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Links with Bakedblog.com Charter Communications lacks actual Communication
Charter Communications has been our service provider for years now, and up until a couple years ago they were a great company, and I valued not only their Internet, phone, and digital cable service, but their customer service as well.
They grew as most good companies do, and grew, and grew. Now they are a huge company, and instead of this improving their services it has made it go down hill. I don’t know if this is the case for all companies that achieve a growth spurt, but I believe it is true for charter. Their customer service has gone way down hill, and after the weekend I have had with Charter I am confident in saying this. Let me tell you about my weekend, it is both hilarious and disconcerting.
Saturday night we were away for my Nieces 5th birthday party. I had such a great time, and I was really excited upon returning home because Sunday was Mothers Day. I was going to get to stay up as late as I wanted and play some games on the computer. While this may not sound like much fun to some of you, I am a gamer chick at heart and I don’t often get to stay up and play because I wake up with my 3 year old son, and take care of him in the morning. Mothers Day is different though I get to sleep in, and stay up and I was relishing the thought as I stepped into my middle room and saw my Internet modem blinking. I had hoped this was just a simple fix unplug the modem, replug it in wait, and I get reconnected. This is the way it usually happens. However we were having bad storms, and my hopes dropped because I pretty much figured that it was an outage.
I sit down and prepare myself to make my first call to Charter Communications. I go through all the hoopla press number one for English, options one through three to get to your department, then the recorded lady that wants me try to the basics first, which I just skip and press 0, upon which the recorded voice says “you wish to speak with an agent,” and I say YES. She connects me. Then for a while I listen to the same music loop over, and over again until I am connected to someone who says his name is something generic like Tim, and has an accent I can’t put my finger on.
Here is where my struggle with Charter Communications starts because half the time I can’t understand the people that are talking to me. About 5 solid minutes of that conversation is me saying “excuse me what did you say, could you repeat that please, I am sorry I don’t understand what you just said.” So we go over what is wrong, my connection is down, yes my TV is still working, but the Internet is out. “Is your modem connected through a router?” Yes it is, then he has me remove the router connection and directly connect the modem to the computer. At this point he tells me it is a problem with my modem, and that I should go to an office and get a new one, or they can send a technician out to take care of it. All hope is lost for me until I can take care of this, but then we go through a couple more steps and he tells me that he now believes it is an outage because there are calls coming in from my area.
Ok it is an outage now, and not my modem, fine I can handle that, they have no control over the weather. Sunday comes and Sunday starts to go, and still I have no connection. So I call Charter again. This time I speak with a guy who says it is my bill that is the problem and he transfers me to financial. At this point that is fine with me, I know I need to pay a past due amount on my bill, and I was going to do it ironically Saturday night. I get connected to a woman in Financial. Again this woman has another accent that I can’t understand and whats worse is she is soft spoken. So not only am I trying to understand what she is saying, but I am having to give my husband dirty looks to quiet down my son because I can barley hear this lady.
The problem isn’t an outage she informs me, it is your bill. Okay well this is what I can pay now, and I can pay the rest on the 23rd. To which she replies when can you pay the rest on the 14th? No I say I can pay the rest on the 23rd. To which she replies okay how about the 21st? By now the feeling of wanting to rip out my hair is upon me, and I am more then irritated about this happening on Mothers Day. Any other day fine, but not today, today is my relax not deal with bills and crud day. So finally we agree that I can pay the rest on the 23rd.
Here is the hilarious part. I ask her if she can connect me to the Internet so I can pay the bill online, because this is what they have done for me in the past, and I pay right away. My husband gets paid bi-weekly so sometimes I have to wait to pay bills. She informs me that I can pay online and then she will connect me to the Internet. Can all the computer lovers around the world just sigh with me at the same time. Did this woman just actually tell me that without having an Internet connection, I can go online and pay my bill, and then she can reconnect my modem? Hold on for one second while I pray to the Internet Gods to give me a 5 minute connection so I can take care of this. I actually repeated what she said out-loud and I think my husband about died laughing in the kitchen. I pay the amount we have agreed upon and she says to me, okay 5 minutes and your Internet will be connected.
Whoo finally it is all sorted out. Five minutes come, Five minutes go, and still no connection. I wait, I reboot the modem, and nothing, nadda, zip, zlich, zero. I call back and this time I speak with a technician, who informs me that it isn’t a financial problem it is most likely an outage in my area due to the storms, they are receiving problem calls from my area, but Charter hasn’t started working on it yet.
