Well I have never had a good experience using Charter Communication’s Cable & Internet services. I just recently moved again and thought I would give them another try (since it had been 4 years since I last tried them). Their pricing is very fair (for the first 12 months anyway) so I went ahead and placed my order and scheduled an appointment to have it setup. I found myself very shocked when the technician actually showed up when he was supposed to. After being at the house for around 45 minutes I was informed that another division of Charter needed to come out to fix something that the tech said was very simple, however he was not authorized to make the change. I was informed that he would then have to come back to my house after the other Charter worker fixed whatever it was he needed to do. The tech that did show up (who was a sub-contractor and didn’t work directly for Charter) was very apologetic and even got the appointment scheduled for me that very same day. However – like my prior experiences with Charter, they never showed up. I rescheduled two more times only to have a tech show up at my house one day when they were not scheduled to (and I was at work)…I told the lady that had called to inform me that the tech was at my house that I didn’t have an appointment scheduled that day and her response was “Charter seems to do this a lot” so even their own dispatchers realize that Charter is very unorganized. After trying to reschedule yet again and learning it was going to take 2 more weeks before Charter could get back to my house I told them to screw off that I would pay more money and get DirecTV along with Bellsouth DSL. They basically said “OK” and never called me again to apologize or anything.
So I did order Bellsouth DSL & DirecTV:
Bellsouth – ordered online and received a package at the door the very next day. It only took me 10 minutes to setup the service myself and I had high speed internet – WELL WORTH not screwing around with Charter anymore.
DirecTV – lots of HD channels I would not have gotten with Charter – technician installed when it was scheduled and everything was a breeze.
I have read very very few positive comments about Charter Communications online which inspired me to rant about my experience with them. Unfortunately in my area (Birmingham, AL) Charter is the only option people have to choose from unless you decide to go the satellite and dsl route which is more expensive, however in my opinion well worth it!
