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Review by Crainial 
UPDATED: 95 days ago
member for 8 years, 61 visits, last login: 73 days ago
 Beloit,Rock,WI
 $50 per month
 about 4 days
 "Fast when running"
 "60-75% Uptime, Tech Support is ..."
 "ok if you have no problems..."
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UPDATED 11/25/06** Charter does have a fast service (5Mb/512k) but with such poor up times as of late, I am considering switching to AT&T DSL. I have called so many times do to outages, and have had only one helpful tech. 3 supposed service calls to the house have been 1, and I have been told by Tech Support that I couldn't talk to a supervisor. Careful w/Charter....
UPDATE 09/05/09
»www.speedtest.net/result/557006006.png
Ug. Supposed to have 10/1 but this is fast for what i have. Just got done signing up for AT&T U-Verse service. Not only is the internet slow, but on the TV side the HD qulaity is HORRIBLE!
Attachments:
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 Review by dave49er
UPDATED: 96 days ago
member for 5.5 years, 3419 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Walnut,Los Angeles,CA
$54 per month
about 7 days
"Was good for a few years."
"Was horrible towards the end."
"Very happy with Verizon FIOS now."
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It was great for the first few years, then it really got horrible. Constant disconnects because (according to the techs) the signal coming in to the house was too hot. When it was idle, the first time you tried to check email, or click on a link, or otherwise send something upstream, it would reboot the modem and I'd have to wait several minutes before it was operational again. Then I could use it for a while, but it would keep dropping out. Techs came over and changed the signal reducer (attenuator?) that they would put on the end of the coax, before it attached to the modem. Things would get a little better. I dumped Charter for Verizon FIOS as soon as I could. The same price, but for 20m/5m instead of 5m/512k. And it works.
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Review by Spense626
UPDATED: 100 days ago
member for 2 years, 124 visits, last login: 13 days ago
San Gabriel,Los Angeles,CA
$64 per month
about 3 days
"Super fast, reliable, love it"
"Expensive"
"HSI is great would recommend."
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UPDATE 8/30/2009 - 20/2 became available just recently so I immediately upgraded and the speeds have been awesome. I am in the Promotion for 54.95 a month which is kind of expensive but worth it if you can afford it, charter has definitely made some steps in the right direction the service has been flawless so far! thumbs up charter!!
Check out these great speeds!!!! love it.
Last Result:
Download Speed: 21834 kbps (2729.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1706 kbps (213.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Ordered 10 meg cable about 3 weeks ago, took about 3 days from the order to install which was great. Right now I am not in a contract because I have heard bad things about charter so I did not want to get locked in, I am paying 64.99 a month right now for the 10MEG package. I am always getting the speeds that I payed for even a little more. I am very impressed with charter right now, coming from 5 Meg DSL this cable is blazing fast.
*8-14-2009* Just a little update they put me in the promo for 44.95 a month which is great, also my speeds have been rock solid 10/1 solid ALL day, only 1 outage in the early morning in the past 3 months thumbs up charter!
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Review by bgetchel
UPDATED: 101 days ago
member for 9.4 years, 186 visits, last login: 19 days ago
Boaz,Marshall,AL
$94 per month
about 3 days
"Charter has gone from pathetic, to satisfactory, to near-excellent!"
"Significant improvements in reliability and consistent speed."
"Still expensive, and monopolistically so, but now they are worth it!"
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[UPDATE: 08-29-2009]
Well... it's been nearly a full year since my last "update." In that time Charter has gotten better, and worse, at the same time. I've received another "stealth" speed upgrade to 20 Mbps, and I get most of all of it a good portion of the time. I can download NNTP (usenet) for hours at a time and speeds will stay within the 15-20 Mbps range for the most part. In fact, I'm downloading about 8GB via NNTP right now with speeds fluctuating in the 18-23 Mbps range.
Not too shabby!
The "worse" development has to do with connection reliability. Our phone is VoIP and we are in a rural area, so there's no cell coverage. As an aggregate, we're down roughly 24 hours per week. Outages are wholly random, rain, shine, storms, or perfect weather, day or night, weekends or weekdays, there is no pattern. Charter has actually regressed in reliability - not as badly as when I first got their service, but to a nearly unacceptable level. We pay $90/mo for internet only (no CATV, not even "basic"), which is very steep relative to other, superior service offerings, but Charter has a broadband monopoly out here in the sticks -- no DSL, no FiOS, nothing.
Let's get it together, Charter!
[UPDATE: 10-17-2008]
Charter has improved considerably, at least in my area. Credit where credit is due. I can't allow my initial negative review to stand at this time. Connection reliability, while far from excellent, has improved to reasonably satisfactory levels. Performance is generally excellent, and I now have been "stealth" upgraded to their new 16Mbps service since becoming available a few months ago.
