 Review by airshark 
UPDATED: 354 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 1802 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Hollister,San Benito,CA
 $59 per month
 about 60 days
 "Only choice in town."
 "Terrible phone tech support. Neglectful of this area.OVERSOLD NETWORK!!!!"
 "Using it because I don't have any other choice. Monopoly."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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It took me over two months to get an installation planned for my new home in Hollister, CA. After receiving no response to my requests for help I ended up flagging down a Charter tech off of the street one day. He was very helpful and polite and he installed my cable modem on the spot. Since then, I've had decent latency, a reliable connection, I'm topping out my advertised speed of 3mbps.
Problems: Charters DNS servers are absolutely terrible..plan on using third-party DNS. Everywhere in every other town in proximity of me is at a minimum of 6mbps (cable) and 3mbps (DSL). EVERY other company has been raising speed and lowering prices. Charter has been promising 5mbps for some time now...but it doesn't seem like it will ever really happen. Price has gone up for same service. It really feels like Charter could care less about what their customers want. I can get a different answer every time I call and speak to a different CSR.
On the BBR Forums...it always seems as if there is some anonymous poster telling all of us to "Shut Up" and stop complaining about Charter. I say that they may be company "Shills" sticking their noses where they probably shouldn't be.
It also seems as if the California (especially Northern CA) market is almost an afterthought to Charter. Middle-of-nowhere towns get speed upgrades and no one can give us any info about upgrades in the future. I wish they would just up and sell us to another Cable company already.
UPDATE: 7/18/06: Oregon and Southern/Central California have gotten speed upgrades. One hour south of Silicon Valley here and we're still stuck at 3/256. Ridiculous.
UPDATE: 4/17/07: Now on the 10/1 package for almost six months. Speed is AWESOME, price is NOT. $79.99 for 10/1 w/o cable service is just silly. Too bad I'm too much of a nerd to pass it up.
UPDATE: 5/22/07: Not receiving rated line speeds except for @2AM with same excellent modem levels. Used to be provisioned for 10+...called in to ask a question and got re-provisioned for 9+. They "Accidentally" re-provisioned my modem to 5Meg a few months ago, had to call in to get it changed back. Unrelated---Terrible slowdowns are now occurring. Repeated calls to India tech support and my frustration grows. No one(almost) knows what a ping is, all insist on "helping" me troubleshoot my computer instead of addressing a backbone issue. Promised calls back, none received. Refuse to offer me a service credit (except the one India tech support woman who "noted" it on my account.) My next call in could find no record of any such note. I have gone from a happy customer to a hateful one. *****CHARTER*****UPGRADE YOUR BACKBONE CAPACITY AND ROUTING IN CALIFORNIA! STOP BLAMING OUR PC's AND IGNORING US!!!!!!!!
UPDATE: 2/19/08: Charter finally re-routed our traffic in this area to bypass a congested router in Sacramento California. That helped with speeds for a week or so. Now, the most my 10/1 package maxes out at is 3/.7 from daylight hours until at least midnight, sometimes till 2-3AM. Pings and tracerts show regional area network congestion and Charter refuses to listen to my repeated phone calls for help. ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY the WORST ISP I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH. I drove to the Gilroy, CA office last week hoping to complain to someone in person..but GUESS WHAT???? THEIR OFFICE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN! If I could give my review "star" rating below a 20% I would. I hope that somewhere down the line, Hollister, CA will have a comparable alternative for broadband internet.
UPDATE: 11/21/08: Charter seems to have fixed its routing problems only after we got some city officials involved with legal threats. The fact that they have been having so much maintenance at night and are somehow unable to notify us of the impending outage is beyond me. Those of us that reply on connectivity for part or all of our work tasks could use some advanced notice Charter! I had to threaten to cancel to get the new "regular" high-speed price when I was paying almost double. Phone support is still awful.
Followup comments:  plattypus1
join:2005-04-08
Riverside, CA
 ·Charter Pipeline
| Talk to a tech/local office. Hey, I'm a charter tech in socal. Our CSR's may just be doing their job, but they don't know a backbone from a hole in the ground. Go to your local office, bring some printouts and ask to speak to a technical supervisor. It might take a while but you'll get results. | |
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airshark
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Premium
join:2003-05-20
Hollister, CA | Re: Talk to a tech/local office. Thanks for the advice. I'll have to try that sometime. Again, thanks for the helpful response. | |
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Carlos
@charter.com
| I don't understand I don't get why all the negative comments. I get consistent 10/1 at anytime of the day in Turlock, CA. I guess it could be there is plenty of competition from ATT. Their customer service is iffy but I hate ATT with a passion so I will more than gladly pay the $59.99 for Charter 10/1 | |
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airshark
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Premium
join:2003-05-20
Hollister, CA | Re: I don't understand Just because you have had a great experience where you live does not mean that Charter has it's game together where I live. For 79.99 I expect at least marginally acceptable service and support. | |
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AdamC831
@charter.com | thank you I live in hollister also. i give this review an A+ for accuracy. | |
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IWLoneWolf
join:2005-12-09
Dallas, OR
 ·Qwest.net
·Charter Pipeline
| review Yep and just cause you have a bad connection or bad experience does not mean every Charter customer every where does ether .There can be ISP that do great where you are at that are no good where some one else is.There really is no 100% great ISP every where | |
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IWLoneWolf
join:2005-12-09
Dallas, OR
·Qwest.net
·Charter Pipeline
4 edits | Re: review Yes and the rest of my point is my review will mostly apply to people near me as yours to people near you ,Yes should have made that more clear and I did not mean to say your review or opinion was wrong .Sorry if I gave that impression. The fact is that because there is some compation hear is why ISP are working to make there service better.Charter has been coming out of a bad financial problems and they do have new leadership. They have started to do upgrades in many areas and in time may fix the problem areas as well.The reason my service is so good is every thing locally that has to do with Internet service is pretty much new.Like one Charter user said that they might go to another ISP like DSL service and if in the future charter or another cable company offered an improved service they would give them a try.I really hope we all see greater improvements in the hole infrastructure of the internet because every time you connect to different sites for downloads ,browsing or to perhaps a game server if one does on line gaming .The routing may take you through other ISP nodes that do a very poor job.I hope you have a better experience in the future weather with a different ISP or Charter for I went though a lot of trouble with my old ISP before Charter offered Internet service here.I remember just a few years ago I do not believe I could find any positive reviews on Charter and now there is at least some ,I look forward to seeing if you ether find improvements in your service or end up with an new ISP that works better for you there. | |
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