Lets recap it is Sunday, and I have been through 4 people. First it was my modem, then it was an outage, then it was my bill, then it was an outage. T here is nothing more I can do Sunday after the last guy tells me it isn’t my bill it is an outage. I say fine and wait another day. Monday morning comes and I am livid that I still have no connection. I hang my head and begin dialing a number that is unfortunately burned into my brain. I speak with another female this time, I am trying not to yell, in fact I am the opposite of yelling I am on the verge of tears. She sees the payment I made, that it isn’t my bill, that it isn’t an outage because there was one, but they had fixed it, so it has to be my modem, and she will be sending a technician out today between 11-3.
Finally, fine that is a relief. Then I walk into my living room to turn on my son’s favorite cartoon, and bam I get Please wait a moment this channel is currently unavailable. O M G, so I call charter back and this time I head straight to financial. I get a guy and I say I want to speak with your supervisor. Guy takes phone number, address, and name. I have recited these and the last 4 digits of my SS# so much over the past days I mumble the lines as quick as I can just to get it over with. Stupid me he didn’t understand so I had to repeat.
This guy tries to tell me I can’t speak with a supervisor, which just about makes me crack, and I explain to him (yes in an angry tone,) that I don’t care what he has to say connect me with a supervisor NOW. He puts me on hold, and I listen to the same music loop over and over again for 10 minutes or more.
3 straight wins at Free cell in 10 minutes not bad.
Then I speak with Ann the current Financial supervisor. I make a point to take in her name because I am finally at my wits end. She informs me it is my bill. That the payment I made wasn’t enough, and even though the previous financial lady told me it was enough she was incorrect. She can connect me now and keep my connection alive until the 15th of May and if I don’t pay the rest by then, I will get disconnected again. They will wave the $1.99 reconnection fee though since I have been through such a hassle. Thank god for that too, because that reconnect fee was going to break me.
She informs me that she won’t be giving me any credits for the time I have been without service, because even though tom, dick, and harry have all told me it is 5 different things, this is really why my connection isn’t working. They can’t give you credits when your without service because of the bill. The voice inside my head is screaming well I wouldn’t have been without a connection this long if someone had just given me the real reason and actually bothered to fix it. I stay silent though because we are busy going through the same steps I have been going through over the past couple of days. Disconnect, shut down computer, reboot, reconnect, blah blah blah.
Surprise, surprise, my digital cable on the TV comes back on, but nothing on the Internet connection. She transfers me to a technical, only after informing me that the technician who would have shown up at 11-3 today was already cancelled because of my bill. I laugh and ask her if anyone would have informed me of this, and she says probably. Back to the same awful looping music to wait some more. I get another guy, again I can barley understand, and he works his magic, and with in about 15 minutes of trying this and that he finally gets my connection back.
I am grateful to this last guy for three reasons, one he gives me my connection back, two he doesn’t tell me what package I have (I have heard that from almost every person I called,) and three he doesn’t recite what my balance is and what I still owe. It is a simple goodbye with “will that be all, can I assist you with anything else?” No. then you have a great day!
Sadly I don’t know where to go from here, I am seriously upset with being tossed around like an old potato given this, and that excuse, and none of them being true. I love the services charter provides, I have never had a problem with my phone, the digital cable with the DVR has always been great, and for the most part the Internet service is impeccable.
However when comes to trying to get something fixed and having to go through Charter Communications Customer service I wince automatically. I actually had to have a technician come to my house once because we had ordered a second DVR box and they gave us the wrong one. He left to go out to his van to get something, and laughed when he came back into the house because I was busy re-hooking the new DVR up. He said you could do my job, I smiled and politely informed him that I had been through this before, and even though I could do his job there wasn’t any way I would ever be taking it from him.
I miss the Charter I used to know, the one that had local offices in my area that I could call when a problem came up. There are still local offices around here, but they don’t have any phones, or phone numbers that you can call to speak with them. I guess they are just there basically to hand out equipment when it is needed and to take payments from people who don’t pay through mail, Internet, or phone.
I don’t enjoy writing this post, I hate to bash a company, but when that company gets to big for its britches and lets good customers down over and over again, I can’t hold my tongue. I will be sending all of this in an email to Charter Communications vice president and general manager Stephen Trippe. I will report any responses I receive from him and hopefully I will get a happy ending out of all of this.
I would like to apologize to the readers of my blog. Bakedblog will be back on track tomorrow. I have some wonderful cookie recipes to give you this week, and I would have given you one today if not for the problems with my Internet, and not being able to send the cookies to my husband’s work. To anyone who actually read this whole post, kudos to you it is a lengthy one.
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I was just talking about how horrible Charter is yesterday. We decided to get rid of cable because of how terrible Charter was when we were trying to get rid of the movie channels. The customer service was so awful that we just cancelled, and I never looked back. We changed our internet provider just so I would never have to deal with what you just described. I can’t wait until they have real competition.