All-in-all it has been a marked, welcome improvement. Charter, much to this cynic's pleasant surprise, has really come through.
Keep up the good work!
[Revised 6-24-2008]
Well, it's been another six-plus months since my last review update. Service and performance have improved considerably since my last report. Outages are down dramatically to only a few hours per month (not great, but great by comparison), and improvement to performance has been no less dramatic. I typically receive the full 10 Mbps that I'm paying for with negligible slow-down. I ditched Charter's television service altogether in favor of DirecTV. Their cable television was poor quality and woefully inadequate -- and lacked any real HDTV options. DTV, by comparison, has 10x the number of HD channels as well as a plethora of other channels that Charter doesn't even offer.
Anyway, about the connection. If services remains at the current level, as it has been for the past couple of months, I can retract my previous review and replace it with this much more favorable one. They're still more expensive than most every competing service (that I can not get), but still a reasonable value. Hopefully they will introduce their 16Mbps service soon when, at that time, I will report on in more depth.
For the moment however, I am fully satisfied with my Charter Pipeline broadband internet service.
[Original Review]
I've had Charter's (clogged) Pipeline for about six (6) months now. I wanted to give it a reasonable amount of time before writing a review, to see if there was a consistent pattern. There is, and it's not a good one, unfortunately. I immediately signed up for their 10/1 package, which was problematic from the start. It took numerous calls to their technical "support" department before I was actually seeing anything that resembled 10Mbps speeds. About the only good thing that comes from dealing with their support personnel is that they make you feel competent and intelligent by comparison. Talking to a Charter "tech" is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
With Charter, you wake up wondering just what kind of internet connection they'll feel like bestowing upon you that day -- if it works at all. They're basically the Andy Kauffman of the ISP world: you get the distinct impression that they really don't want to be in the internet business at all, but if they're forced to do it then their clueless customers are going to bear the brunt of endless "practical jokes" perpetrated by beleaguered Charter technicians. Service and support this poor simply can't be caused by mistaken incompetence -- it just has to be intentional.
I know this sounds like a typical "squeaky wheel" rant, but I've dealt with a myriad of different companies and types of connections in my profession as a WAN developer, and while I've encountered incompetent individuals and companies none have reached the bottom wrung that Charter alone seems to relish. If you wanted to build a company from the bottom up around charging the most while providing the least I would submit Charter as the primary case study.
It's not all bad. On the ever-more-rare days when the connection is operating at full potential things are good. It's very fast and you can maintain a 10Mbps download for many straight hours. However, I can not recall the last time I've been blessed with such a connection. I've been paying a severe premium for their 10/1 package, but rarely do I see speeds above 2Mbps any more, and even those speeds fluctuate wildly from near zero up-to 2Mbps.
If you don't need 10Mbps (good luck getting it) I seriously recommend looking at DSL or other alternatives. I can, in no way, recommend Charter based upon my experiences and those of my two neighbors. They've had Charter much longer than I and absolutely hate it, but we're way out in the country with the nearest CO a good 25000+ feet away. Otherwise, I'd take the large on-paper speed hit and exchange it for a reliable, consistent connection any day.
For Charter, it's two thumbs down... WAY down!
UPDATE - 11-05-2007: I just received my first BBR monitoring report for the weekend. The most optimistic report cited a 75.94% reachability. I'm surprised it was that high. In my experience it's been down or sporadic 50% of the time. Of course, I assume this is a 24-hour monitor, so it might be great while I'm asleep in bed.
UPDATE - 11-12-2007: Here is my second BBR monitoring report. Talk about going from worse to horrendous:
Outage report as seen by new jersey USA ny-monitor.dslreports.com
--------------------------------------
DOWN 2007-11-05 04:03:10 - 2007-11-12 03:01:12 (10018 minutes)
** You had 0.62% reachability during the period
Outage report as seen by california USA sjc-monitor.dslreports.com
--------------------------------------
DOWN 2007-11-05 04:03:21 - 2007-11-12 03:01:12 (10017 minutes)
** You had 0.62% reachability during the period
Outage report as seen by san francisco USA 64.81.79.40
--------------------------------------
DOWN 2007-11-05 04:03:19 - 2007-11-12 03:01:12 (10017 minutes)
** You had 0.62% reachability during the period
Followup comments:  
OneStepAhead
@charter.com
| sucks for you i download at the full 10mb speed just about 24 hours a day.. and i keep it maxed almost 100% of the time downloading binaries from usenet. Im pulling 1200kbps right now from news.giganews.com via charter 10mb.. then again i dont live in the boonies.. | |
| | bgetchel
join:2000-07-05
Waterbury, CT
1 edit | Re: sucks for you Hi OneStepAhead,
I hate to tell you this, but if you're getting 1200 Kbps you're only getting about 1/10th of your 10 Mbps speed. Congratulations on proving my point.
