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************* Service Update July 10, 2018 ************** Had Charter installed September, 2017. Tech was late. Got $20 credit. . No general issues to report. Did have a free speed upgrade from 60 Meg / 5 Meg to 100 Meg / 10 Meg.. getting 120 + Meg / 12 Meg in December. *********************September 2017******************************* Switched back from Frontier.. should have stayed with Charter! For full details, please read my review of Frontier >> »Review of Frontier Communications by AMDUSER ************* Service Update July 31, 2016 ************** The service is slow.. really slow. My old 56k modem is faster!. .. And has less buffering! I believe Charter oversold this area. Speedtest indicated 30kbps download / 1.15 Meg upload. :O See screenshot below.. It also explains why Netflix was taking a while to load.. ************* New Service May,5 2016 ************** Called up Charter on 5/2 for an appointment for 5/5 to have the 60 Meg service installed. The tech (contractor) arrived early, and had to install a new cable outlet. After that, cleaned up the cable box where the service drop is located, and proceeded to install an Arris TM 1602 eMTA. Service tested at rated speed.. and signal levels appear to be good at this time. Called up Charter to switch to a Cisco DPC3216 eMTA that I own (same 16 channel chipset at Arris 6183..). Charter got that up and running shortly.. Will update if any changes to price / service later.... ************************************************************** This Space intentionally left blank.. as the review that was here was 11 years old.. ************* Update October 2005 **************[Last update] I recently moved several days ago, and dropped Charter Pipeline 384/128 internet access. [I also had cable tv setup at the new location and the install tech was 15 minutes late for an install between 8 am- 10 am :-( .] /Switched to Verizon Online DSL... will write that review later. ************* Update May, 2005 ************** Charter raised the bill a few months ago, [the promotional package we were on expired]. As a result, the Charter Digital cable [small]TM[/small] was dumped in favor of analog cable. [It saved about $20 / month before taxes and fees.] The 384k cable internet works, it hasn't had any problems as of late. Intrestingly enough however, Verizon 3/768 DSL just became available a few months ago for the same price as the 384k bundled rate. [~$30] [Old Part of Review] I signed up for service in November of 2001 a few months after Charter finished installing the equipment to offer cable internet. It was the 256 /128 plan + digital cable to save $10 off the cable bill. At first when the technician installed cable internet & the "supposed" digital cable. The cable internet did not initially connect, but the digital cable box did work. A trip to the where the connection is feed into the house, the tech. then changed the connectors on the cables. The Charter tech. then installed the latest version of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 6 slowed down Windows Me as well as caused error messages. The Good - After that, the green light on the Motorla surfboard cable modem turned on. The service was quite reliable, ( no disconnects, low ping times) for about 6-7 months w/o any major problems. Summer of 2002 came around, and the city was doing some work in the alley, near the pole. The city workers, it appears, had damaged the cable line when they were plowing the alley preparing it for new gravel. :-( The line was basically cut as the cable guy said it was 3-4 feet of excess cable was basically pulled up. ) The service was out for about 6 hours. Called Charter, they sent a tech out who came and fixed it, as well as credited for the service outage. The Bad - A while after they fixed the cable line, they began to heavly advertise for the cable internet as well as the digital cable services. The internet service on the node, slowed down as the speads eventually dropped a little bit as the ping times increased. It evenually leveled off, and Charter eventually obtained more bandwith for the node. The connection at this point was still reliable. - The Ugly !!! Eventually over a peroid of 4-6 months they signed up quite a few customers, and the cable modem then started to lose sync and have frequent disconnects started happening. After I checked the the modem for the signal level, etc. it was obvious that it had dropped. At this point almost everyone in the immediate area had signed up. The modem has started having more frequent disconnects lately and the service becomes annoying when it does work but then disconnects while using the internet service. OVERALL RATING: Charter is reliable for the cable tv. The cable internet service needs improvement ( more reliablity) because of the frequent disconnects. ****** UPDATE ******* Charters Internet service has improved as of late. The cable internet has not been disconnecting nearly as often as it has been. [ Nice improvement] ****** UPDATE ******* October Charter upgraded the cable network in the area,and recently rolled out the 2 Meg promotion package which works great even though paying for 256K/128 . ****** UPDATE ******* Well, the free promotion to 2 Meg promotion is over at the start of April. It was nice while it lasted, dropping the connection speed back to 384K to save some money. Also replaced the Motorala Surfboard 4200 with a linksys cable modem to avoid rental fees. Looked into getting Charter Digital phone service which is available in the area a month ago- couldn't have it itstalled, the technician said it requires a basement to where some cabling from the pole would be hooked up. Attachments: member for 20.8 years, 4116 visits, last login: 332 days ago updated 5.7 years ago
