according to another rep) served to me.
My heart is still racing. AT&T, why must your internet be so damned slow?! I would have switched T-​O-​D-​A-​Y. Ugh.

Terrible company that will lie and manipulate in order to inflate your bill as high as possible. Was literally told «it is your responsibility to make sure we don’t charge you while we are not providing you any service.» Afterwards they refused to reverse these charges.
They have a monopoly on internet coverage and they use it to abuse people. Avoid them if at all possible.

Meh. Meh. Meh.
According to the sales staff at Charter, they’ve improved drastically since the old days when they were the worst provider in the world and their customer service was terrible. Don’t believe a word of it. I fired Charter five years ago, and found that AT&T uVerse was no better but a lot more expensive… and now I’m back with Charter. I had an issue a couple of days ago and called customer service and AGAIN had to go through that incredibly long automated «troubleshooter» before I could speak to a human. It’s the same recording they were using in 2010! Seriously? (The recording, incidentally, had NOTHING to do with why I was calling, but there is no way to bypass it. If you try the old «Enter O» trick to get an operator, she just says «Sorry, I didn’t get that» and you have to START OVER!!)
First off, the $ 29.99 per item: Phone, Internet, and TV, is a big lie. There are surcharges on every single service, so expect to pay around $ 175 every four weeks (yes indeed, Charter does not bill monthly, they bill every four weeks, so you will receive 13 statements per year) for the least expensive bundle. There is also a surcharge for local channels which NO ONE will tell you about until it just appears on your statement. And why wouldn’t customers expect to have local channels when they’re paying for cable? $ 5.25 on every statement. Not a huge amount, but dang! Oh, and that free installation they offer? Once you have the services installed, they will NOT give you free installation. Your installation fee will be $ 318 (it’s a bunch of smaller charges, but they add up to $ 318) and you will receive a bill with your first statement. I called about this charge and was informed that Charter has NEVER offered free installation, so if they offer you a deal like that… you must be dreaming. I was, apparently.
The last part of their pitch — how Charter will pay your early termination fees with your old provider? Not true. There is a form to fill out and you need to send paperwork showing your early termination fees, but the forms and paperwork are never right. Charter will ignore you completely until the time for submitting early termination reimbursement requests has expired, and then it’ll be your fault for not meeting the deadline.
So why, when this company is SO horrible, expensive, and dishonest, am I still dealing with them? Well, it’s not like there’s a lot of choice. At&T is almost as bad, but a lot more expensive. DirecTV with Vonage was a great combination, but Vonage can’t trace calls and we have a random phone stalker… and now that DirecTV is owned by AT&T, they’ve probably lost their edge anyway. At least I don’t have a contract with Charter, so if anything better comes along in St. Louis, I’ll be free to change and get away from Internet that drops, the TV that freezes for minutes at a time, and a land line that drops calls.
Sigh. Welcome to the quagmire.

When I switched my Charter TV service to a bulk tenant building, I was told the cable box would be in the new apartment and that a technician would just «turn on» my service. I made an appointment 2 days after I moved in. Guess what? Of course there was no box there, and the tech didn’t offer to reschedule my service or to bring a box back. Instead, he directed me to this location (which was inconvenient for me) where I had to stand in long line after work, just to be told that the technician made a mistake and that he could have re-​scheduled. Luckily I was given a cable box and figured out how to hook it up and run the diagnostics myself over the phone with an operator.
I’m going to cut to the chase… I have never worked with another company who has worse customer service than Charter (on the phone, their rates, in person)…They are my least favorite company in the world. Their promotional rate on any service is the best rate you are ever going to get for 12 months and they are going to jack it up after that first year. They have a monopoly on the internet/​tv market in St. Louis, and if there was a better option for high speed internet, I wouldn’t use Charter. Their new commercial about Charter Spectrum customer service is a joke… I’m always on hold every time I call, and they do anything they can to have you not speak with someone. Anytime you have a problem, it’s a pain to get someone on the phone and schedule anything.
The sad thing is you will probably have to use them until AT&T can break into the internet market and become competitive on speed… I hope that happens soon for the sake of the people of St. Louis.

heinous nightmare: monopoly. the only service I can get in my area. customer service tries, but the service is just terrible our internet drops in and out literally every alternate minute. the moment another option comes to my area, I am switching. we have had about 5 different modems and 10 different service people out. works just ok for a while, then back to dropping internet. modern problems.

Now I remember why I don’t have TV.
I came here to drop off equipment for a friend and the customer service was borderline horrific.
Luckily I don’t have to deal with Charter beyond this 4 minute encounter.
Just needed to let you guys know.

You will have to give your phone number to them, you will get endless number of uninvited advertisement phone calls even after you call them and tell them please not to! ! they make business from annoying people!