--
Da Biff | |
| | | matt314159
join:2006-01-18
Hesperia, CA
 ·Charter Pipeline
| Re: sucks for you He just typed it wrong I'm sure. I think he meant to say 1200KBps. Which is very close to the full 10mb, esp when you consider the TCP overhead and whatnot. I get 1200-1300KBps all the time with usenet on my 10mb charter connection.
Frankly, I wouldn't stand for it, if they couldn't resolve the technical issues, I would be gone. Luckily I'm not in your situation. | |
| | | | bgetchel
join:2000-07-05
Waterbury, CT
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: sucks for you Hi Matt,
I'm sure there are some that are getting what they pay for, and I'd love to be one of them. Unfortunately, judging from the reviews, Charter is the single worst major broadband provider in the country. I haven't seen any ISP with the number of bad reviews that Charter has -- and the bad reviews are REALLY bad, not just marginal.
I'm grinding my axe, for sure, but I'd love to be a fan if they'd just get their act together. I can be as vociferous an advocate as I am a detractor. The installer came by last night to remove the cable HD-DVR box and trap the signal (I dropped their cable TV service in favor of DTV) and he wasn't exactly a fan of Charter either (they don't have their own trucks out here) and said they act as though it's your privilege to do business with them.
I would pay $200/mo if FiOS were available here, or something competitive.
--
Da Biff | |
| PotentBoy99
join:2001-10-23
Simpsonville, SC | Some of us may live in the boonies... Hello onestepahead,
And, some of us may not...
Have you got the typing down yet?
Hope this Helps,
PB | |
|
renochartersux
@charter.com | 5 is 3 is less Here in Reno they signed a contract with charter for the next 7 or 8 years... Horray us!
PS they say 5m is the lowest and im pulling some solid 1.2's all the way up to 3.0 | |
| | bgetchel
join:2000-07-05
Waterbury, CT
·Charter Pipeline
| Re: 5 is 3 is less My speeds are literally all over the map. They range from near dial-up, or complete loss of connection (sometime for seconds or minutes, sometimes for hours) all the way up-to the full 10Mbps (increasingly rare). Yesterday I had almost an hour of full 10Mbps performance, but generally it was 1-3 Mbps. I can live with 1-3, but not while I'm paying for 10.
I'm going to see if a higher-speed DSL has become available in my area (which I doubt). Otherwise I'm going back to the "basic" speed package, since that's all I get anyway -- if I'm lucky.
I canceled my cable TV from Charter (I had their full package) and switched to DTV satellite. Charter has a paltry 5-6 HDTV channels here, and their prices are likewise absurd. DirecTV crushes them for both content and price.
--
Da Biff | |
| wilberfan2
join:2004-11-25
Burbank, CA
1 edit | Fed up with Charter, too I stopped by today to investigate alternatives to Charter--because I'm fed up as well... I've been with them for 5 or 6 years (?), and was pretty happy with them until last year sometime.
The outages drive me nuts. I've logged nine separate outtages in the last month--including all day yesterday (from noon to 9 pm, or so).
And they recently moved their tech support from (nearby to me) California to the Phillipines.
Bleah.
Love your tag line: "You can get better, but you can't pay more!"  | |
| 
defiant
Garbage in, garbage out
MVM
join:2000-09-04
Monroe, MI | Support Ya know bgetchel , you could reach out to those of us in the Charter CATV/HSI forum that might be able to assist... | |
| | bgetchel
join:2000-07-05
Waterbury, CT | Re: Support Thanks for the heads-up. I'll be right over.
Do you think the forum can really assist with anything, or does it just elevate my soapbox a little more?
--
Da Biff | |
| | |
defiant
Garbage in, garbage out
MVM
join:2000-09-04
Monroe, MI | Re: Support We can't work miracles or intervene directly (most cases) , but we can try to get to the root of the problem and make it easier to get it resolved through the "normal" support channels. | |
|
CharterSux
@charter.com | Total Agreement Charter does suck. Anyone have any info. on TDS Telecom. They advertise 10K | |
| zed260
join:2007-09-30
Cleveland, TN | you should get charter phone they give discount and its more reliable then typical voip
if you areas like mine you can save quite a bit from doing that practicly get phone for free | |
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Review by eugenegill
UPDATED: 103 days ago
member for 5.5 years, 974 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Greenville,Greenville,SC
$40 per month
about 2 days
"Reliable"
"Billing is FUBAR, slow newsgroups access"
"Solid, no-frills for average price"
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Update 8/27/09: My promotion ran out so I followed the normal protocol to get the latest. Previously I had the normal rate for internet, with a promotion for basic cable. Now I have the promotion for internet ($29.99), and normal rate for TV - bottom line price the same!