Only reason I'm on this plan is because I was misinformed before porting my phone from a L-TWC package, something they've admitted to and offered inadequate solutions to fix. I dropped down to the basics: Spectrum TV Select and Internet. I would've gone with ultra but unfortunately while the tech could get a 16x4 modem to work on the plan, he couldn't close the work order with it installed and all the 24x8 modems they supply are Puma 6. My price includes a $25 discount on internet for 12 months because of my past troubles and I have 2 STB's on the account @$7/ea. I have a DCX3400 for my DVR, a DCX3200 for another room, as well as a Roku in the spare room. The modem is a Technicolor(Cisco) DPC3216. Overall I'm upset over how much I'd have to pay to get my upload speed and missing channels back and am planning to switch to at&t shortly in light of their recent bundle price changes. member for 6.8 years, 3756 visits, last login: a few minutes ago lodged 5.7 years ago
My mom has had the same Standard cable for years, decades really. No special channels, just the Standard bundle. Under Time Warner it was about $65ish/month. Since Spectrum has taken over, her monthly bill for the exact same service has continued to climb. Two months ago, they even cut the NBC and CBS channels without even negotiating (the City of Yuma is even involved as they gave no notice). As of the latest bill, it has now gone up to $98/monthâ for Standard Cableâ and they even raised the local broadcast fees, again, yet STILL won't add the NBS and CBS stations back. If any sort of competition was allowed, or if I lived closer to physically spend a few weeks (and many random other days) teaching her how to stream everything, we'd dump them (well, we'd be stuck with them for internet in that case, but she'd at least get to watch her shows). This is the only entertainment my mom has though, and she doesn't want a dish, so she's stuck with them, and Spectrum knows it. (I pay my mom's cable bill for her, so I'm very well aware enough to write this review on her behalf) member for 13.1 years, 922 visits, last login: 242 days ago lodged 6 years ago
Speed: Speeds are often close to advertised speeds. Downtime: Charter has an outdated view of Internet service for residential customers. They view it more as a convenience & entertainment service rather than as the utility it has become. Because of this mentality, they bring down the service for testing & repairs too casually and don't take legitimate outages (from storms & such) seriously enough. They regularly bring down the service for hours at a time (usually about six hours and usually during the early morning), and outages from storms are usually not handled for 12-48 hours. Additionally, the modems provided by Charter are often unable to reconnect to the service after it's been restored unless the customer completely disconnects the modem for a few minutes then reconnects it, and most customers don't know to do this. The Technicians: The local installation/service technicians are incompetent, rude, pushy, invasive, macho a-holes. I nearly had to kick one off my property because his attitude was so far out of line. Picture guys who aspired to be corrupt bully cops but couldn't make the force. I've spoken with my family, friends and neighbors about them. Virtually all had bad experiences to report. Throttling: Charter monitors how much bandwidth you're using and how you're using it. If they don't like how much you're using or how you're using it, they'll start throttling your connection. Reporting down service: If you call to report that your service is down (whether it was brought down intentionally by Charter or by a storm), you'll get an automated system that asks for your account information then runs you through the time-consuming idiot test (is your modem plugged in?, etc). After you get through the idiot test, instead of giving you the option to simply report that your service is down, you're either forwarded to a live person or told to call back during a time when one will be available. The live person essentially has no information about anything and has no ability to record/report that your service is down. They are capable of three things: (1) asking for your account information, (2) going through the idiot test with you again and (3) scheduling an appointment for a technician to come to your house. At one point my service was down for several days because a technician, without telling me, had put a filter on my line (at the pole) because he suspected there was line noise coming from my house (turns out there wasn't) and he installed the wrong type of filter so it completely blocked my service. When I eventually called and got through to a live person, she had no information about the technician messing with my line. I only found out when a second technician showed up two days later, found the filter and told me what happened. Conclusion: All things considered, the cost of service, in my opinion, is about double what it's worth. If there's another choice in your area, give it a try. Unfortunately, I only have Charter and AT&T to choose from and AT&T is even worse. member for 8.2 years, 2 visits, last login: 5.3 years ago updated 6 years ago
I have Spectrum TV (Silver, Tier 2, three DVRs), Normal internet (100 up, 10 down...all that's available), and Voice. My mother is older and moved into our house. She wanted regular TV with a bunch of channels, and a land line which we had ditched some years ago. So I called up charter and ordered more TV stuff, some DVRs, and the phone. It is extremely expensive now, but hey, my mom deserves to get what she wants. The upgrade process was painless. The DVRs are a decade old, at least. They are stand alone units...can't record a show and watch it in another room or anything like that. I like to watch baseball and they only broadcast FSSW in 720p for some reason. On top of that it glitches out a lot. Anyway the DVRs are Explorer 8640HDC with a really bad guide. Last time I was having connectivity issues they gave me a new router off the books. It's a SageMCom something or other. I'll be replacing it soon. The modem is an ARRIS...not sure of the model number. I've had Charter/Spectrum internet for years. There are definitely periods where it works fine, and if it's working fine I get higher than advertised speeds usually. Like 122 down, 14 up. Ping times are usually in the 8-10ms range. But there are times when everything goes to hell and it's a pain to get fixed. Usually I'll start losing upload speed. Then if I can't get anyone out here to actually fix it, the upload speed will drop to the sub 1Mbps range while download speeds are up and down. If they fail to fix it and the problems continue, it will get to the point where the internet is unusable. Complete outages have been rare (knock on wood), thankfully, but these signal problems are not and the first tech rarely gets anything done. It usually takes a week to straighten it out, but sometimes longer. I've had crappy internet from Dec 10, 2017 all the way up the very end of February and finally, for now, things are working well. 100/10 is as fast as I can get. I'm really looking forward to having the option to upgrade. 