Being south of St. Louis, Charter is pretty much the only option we have here as well. We had something similar come up with these kind of things. When I know we have a past due, and the net is up I go through the internet customer service on the website and set up to pay it, and they always give the extension.
Dealing with them on the phone is a joke, we got the runaround a couple weeks ago about the DVR. We called and were told you can pick up the box at the local office. So we went down there and were told, no you had to set up an appointment, which we did for that Friday between the ever popular 1-5.
At 4:59 pm, and I am not even making it up, the guy shows up, and can’t get the box to work. He flips it over and there’s a sticker on it, showing that there were problems with it. Of course, he doesn’t have another one and can’t get one tonight because everyone is gone.
So Tina calls the customer service, and gets told that dispatch will be notified and we’ll be set up Saturday. Never happens. The guy shows up TUESDAY, doesn’t know how to do stuff, finally gets the box to work so things show up…problem solved? No.
Normally the guide updates with everything, and of course, the point of DVR is to record stuff. Couldn’t do that. I go through customer service, I think four people like you did, to find out they gave the WRONG SERIAL NUMBER on the box to be provisioned, and the box I have supposedly isn’t the one I’m supposed to have. It wasn’t until last Wednesday that it actually was working right.
Things like this make me wonder if these people actually get paid when they should or if the printer gets sent to a different place from where the checks get printed.
I so feel your pain. This sounds so close to my experience’s with HughesNet for our Internet. I currently have a brand new modem sitting under my computer in the box because they decided it didn’t work because of a bad signal and I needed to pay an ungodly amount to have a technician come align my satellite. What I never could understand is why the current one works fine. Wouldn’t the alignment need to be the same for both? Of course, all those I talk to at Hughes I’m pretty sure do not speak English as a first language (which is the first and maybe foremost problem). Yep! I sympathize with you TOTALLY. Good luck in deciding whether or not to stick with them. Unfortunately for me there are really no other options in the woods of East Texas.
charter is a company with one foot on the ground and the other in the grave they fired there sevice reps at the local call centers they only can afford indian service reps .If you want to talk to a real english speaking service rep. try ATT the person may be in clevland or dallas but the person you will speak to will be from here. That persons income will be spent on children living in this country.Also the phone companys are a regulated service industry they can’t just raise your bills with out the ok from the govt.They have to reastablish outages with in 24 hr or the govt. fines them. They do have a few outs on this weather ,crime damage .TRY DSL OR UVERSE
I posted on this very thing today, as well!
http://manodogs.blogspot.com/2008/05/problem-with-corporate-billing.html
I posted on this just today!!! I kept trying to include a link to it so you could read it, but apparently, I cannot. However, I linked to your post from there.
I too soo feel everyones pain charter is the absolute worst my internet works about 50% of the time I am surprised that it has worked long enough to type this letter, and the customer service you explained is exactly as you say I will be so glad when they have a competitor.
Very well written, Rachel! Real customer service is lost everywhere. I don’t have the same company as you. But went through something the other day with a different company!
Sorry about your Mother’s Day. Hopefully your hubby will let you relax next weekend
Sounds like the Internet company in Fargo, Cable One. It has a monopoly and therefore can do whatever it wants. We pay a fortune for really terrible service. And the bill will just increase by 25 percent with no warning.
Unfortunately, CHARTER still has not addressed the issues with customer service. I’ve been calling customer service for 3 months now trying to resolve an error on my telephone bill. I spoke with a customer rep today by the name of “Monique” (probably not even her real name) and I was appalled by the way she spoke with me. You all know the drill; they say “just pay the bill and we will credit it back to you.” It sounds like a scam to STEAL money from innocent customers. I can’t believe they employ such reps who would dare speak to customers the way she spoke with me. When I asked to speak with a supervisor, she told me “He already spoke with you last month and there’s nothing more to say to you.” Can you believe that!! Well of course you can. Look at the number of comments made about CHARTER. When are we all going to stop using them as a service? It’s too bad we have grown addicted to cable services (myself included). However, this weekend marks a change for me. Once the bill discrepancy is resolved, I will be switching to AT&T. Good luck to the rest of you until you can make a choice to discontinue your service.
Charter is HORRIBLE! We had a bundled package with phone, internet and cable. I called weeks ago to cancel our internet and cable but instead they cancelled our phone. After 8 years with the same home phone number, we were told we couldn’t get it back even though it was there error. It’s been almost a month and we still are not close to getting our phone back. I literally call 4 times a week and each customer service rep tells me a different thing. No joke! Ugh!
I had only 3 months of service with Charter, not much of an experience base. Then, I was advised I would be transferred by my company. So I terminated service with Charter. OK so far…
Then the Stock Market crashed, my comany got cold feet over moving anyone, and I was told to stay put. Here’s where the drama begins.