I gave this a few days, then called to cancel TV, as OTA is all I need. Was able to do this as Uverse is now available in my area - yay! I was very careful to have the CSR explictly confirm that the internet promotional rate would stay the same, that there would be no other charges, and no lock-in period. I drafted a letter to Charter recording this, and gave it to the lady behind the counter at the local Charter office, making her initial it and my copy as a confirmation of receipt. I am convinced Charter will screw up the bill, so sadly it has come to this.
Meanwhile, service is solid. A lightning strike took out their box, which took three days to repair.
Update 8/6/08: Now 5M/512 - speeds as advertised, pings mostly ok. Charter jerks you around with promotions and billing issues. Account support is poor. On a technical level service has been reliable and technical support satisfactory. Charter website is poor.
384/128 recently upgraded to 3/256. Speeds pretty much as advertised with reasonable pings. Dynamic IP seldom changes. Use my own SB5100 modem - a solid performer. Never call tech support, so can't comment (a good thing). Vonage works well, FTP, HTTP, etc. servers not blocked (do not abuse!)
Update: Downgraded back to 384/128 - still $39.99. Apparently CSR made a mistake! Very irritating.
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 Review by lecroix
Posted: 106 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 1618 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Athens,Limestone,AL
$120 per month
"Nice "combination" packages for pricing (HD-CTV-ISP-Voice)"
"Sporadic connectivity issues."
"If I had another choice I would switch."
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I am very please with Charter's CTV and HD offerings, but their internet service is the absolute WORST that I have ever encountered. I am a former BellSouth DSL customer and there is no comparison between the two as far as speed or reliability. Charter ISP is unreliable and speeds vary greatly dependent upon the time of day in our area.
I would try another ISP were Charter not the only option for this area, not counting satellite service. I can only pray for the day that AT&T/BellSouth offers fiber optic DSL in my area.
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Review by BlakePaulson
UPDATED: 109 days ago
member for 1.3 years, 565 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Alexandria,Douglas,MN
$54 per month (24 month contract)
about 4 days
"Fast connection, very reliable..."
"Tech support besides those on these forums sucks!"
"I'd recommend Internet but tell everyone to stay away from cable tv!"
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I've got 20/2mbps internet (just switched to it... Not as reliable speed wise as 10/1 service.) The connection is very reliable and is worth the money.
I've had charter at my apartment and at my new house for over 2 years and haven't had any issues. The Tv service sucks and I'd send anyone away from that service (go directv!) but I like the Internet.
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 Review by JaM4150
Posted: 110 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 1046 visits, last login: 5 days ago
Nags Head,Dare,NC
Contract price not specified.
"Steady"
"None"
"Go with it."
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Pro: Steady
Con: None
Bottom line: Go with it.
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 Review by chaos7979
Posted: 110 days ago
member for 2.3 years, 49 visits, last login: 6 days ago
Birmingham,Jefferson,AL
$45 per month
about 2 days
"Great speed--I have the 10 meg connection and max it out consistently when downloading from my newsgroup"
"I am happy with charter and can think of no bad points"
"Consistent service with high speed"
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I am very happy with my service. I pay $45 a month for a 10 meg connection and get what I am paying for. I consistently max out my connection when downloading from newsgroups. It takes 30 minutes to download a 4.5 gig movie. I am very happy with Charter.
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Review by explorer514
UPDATED: 111 days ago
member for 6.5 years, 144 visits, last login: a few hours ago
South Beloit,Winnebago,IL
Contract price not specified.
"great srvice when it works"
"i think their infrastructure is in need of maintenance"
"if i could get 3 meg dsl i would disco in a heartbeat"
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Have had Charter Pipeline for some time now, made a switch to DSL for a couple years.
I have to say that DSL was the most reliable connection I have ever seen and think I only had to reboot modem/router one time in the whole duration.
Cable internet seems to be quite a different story as will at times find connection in a non functioning state even though everything indicates it is up and running and will have to reboot modem, router and rarely the computer itself.
Definitely enjoy high def channels and the choices of educational stuff is great (ie science channel, history channel). I believe that I would enjoy it a lot more if commercials were reduced and a standard audio signal were used.
Calling for routine issues such as video on demand not working or internet not working is frustrating as about the only advice they seem to give is to reboot the hardware or schedule a technician to the location. Hard to believe that's necessary with the level of diagnostic tools available to the support people.
Oh, and if you ever cancel your service, your POP email will remain active for some time and when you come back to Charter, it will not let you in, nor will any amount of calling and resetting passwords at multiple support levels.
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