If I could give zero stars, I would. Customer service is the worst! We are new to the area and have TV, internet, & phone with charter. They cannot get the phone working (3 weeks now) and I spend an average of 1 – 2 hours a day dealing with this. They say that the system is not «provisioning». They are elusive when I ask what provisioning means and I’m convinced it is a made up thing. 4 Supervisors have all told me the same thing & promised to get it fixed and call me back but they don’t call and say that they don’t have a direct dial line to get back in touch with them.
The internet comes and goes worse than I have ever seen. For someone who works from home, I would not recommend this company.
Poor customer service, poor product. Run away from this company if you can.

Just saw I could review my ISP on Unilocal so why not?
So I compared Charter w/AT&T and saw that AT&T are getting away with highway robbery. Let it be noted, I just pay for internet – none of those fancy packages. St. Louis doesn’t have that fast of internet but Charter’s package is decent in comparison. The customer service part is usually the worst aspect of dealing with such large companies like these. I’ve had a better experience with AT&T in the past but Charter is way faster and cheaper.
I talked with someone on the phone but finished the set up with live chat. I recommend doing the live chat because I’d rather talk to someone on the computer than listen to them read from a script and try to sell me more than I want. It’s all set up now so let’s hope it doesn’t go down!

I’ve had a lot of problems with it working in our home for a long time. Seems like it gets fixed then goes bad again. Today they said they’d be here at 1 o’clock and you’re still not here at nine pm.. I’ll be switching to another company I do not recommend that you use charter thank you

I’ve been getting collection calls from Charter for the past 3 months because they have my phone as a contact number for one of their customers. I have never been with Charter, and when I called, they told me they couldn’t stop their own calls! This company is garbage.

One of the worst companies for Internet and TV around the Internet is good with the TV for the last 9 months they have been billing me for something on high definition recording that I haven’t had and they’re only giving me two months money back instead of the past 9 months money back

Worst TV menu navigation ever. Why did they get rid of the better Moxi boxes that had better navigation/​remotes? This experience is completely useless. The Motorola set top boxes are HUGE now… WTF? Guess they are betting on the popular internet 100 meg service and totally forgetting about the TV customer service. Guess I’ll downgrade, keep the internet and subscribe to Hulu and Netflix like everyone else seems to be doing these days. Cable TV is dying.

WORST EVER
I had Comcast for years and years in other cities but in St. Louis the only provider available is Charter. They are the absolute worst service I have ever encountered. Spotty connections, idiot customer service, illiterate technicians who argue with you about how you want your equipment installed.
I literally had to watch over the technician’s shoulder to make sure he didn’t go back on his word about how he would install the new line. I’m not a very picky person I just didn’t want my new cable line literally STAPLED TO MY WALL. I asked him politely several times to run the cable through the basement and up through the floor to my router (just like the old one had been ran), he still messed it up and ran it into a closet, then made a whole in my wall that can be easily seen to run it to the router. I gave up at that point.
I maybe get full use of my internet 13 — 16 days out of the month. I have to reset my router 5 – 10 times a day in order to get service to come back on. And every time I call them to try to address it, they brush it off and try to make me upgrade to a cable and internet package (as if that would help the terrible service I receive).
If I ever find a suitable alternative for Landline cable internet service I will jump on it. This has been a frustrating waste of my time and money.

I have lost track of how many times someone from Charter has called, trying to sell me phone/​TV service on top of my preexisting internet.
What makes me even more furious is that in an attempt to get me to pick up, the calls never come from the same number… and curiously enough, I get calls from both Chicago and St. Louis area codes. We don’t even have Charter back home in Chicago.
If you get one of these calls, don’t hesitate to interrupt them and ask to be removed from these promotional calls. They’ll even have a «this may take up to 31 days» scripted response ready.
Instead of calling, maybe they can fix the random service outages that happen like clockwork every month.

The worst internet provider ever encountered. Outages daily. Repeated technician visits have not resolved the problem. I wonder who in the city government got the bribe to give Charter
its monopoly in St Louis. The only hope is that they get acquired by another company that knows what it is doing.

I’ve never been a fan of Charter and, two years into doing business with them, I doubt that I ever will be. The company’s effective monopoly over truly high-​speed broadband service in some areas essentially means that you can’t leverage any competition against them and simply have to hope that everything works out, if you want the fastest residential internet service available in the area. (No offense to ATT’s DSL service, but it simply cannot compete).
What’s worked well is that the 30 mbps offering consistently runs at or above that level in my neighborhood (as advertised). I can count only once or twice in the last two years that the service has been down: very consistent, reliable uptime. Even the installation tech was on time, knowledgeable and gave a number of good tips for using the service effectively (for instance, it might not have been his job, but he was willing to advise on good places to put my personal wireless router and cut off plenty of coaxial cable so that I could run my modem from multiple locations).
Price hikes (to the tune of $ 10/​mo each year) aside, I’ve been lucky and would recommend their cable internet service without reservation. Reservations in recommending that anyone deal with Charter? Of course. The service itself is fine though.
Notes:
*Getting tons of junk mail from the company? «To reduce Charter direct mail, visit
;.
*It seems strange to consistently have to deal with their Retention department, but calling to ask about the promotions at least once a year seems to be required. Failing to do so will lead them to roll you into higher rates for the same service since you’re «no longer on promotion». There are deals for existing customers as well as new ones but you have to ask.

