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 Review by Varlik 
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 6.6 years, 2106 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Anderson,Anderson,SC
 $40 per month (6 month contract)
 about 10 days
 "It's broadband and is available at my residence."
 "Communicating with tech support, Lack of basic and general knowledge from employees about the product and its features."
 "Things are pretty much fifty / fifty when it comes to dealing with Charter in upstate Sc."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Updated 11/10/06 New service a at new location.
Pre Sales Information: Service was ordered Friday 13th Oct 2006 from the local office. The CSR that assisted me was very courteous, helpful and patient. Even though it was an hour until closing with a very long line she walked me though all their promotions, plans and their pricing. And did her best to try and answer all my questions.
Only gripes were that she didn’t know what upload was nor what the upload was on the 5M package, no one did for that matter. And the earliest she could install me was in 10 days on Monday 23rd Oct 2006 from 8-12. I ordered Charters Biggest Digital Cable Bundle with 5M / 512 HSI (providing my own modem). The rates offered where good for 6 months HSI portion of bill is 39.99 per month.
Install Co-ordination: The installer called me around 9am said that he was in the area and couldn’t find my address on mapquest. Said that he wasn’t from this area and didn’t know where he was and wanted directions. I gave him directions which took awhile since he couldn’t seem to understand that I was in an apartment. By the time he understands where he’s going he is right down the road. Then he says “I need you to be by the entrance to the apartment site. If you can’t I can just come back this evening or reschedule” So I put on my shoes and run up to the front entrance, something I’ll never ever do again.
As I get there I see a nice Charter van pulling in it passes me and I run after it. The driver slows down rolls down his window and stares at me. Turns out he wasn’t my installer but installing someone else. He was nice though said if I need help and he was still there to come talk to him.
Then a Rickety beaten up old white van pulls in the entrance with a tiny sign on the side that said Charter Contractor. The guy lets me in the van after I tell him I’m not going to walk all the way back down to my apartment. So I get in and wish that I hadn’t the place was a pigsty trash everywhere. And all the windows had multiple large deep cracks in them. Receiver boxes, equipment and tools were lying to and fro on the floor sliding around.
The installer brought with him 3 loops of Coax connectors a digital receiver and a small brown box, which seemed rather large for a remote. He set about hooking the digital box up with the coax. I went to open the brown box only to find a cable modem instead of a remote.
I asked the installer about the modem and he said that I was scheduled for a HSD install and pointed to his invoice which showed a $49.99 HSD installation charge. I then pointed to the bottom line under the same section titled “Work to be Preformed” on the invoice titled “CUSTOWNMDM” customer owns modem. And the comment section filled in by the CSR that set up the installation that said customer has own modem.
He then went out to check the equipment box outside the building only to come back in wanting me to show him which hook up was for my unit saying that none of them were marked. I told him I didn’t know so he runs in and out of my apartment several times and finally comes in telling me that it’s been on all along and that it’s included in my with rent. I tell him that hasn’t been on all along and that it isn’t included and he wanted to argue with me on the matter.
He then asked me to change the channel even though I have no remote, he didn’t bring one in. So I have to use the controls on the recover box. I check the low channels some which have specks and lines. All the Channels looked washed out. And the higher ones had lots of tilling after changing the channel for far too long a time. He said that it was normal and a good picture that he couldn’t adjust anything. I should mention he didn’t ever check the signal levels anywhere he didn’t even have a meter with him.
He still insisted on doing the HSD install even though we were using my own modem. So he unhooks the coax from my modem installs one of his and them sits down at my pc which was on unfortunately and tried to change my homepage. Saying he had to do this as part of the provisioning.
I argued for a few minutes but finally gave up and helped him find the tools option on the menu bar and change the homepage to charter.com. Then he calls in the modem and gives the wrong Mac ID giving them the USD CPE MAC ID instead of the HFC MAC ID and gets in a fuss with the Charter folks over his cell phone. He even tired to argue with me when I told him it was the wrong ID. I finally told him to stop arguing give them this ID, give me my remote and get out.
He gives them the ID I told him too and like magic I have a connection. He then says that he will have to go to his truck to get the remote. Well he leaves without giving me the remote to bad for him that I had his number on my cell phone. I called him said a few things and he is back at my door handing me the remote.
I go out to watch him leave and low and behold I can see several other Charter vans doing installs. One gets done in the apartment across the hall from me. These folks just moved in Friday and requested service that same day and they got an installation date three days latter by a real charter employee. In fact several of the installations had been requested Thursday or Friday. I checked all his coax after he left all of which had lots of little wire and insulation strands sticking out underneath the connector.