I called Charter to say “never mind, hook me back up please.” I still had my cable box and Internet modem. Charter scheduled an install appointment for Thursday, between 2 and 4 PM. I took the afternoon off work (not a fun thing to do in my field) and waited, and waited. At 4 PM, I called support. I have a cell phone with a Northern California number. No land line, just a cell phone. So I when I called, their moronic call routing system, it prompted me for my home phone number, and after I entered it, replied that: “That is not a valid number.” I thought: “well dummies, I’m calling from that number, so don’t tell me it’s invalid. It’s your call center computer programming that’s ‘invalid’.”
Finally, after insistently entering the same number over and over, the call center computer gave up on telling me how wrong I was, and routed me to a live human - somewhere in New Deli, from the sound of the accent. I managed to struggle through the accent with several can-you-repeat-that-please requests (do I have to learn Hindi to do business here?). The tech was able to find my account by my account number (which had enough digits to be in the quadrillions - more than the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy - does Charter number how many molecules are in their cable box to assign the account number?). I was then put on “drop dead” hold for 37 minutes — and then disconnected.
Call back, navigate past the call center computer’s chastisements about my “invalid” telephone number, get another person in Bombay… Tell my story again about how the installer is a no-show deadbeat. This time, they promised to call me back when I protested being put on hold. Wait one hour - no call back.
Call back again, navigate through computer idiocy, get another person. Now I realize that the installer is a bold faced liar who never came near my home. The Internet modem can’t be “provisioned” because the cable feed is still disconnected. And then I’m told that service can’t be installed until I return Charter’s equipment - so they can just bring it back to my home! It’s “policy.”
Two days later, and I now have satellite TV installed, and I’m using my Verizon account to connect to the Internet.
The cable companies are monopolies - you have no choice over which company to use. There is still some competition with satellite TV (nobody “owns” the airwaves) - so guess which industry gives better service? I know the Republican party is big on “deregulation”, but when you deregulate a monopoly, all you do is give them permission to rape the consumer — without so much as a thank you afterward.
Charter changed from a great company to a company that treats customers horribly! I have been dealing with many of the same issues mentioned above. CUSTOMER SERVICE and TECH SUPPORT are rude, inept, and not truthful. This is from a customer, well FORMER customer of 15 years! After turning in all the equipment, getting a receipt, and actually having a credit on our bill…..we got “the letter”. Guess what? Charter is trying to charge us hundreds and hundreds of dollars for equipment we never had.
The letter threatened legal action to recover the items.
How can we return items (for example routers and modems we never obtained from them). We bought ours elsewhere. BEWARE! Stopping service will not stop this company!
I would not have kept Charter had I been offered a year free of charge.
Now, I suppose they are taking us to court. BEWARE!
PS. For those of you who are given information on when the repair person will arrive, don’t sit and wait. I sat here for three DAYS from 8am to 8pm…….and was reassured every two hours (I called) and of course no repair person came.
As a contractor for these idiots at Charter, I can tell you management has no clue what is happening in the field with customers.
The people you are talking to are in either the Philipines or Panama of late. Sometimes you get lucky and get the US. Sometimes your call goes to Ontario. Then there is the problem of getting connected to the wrong system….you are either an ICOMM Charter billing or CSG (or some such nonsense) Charter billing. The two systems are NOT connected. Get connected wrong and you may have to call back or hope you can be transferred properly.
Charter a couple years back laid off 200 people in their call center headquarters in St Louis MO and contracted out the call center operation to Teletek in Philipines… thus the problem with you understanding them and them understanding you.
The problem with getting reconnected is that digital is one system, a CSR can go in and send a signal to your box. But if you want your internet back on they have to log into a SEPARATE system called “Aurora” and reprovision your modem. If it is telephone, that is a whole other system and has to be reconnected by the phone department and jump through a bunch of hoops…ALLEDGEDLY to meet FCC requirments.
Charter is deep in debt…$20 billion in the hole as of 2Q 08. I am waiting to see what 3Q 08 brings. They just refinanced a bunch of 2009 debt to 2015, so they are playing shell games.
Charter is so desparate that they are giving away promotion deals like day after Haloween candy. If you signed up for a deal and then your bill comes and the deal is not there, it is because someone did not enter a code correctly. There are codes for ICOMM, CSG, then for U-Verse areas and non U-verse areas….then single play, double play, triple play, overbuild…you get the picture…there are literally hundreds of promo codes floating around the billing system..
Recently Charter updated sales promo codes again…. no wonder they cant keep it straight…I hate trying to sell cable… I dont encourage customers to sign up with charter, especially phone service. .. I hate it, I am just a contractor for them…. I have AT&T U-Verse….if Charter were the only alternative for cable/internet/phone, I would go back to carrier pidgeon and the post office.