Charter is one of the worst companies I’ve ever encountered.
We’ve had Charter internet for a while with very little in the way of negative incidents, so we decided to give them a shot for cable. We are in an apartment and can’t get anything but cable, so they’ve got us between a rock and a hard place anyway (we previously only had Netflix). Anyway, we upgraded to a bundle with phone, cable, and DVR with a bunch of premium channels and were so excited for the technician to come out and install the services.
First of all, the guy showed up two hours early. Two. That’s pretty darn early when you’re in the first bracket of morning appointments. My husband and I were still sleeping when we got the knock on the door. It scared us to death — not cool, Charter. Then, the guy left without checking that the cable worked. The box was still downloading the channels when he decided it was time to hurry off to his next appointment (probably hours early again).
ONE DAY LATER, our cable went out. Completely. Called Charter and the woman told us that the guy probably installed the cable incorrectly, but that we would have to pay a service charge for him to come out and take a look. REALLY? After getting quite belligerent, she finally relented and waived the service fee since, um, it was never installed correctly in the first place. Nope, not paying extra for a service I didn’t even get. The lady set up the stupid appointment for the next day and I was left stewing over the absolutely awful service I had received, both on the phone and in person.
Well, I know a money pit when I see one. I could just imagine spending lots of money for service I rarely get, or for erroneous service charges. Believe me, I’ve seen all the reviews online… so I called back and canceled all but our original internet. The guy working in the retention department also had the nerve to try to tell me I had to return the equipment to the Charter location of their choosing. Not a chance. If I had to do that, I’d poop right on the cable box so they wouldn’t want it back. After threatening to also cancel my internet, he agreed to send out a technician at the same time as the appointment I was originally scheduled to have (the next day). I guess that’s the way it works — you threaten to leave, they’ll relent and give you what you want. Not a great way to maintain a solvent business.
SO. We’re back to Netflix and rabbit ears for local channels… and you know what? I couldn’t be happier. Screw you, Charter.
EDIT: The day the Charter guy was supposed to pick up the equipment (today), it kept getting later and later and no word from Charter. I called the customer service hotline, only to find out the previous representative I had spoken to hadn’t put in the request for them to come and get their stuff. I asked if there were any available appointments left and the new representative told me I’d have to wait a couple of weeks. When I explained that this wasn’t good enough due to all the broken promises I had already endured, the representative HUNG UP ON ME. I quickly called back and demanded to speak to the retention department directly. The retention employee couldn’t believe all I had gone through, which resulted in an appointment to pick up the equipment «within the hour.» It is now «within the hour,» so we’ll see if they can do ANYTHING right. Update to follow.
EDIT 2: NOPE. They did not show up. Retention guy offered me a $ 10 credit «for my trouble.» I laughed… I actually LAUGHED at the audacity of that suggestion. A measly $ 10 won’t win me back. The retention supervisor then offered me TWENTY WHOLE DOLLARS, with the caveat that I return the equipment myself. I have never laughed so hard in my life. Eventually, we worked out a suitable arrangement to compensate me for my trouble, but not without sitting on the phone for HOURS.
THIS COMPANY IS A JOKE. STAY AWAY.

I wish there was a «NO Star Rating!»
We have been without cable TV for over 24 hours.
No communication from Charter. (They have our email address!)
Nothing on their site about the problem, or when it will be fixed.
Horrible Service.
I’ll be looking at alternatives!

I’ve never been to this center, but this review is for the services I’ve received from Charter.
I recently moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend. We had Charter at our old place and kept Charter. A few weeks before we moved, BF called and set up an appointment for Charter to come out and set up internet, tv, etc. Two guys (Tyler and forgot the other’s name) showed up promptly at the scheduled time.
They spent an hour or so at the new apartment getting everything squared away. We forgot the remote at the old apartment, but they had an extra. They did a perfect job setting everything up/​getting it all transferred. Our DVR didn’t even miss a night of recording. Both guys also wore those little booties over their shoes whenever they were in the apartment. Nice touch!
We never have a problem with our TV/​DVR/​Internet. Thanks to these guys for a smooth transition!