I visited the office the next day to complain about my service and instillation, luckily I get the same CSR as before. She takes off the HSD instillation charge and arranges for a tech / service call at my convenience. They were willing to do it that afternoon but since I work 3rd I picked the next day.
The tech called at 8:45am to confirm my appointment and they called again before coming to my door. The tech checked the signals at all key points, and checked all the equipment. Swapped out receiver box, splitters filter and coax. Also called over his radio to verify missing channels and help discovered and resolve a head end issue. Even gave me a direct number (a first by my memory) to call him back if I stated having issues again afterward. Things have been good since. I just wish I could have gotten a regular Charter employee to begin with since everyone else did.
Services: High Speed 5M/512K, 1 dynamic IP, 10 emails 1 GB each, 20 MB of personal webspace, 3 security keys (for Charters security suite).
Email: Email with charter can be temperamental at times. Charter has just recently upped the size of the email accounts to 1GB. There is a web mail interface available for those that need it. Charter does employee server side spam and AV filters and is using Symantec’s Brightmail. However there is no way for users to see what is being caught by the filters.
News Service: Charter contracts through Highwinds for its news service and is capped at the 128kbps level. There is a maximum of two connections per IP at the same time. Headers are not subjugated to the cap. Highwinds tends to have poor retention time and an excessively high amount of spam posts.
DNS & DHCP Servers: Charter DNS servers tend to be extremely flaky in the Upstate SC market. Because of this many users set and use other DNS servers then Charters local ones. The DHCP is on average fairly trouble free.
Support: Tech support with Charter more now then ever seems to be a gamble. It usually comes down to who you happen to reach on the phone. Or who happens to come to your house when they roll a truck. This has increased since Charter outsourced much of its tech support which is now handled by Teletech in numerous call centers some outside the USA.
Charter Security suite: Features F-Secure AV and Firewall. As well as a popup blocker and spam filter. AV uses 3 AV engines a modified KAV AVP engine developed by Kaspersky and Libra a engine developed by F-Secure both are based on virus signatures. The other is the Orion engine developed by F-Secure which is a Heuristic engine. The Firewall is leased from Zone labs and uses a in-house GUI. The product does a decent job but takes a painfully long time to connect, check for and download updates. For that reason I’ve stuck with other protection.
Billing: Is now also outsourced and handled by a call center in Mexico.
Everything below this point is a review of my service of Charters HSI when I lived within the city of Anderson for the 29621 zip code.
Old Metric ratings
Pre Sales Information: Unrated
Install Co-ordination: 20%
Connection Reliability: 80%
Tech Support: 60%
Services: 60%
Value for money: 60%
Update 8/20/05: Charter has seemed to hit a progressive roadblock more then likely due to their current finical situation. The upstate South Carolina Market was one of the first markets to Beta test the 5M / 512 package, but it’s still nowhere to be seen since the Beta ended several months ago.
Charters has switched their outsourced News service from the reputable and dependable Supernews to Highwinds. The results have been abysmal to say the least. What was once a decent set up even with its limitations is now an effort in futility. News groups are over run with duplicate posts, missing posts and spam without end. Errors of one kind or another are annoyingly common.
Charters efforts at filtering email spam have proven to be a joke. This isn’t surprising considering the fact that they’ve chosen to outsource this and are now using Symantec’s Brightmail service. There is still no means to view what is being caught by the spam filter. The concept of a junk (spam) mail account so customers can log in an see what’s being caught seems lost to Charter. Along with the fact so many other ISP’s are able to provide their users with this.
On a side note I also get cable TV service from Charter and signal issues continue to grow. I note this since both signal and line issues can affect both services. Charter insists that it is with my homes wiring even though I’ve replaced all the wiring and splitters with no difference. Even though the techs who have checked the signal got the same readings when they checked in the house, at the box outside the house and at the utility poles where the main line is.
Update 8/27/04: Since my initial review in 2002 my service from Charter has overall been good. Their have been only a few minor issues most of which were short lived in nature. Most of these were service issues involving a high upstream power level.
The Toshiba modem I was leasing from Charter went bad causing connection issues. Although it turned out that Charter had apparently never added it to my bill it was easily corrected with no issues and no cost to me. I later purchased a Motorola Surfboard 4200 modem to avoid having to pay the modem lease fee. This resulted in my only other issue with Charter. When I tried to register the Modems Mac ID, this proved to be an difficult task.