100 down is fast enough but 10 up is not. Plus, if they upgrade their equipment maybe the connection will get better. One can hope. There are good things about Charter/Spectrum. You don't have to wait on the phone forever to talk to a tech support person. Also, when they roll a truck they give you a 1 hour window, not this "we'll be there sometime between 8 am and 6 pm" nonsense. And generally it's just good that they exist, even if it is expensive and unreliable. My only other option is ATT DSL. I almost forgot. The Spectrum website is very slow, and many features just don't work. Now it could be that I have lots of privacy extensions and about:config tweaks in my Firefox profile, but I cannot check the land line's voicemail on the desktop computer anymore. The site says all my equipment as "unknown", which happened recently. It's also more difficult than it should be to compare the different TV plans. But even with all the complaints I'm still glad to have Charter over ATT. That's life in a local duopoly. member for 6 years, 42 visits, last login: 5.1 years ago lodged 6 years ago
Don't bother trying Spectrum Stream or Spectrum choice. After 24 hours, they still can't get my account active, and just keep trying to up-sell to regular cable TV. It's no wonder they are bleeding video customers like mad. They don't want my money! member for 24.3 years, 4986 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago updated 6 years ago
public: Pathetic - Had Bright House (aka T-W Roadrunner) for years and the service was generally good. Since it went from Bright House to Charter-Spectrum, the speeds have continuously gotten worse. Paying for 50/5 - usually see about 30/2-3. Changed to my own modem about a year ago, and it helped with the speed, but now the service just keeps getting slower. I can see the cable junction box out my back window (across the yard), and it looks like a grizzly attacked it. Cover is off..wires poking out everywhere...ugh! The rates went up at the year's beginning about the same time the service began getting worse...go figure. member for 6 years, 2 visits, last login: 289 days ago lodged 6 years ago
TV Prices are terrible, once spectrum took over my market pretty much everyone saw a $50+ increase in their bill for the same crappy service. Their DVR are embarrassingly out of date (2007) this company is a shining example of why people are cord cutting. member for 21.8 years, 1128 visits, last login: 104 days ago lodged 6.1 years ago
This is not Ortonville it is Goodrich 48438. Worst service ever and it is in the Entire zip code area. Unfortunately there is this or Charter DSL. I would laugh if I were not already crying. My cell service has better reliability and speeds than this and that is in a lousy cell area. Constant outages, constant drops and incomplete connections. A download for W.O.W. took over 24 hours and then did not work because of drops. I ended up taking my machine down to a friends house in Comcast area, done in 5 minutes with no problems. As I said this is a territory wide problem as I have gone to other homes and business in area and they all have the same problem. Time for a class action I guess. Equipment has all been changed out a few times and tried in other cable company areas, no problems so we know it is the company and the service. member for 21 years, 117 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago updated 6.1 years ago
I have internet-only with Spectrum, for $39.99/month. I have phone service with another company. I thank G-d for that. I would hate to rely on Spectrum for telephone service. It's bad enough to rely on them for connecting to the internet. I started out with Time Warner as my ISP, with whom I had no problems except for mediocre speeds. Time Warner sold the business to Spectrum, which is a Charter company. Therefore, since my internet cables and such were already installed by Time Warner, I cannot comment on how Spectrum handled the process. I have my own modem, an Arris Surfboard SBG6400, which was suggested by Time Warner as a modem which would work with their service. Spectrum in NYC has had FOUR outages, lasting for hours, over the last month and a half. The last one affected so many NYC residents, it made the front page of a local newspaper. Some of the outages were due to vandalism by disgruntled electrical union employees, which demonstrates to me that Spectrum managers are third-rate at best. Tonight's 2 hour outage was claimed to be "maintenance". The rep on the telephone claimed that customers had been notified before the "maintenance". I sure was not notified. As my father would have said, Spectrum is about as reliable as a broken arm. This number of outages in such a short time, affecting thousands of people in the NYC area, is not acceptable. If there is another reliable internet company offering service in NYC, I will look for it. When my internet service was supplied by Time Warner, it would be unusual to have an outage more than perhaps once a year. But Spectrum? SPECTRUM TOTALLY STINKS. BTW, can you imagine having your telephone service supplied by Spectrum, and not be able to phone for help in an emergency, thanks to their latest "outage"?? member for 9.6 years, 10 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago updated 6.1 years ago |