Part of this is due to the way in which support is now structured in my market. Calling my local support number now connects you to the regional call center in Louisville Kentucky who handles the first two tiers of tech support for my market.
On my first call the tier two tech tried twice to provision my modem unsuccessfully. Before another tech informed him that provisioning for my market had to be done locally. So I was told that my information would be forwarded to my local support and to give it 24 hours.
24 hours came and went and I called again with essentially the same result. Being told that my information would be forwarded to my local support and to give it 12 hours. Well 20 hours latter I call them again with the same result, they'll forward my information and to give it 12 hours. I protested since this hadn't resulted in getting the modem provisioned yet. To which the tech replied that he would mark it urgent and copy his supervisor as well.
I got home from work the next day and the modem still wasn't provisioned. Called and once again they tried to say that they would forward the info. Angrily I protested this and was transferred to a supervisor who finally told me that he would personally contact my local support and to wait 8 hours and call back if nothing happened. I told him I'd give them an hour and if I had to call back it would be to cancel both my Cable TV and Internet services. Hung up the phone and five minutes latter received a call from my local support ten minutes latter my modem was provisioned.
Charter then unveiled the Thank You Campaign back in Sept 2003 premiering their 2 Meg download speeds. Sadly the upload still remained at 128K for most markets but the price was lowered. Then in April 2004 Charter rolled out their 3Meg speeds replacing their top 2 Meg speed in many markets. They also increased the upload to 256K with the price remaining the same.
Features: 3 Megs / 256k, 1 IP, 10 email addresses 25Megs for the primary account and 10Megs for all other mail boxes, 3 security keys (for Charter Security Suite), 10 Megs of Personal Space, Newsgroups.
Email: Email with Charter has improved greatly. Charter has recently started using server side Anti-Virus and Spam filters. The results have been very noticeable, this has virtually eliminated all the incoming infected email that I receive. And it has helped greatly to reduce the amount of Spam as well.
However Charter has not provided its customers with the means to know, view and in the case of the spam filter recover if desired what is being caught. This is very disappointing considering the number of companies that provide this ability with their Antivirus and Spam filters. Because of this if you're someone who depends on being able to retrieve or send email you might want to consider an alternate email provider.
News Service: Charter contracts with Supernews and is capped at the 128kbps level. There is a maximum of two connections per IP at the same time. Headers are not subjugated to the cap. Supernews tends to have a great selection of newsgroups. And you can easily request new ones at the supernews.general newsgroup. They also tend to have a good time frame on retention as well.
So if you're someone who actively uses newsgroups you may want to also look to another provider for newsgroup access. If however you only occasionally use newsgroups then you might find Charters arrangement livable. Or great for a backup of sorts.
DNS & DHCP Servers: Charters DNS and DHCP servers are fairly reliable and errors and problems are not as problematic as they once tended to be. When problems do arise however they tend to last for days or weeks rather then hours.
Support: Tech support with Charter sadly still tends to be a gamble. It usually comes down to who you happen to reach on the phone. Or who happens to come to your house when they roll a truck. Charter uses a regional call center in Louisville Kentucky to handle the first two tiers of tech support for many markets including mine. Calling the local 24/7 support number will automatically forward you to Louisville Kentucky. Thus their is no direct way to have contact between you and the local HSI support office.
Unfortunately may employees at the regional call center either don't know or don't understand this. Numerous times I have called about an issue only to be told to call my local support office for HSI. Which is hard to do since any and all numbers seem to be set to automatically forward calls to the regional call center. And as of a year ago the only number that the local Charter office will give out is the 1-888 number.
When a truck is rolled and comes to your house are they a contractor working for Charter or a Charter employee, who knows? They don't tell you and they don't tell you their names nor do they wear ID badges. Just hope you can read the signature on the receipt, if they leave a receipt.
Often with tech support I still run into employees who don't want to give you their name when they greet you whether in person or over the phone. I'm not talking about a full name or a last name just a first name. When they do give you a name they say it fast on purpose in the hopes that you won't get it. They'll do this every time you ask them to repeat it even if you ask them to spell it.
Charter now assigns appointments in 2 hour (used to be 4 hour) windows Example 2pm - 4pm. They can then come anytime within this window. Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way. Charter doesn't care that you work first shift and had to take half a days vacation so that you could be at home to meet the tech for your 2 -4 window.
I have found it very common to get off work early to meet a tech for a window only to find that the tech came at a much earlier time in a completely different window. Usually with no phone call or message left on the machine in an attempt to even contact you. I have also come to the conclusion that Charter over schedules their employees and contractors.
Getting trouble tickets for on going problems is still like pulling teeth. Records from previous calls are still often seemingly not kept, not available or unattainable to the tech. Getting credit issued can be just as hard. In the past I've been told that I would receive credit and asked for a ticket number only to be told that I don't need one. When the bill came no credit. On a few occasions I have been given a ticket number and promised credit on for it to not show up on the bill, with their being no record of the ticket number.
Different employees will give you different answers to the same questions. Simple things like whether there is an outage or if there is another problem are blown off with responses like “We're aware of the problem and are working on correcting the situation.” They totally avoid giving out any information as to what the problem is with an estimated time frame given as to when it will be fixed.
Sometimes even basic information about their HSI service is often seemingly unknown, unattainable or unavailable to the representative you're speaking too. Even the local office will often have no filers or brochures with current info, facts and prices available. Information on bundled packages and prices tends to be hit or miss in availability. Their website while much improved still tends to have flaws in it's services availability for your residence search. And saddest of all they still don't offer a network status page after all this time.
6/7/04
Prehistory: Before Charter bought them out I had service with Helicon cable. From March 18, 1999 to September 1999. They gave me a Bay Networks modem and I provided my own Ethernet card installation was $29.95. The service provided was standard residence two way service 300k burstable. Including two-email address and 2 Megs of personal storage space for $49.95 a month.
Current: In 1999 Charter bought out the local Cable franchise in Anderson. My first bill from Charter arrived in Sept. my service and it's cost $49.95 a month remained the same.
I then received a letter postmarked Feb. 14, 2000 from Simpsonville SC. welcoming me to Charter Pipeline. It informed me of it's features and provided numbers for tech support. “Packages starting at $29.95 per month and $10.00 modem lease.” “Your account will be transitioned to the Charter Pipeline around the end of March 2000.”
This came as good news to me for weeks Charter had been advertising 256/ 128k for $29.95 a month. So I called to switch to that plan and price and was informed by the CSR that Anderson customers paid $49.95 a month for their service. And that the Ads were only for residents in the Greenville SC areas formerly served by Intermediate Cable whom Charter had also bought out.
Because “This is what former Intermediate customers and residents from the Greenville areas are used to paying.” “Charter offers that rate because we don't want to hurt our standing in this market.” She wouldn't reply as to why he Ads said Upstate SC and not Greenville SC.
March 2000 came and went and I was never contacted nor did they provision and set things up. During this time my ability to hold sync began to decline. Calls to tech support brought no resolution. They repeatedly said that my PC didn't meet their necessary requirements.
After several weeks I managed to reach a friendly courteous tech who didn't blow off my questions after she told me my PC wasn't adequate. She asked me to confirm the system stats on file for my computer, which of course were nothing like mine. She then asked what model of modem I had and upon being told Bay Networks arranged to have the modem exchanged.
A tech showed up the next day to exchange the modem. He insistently tried to open my PC and take out the Ethernet card. Stating “You're confused it's our card you've probably just forgotten.” I had to show him my contact with Helicon to get him to drop this. He then had me sign the receipt for the modem.
As he replaced the modem I had to step out of the room. While I was gone he took the liberty running a CD and installing stuff on my computer on my computer. I came back just in time to see him removing the CD. I asked him to note on the receipt that he had installed programs etc. on my computer and that the Ethernet card belonged to me. He said that he would. I then stepped out of the room to answer the phone. I came back in less then a minute only to find him gone having left no receipt.
My ability to hold sync improved but my speeds didn't. This began the numerous calls to tech support. Having to go through reboot your modem, check your network settings, reboot PC and release and renew your IP address. Missed tech support calls where the tech showed up earlier then scheduled without any advanced notice beforehand so I could be there. They would leave cards on my door saying, “You weren't at home guess you forgot. I have rescheduled you for one week from now.”
When they did show up for the right date and time, they would give me the third degree about why I had put a lock on the splitter box attached to the house. And each time I had to get them to understand that Helicon had put the lock on there and that I had no key to it. They always ended up calling others to come and see if they had a key that would open the lock.
That usually took two or three trucks and upon opening the box and seeing how things were hooked up they would say things like. “This isn't hooked up right!” “Why is this hooked up that way?” “Did you mess around with the way this was hooked up after they installed it?” “Who hooked this up?” “Why didn't they run a separate line for the modem?” “This needs to be fixed!” Funny thing is they would always put that lock that didn't belong on that box right back on. And they wouldn't arrange to have the hook up “This isn't hooked up right!” fixed.
Then I received a letter postmarked Dec 5, 2000 from Simpsonville SC. This letter stated “It is with Great Pleasure that I welcome you as new member to the Charter Pipeline family of Internet users. Effective Dec 7, 2000 you will be officially using the Charter Communications, Charter Pipeline Internet Network” “Each Charter Pipeline account that is currently paying 49.95 will be reduced to the Pipeline standard monthly rate of $39.95 this rate reduction will take effect on Jan 1, 2001. Your email residential account will change form the current heliconsc.net to the charter.net effective Dec 7, 2000....”
I now knew why things had been so bad. All this time those of us in Anderson were never on Charters network to begin with. Our bills had Charter on them but we were still paying for Helicon's network, which is why the price stayed $49.95 a month.
This is why the lady told me Anderson residents couldn't get the 256/ 128 for $29.95. And that's whey she wouldn't answer my question as to why the Ads said Upstate SC and not Greenville SC. She couldn't not without risking letting slip that we weren't on the Charter network. They didn't even have the professional courtesy to charge us the same price as other customers in the same market. But they were more than willing to keep adding more Anderson customers to the Helicon network to the point they oversold the system.
So I called them and a friendly tech guided me through making sure that I got set up right. And within a week my speeds dramatically improved. This was short lived however because remember, the old Helicon network was oversold. Well when they switch everyone guess what, yeah that's right oversell. We were oversold before we began.
Well surely they knew about this and were in the process of doing something right? Right? NO! “There is absolutely no oversell situation in the entire upstate area Mr. Varlik. What you're running into is simply what's called shared bandwidth.”
After this began a deluge of DHCP server errors and to a lesser extant DNS server errors. This lead to many phone calls, much wasted time on hold, many lies and just plain out no responses to my calls, questions and pleas for help. This went on for many weeks until they finally agreed to send someone out.
A lineman arrived around 9 pm found the lock on the box and I went through my explanation. He didn't have a key to open it and had to call two other linemen to whom I then had to repeat my explanation about the lock. Neither of them had a key that fit. At this point one of them remembered having been through this before and fetched a pair of bolt cutters and cut the lock.
Once the box was opened I then had to listen to all the questions and statements about the hookup. Well they checked the signal at the box and said it wasn't good. So they followed the line back to the utility poll unhooked the line at the bottom of the poll and checked the signal which also wasn't good.
So they shinned their flashlights up at the lines and argued over which line was what. “No! No! No! That's the phone line over there this is the cable line.” “Well what's that line there?” “I don't know!” Then one of them talked about how he's written up trouble tickets for houses all along this run of line. They then told me that it was squirrel damage and that they will check some things out and probably return tomorrow.
Well tomorrow turned out to be several weeks later, when a contacted crew came through running new lines. I asked them who they were running line for and replied “Oh Charter.” A few days latter my speeds improve. Then months later they started capping me at 256k when I was paying for 512k. This took two months before it was resolved. Then for months I received speeds that were twice what I was paying for. When I called and asked tech support about it they got mad because they thought I was complaining. But since then things have gone back to the speeds that I pay for.
Before Charter bought them out Charter used to use H.S.A (High Speed Access) for a large amount of their tech support in off hours, weekends and in smaller markets. On more than one occasion I called the local number to the Simpsonville office (24/7 tech support) only to find myself talking to an out of state HSA call center. Some of the more memorable moments are listed below.
1. DHCP errors had continued and so I called tech support. I told the lady why I was calling that I was having trouble connecting to the DHCP servers. Well the lady heard DHCP servers and that was it as far as she was concerned with my conversation. She said “Sir! SIR!! We do not use DHCP brand servers! We only use IBM and Microsoft servers.” (Yes it really did happen) She hung up the phone when I started to ask what call center she was at, what her name was (since she had never given it) and to speak to her supervisor or a tier II tech. She thought DHCP was a brand name like NEC or IBM.
2. Then there was the time I called and the tech on the phone told me “that’s strange everything is fine here.” Well she kept saying that throughout the entire call and I kept trying to work her into divulging just where here was. Well she finally told me “Colorado”. SHE WAS IN COLORADO! That’s nowhere near me so of course everything is fine there, because your not here you’re in COLORADO!
3. Once I called (back when it still gave you the network status, they stopped not long after this happened) and it gave me the network status for the Akin Sc. Augusta Ga. area. I’m not anywhere near Akin Sc. or Augusta Ga. that’s almost 150 miles from here. After getting a hold of someone and telling them my modem wasn’t able to hold sync I find out that I am talking to people in Georgia.
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