Some words from a Charter Technical Support Rep

Well now I know why some areas of the country complain about Charter and others don't .
Sure am glad I live in the Wisconsin region where the Techs care about their customers .

Why do other ISP's such as SBC give out way higher upload but still have the same idea of not running a server on the connection. Not everyone is trying to run a damn server most of us here would like to video chat with our family across the US, and since charter only gives us Billy Bob's (who can not afford the ridiculous prices charter charter offers for higher upload) such a small upload connection we can't even do that. We also would like to manage our websites but every time we have to upload a video, pdf, or any other thing that would be for work or anything in that lines we have to wait 2 hrs to upload a damn 40-50mb file.

Not everyone is Stupid.

Sincerely,
A customer pissed off at a tech
SOB, FU, STFU!

our angry charter tech guy probably has lots of them. like locksmiths or cops, its a foregone conclusion that someone is approaching him with another problem, and the long waits on hold dont do much for anyone's morale! our fella has to deal with them everyday, and probably doesnt get much in the way of thanks. maybe he just decided to vent after a uniquely crap day at the office?

i hope it doenst come off like i am kissing this guy's ass. im not. but i can see his side. julia

Well sir god tech are these paper certs you show boot camp specials. Now to the real point. I have both charter and Alltel DSL. I have had the dsl for 7 years in that 7 years I have had one period of 2 days no dsl service. I have had a couple of times that i have had email service problems no biggie I need a break. Now i have had the charter service for one year and it is a constant down time and outage such as is the case today. I had a period of two weeks no pipeline internet. Local office says the call center never gave them the order. They say the only thing they saw called in was we called for the cable tv down and that we called back and canceled saying it was back up. Well I never called about the TV being down it was never down in that time frame. Ever since that fiasco where one of the nodes ended up having a large hole in it and rain Fried the components our service and been half usable. So now you tell me why we as paying customers should not be getting what we pay for. OHHHHHHHHH lord i will be so glad when the local utilities company gets out here with their service Phone Cable and internet 3mb up 3mb down fiber all for $80.00 a month and yes their service rocks.

The problem may be Techs who hate there customers and takes the attitude that everyone is ignorant.While this Tech has only been at charter for 2 years,i have been with them for almost 7 from one way cable to todays 3meg 2way.I have seen it very bad and at one time Charter was one of the worst ISP's there was.It has gotten allot better,but with those horror stories of years past comes a reputation,and a bad one at that,and it will take years for them to get public opinion back on Charter's side.Another problem is the closing of the local phone support,now you get someone 500 miles away,who could really care less if your cable in your town is working properly,all they are interested in is if the Wildcats won a basketball game etc etc.

If your that unhappy,take a layoff or get another job,May i suggest ditch digging,as you will not have to take phone calls from anyone and you can work out that anger with a shovel. Surely you didn't get all those certifications and schooling to get a $9.00 an hour phone tech job did you?

"A Pissed off Tech",

I completely understand that there are a plethora of users who aren't extremely knowledgeable and don't understand that their router config is what's causing problems, or that a backbone is having line or router issues, or what some worm / virus has taken over the bandwidth on the internet while it spreads.

That being said, I do think you're a little off base in your points.

1) Statement: Only users who want to run servers care about upload speed.
Reply: That's a load of bull. Upload speed is desirous for a large number of reason.
a) Sending digital pictures / home videos to family. It drives me NUTS with how long it takes to send a few pictures that are only a few megs. Forget trying to e-mail a 50 meg video file to someone (whose e-mail provider hasn't put a quota their mailbox size)..

b) Gaming - Folks who enjoy playing online video games need upload bandwidth in order to maintain a high quality of play.. and I'm sure you know that there are a LOT of people out there in this category.

c) Working From Home - I, and many others, work from home much of the week. Even if I were to pay for a "business" internet service, I would only get 384k upload speed. This just doesn't cut it. My remote X-Windows sessions are horribly slow, forget trying to work on a presentation off of a server in the office, and don't even bother trying to send anything as an attachment to fellow co-workers. So your "even go to a SOHO account" is NOT a reasonable response.

2) Firmware updates. I have a Motorola Surfboard 5100 with the original firmware. This firmware has a bug(s)in it that causes connectivity issues with my Vonage telephone adapter. I have had to move my vonage adapter behind my router, which is NOT an ideal solution because it will not take the bandwidth it might need for a high quality call.

I have spoken to dozens of support folks, senior engineers in level 2, managers, etc. FINALLY I got a manager out of the Connecticut office who appreciated my issue and even mentioned that she is aware of many other customers with the same problem. She's been great to work with.. Wish I could remember her name, she even actually called me back a couple times to give me a status update. A few weeks ago she told me that she had been able to convince corporate to approve rolling out a newer firmware revision on the 5100s -- though I have yet to see it. The firmware revision I have is 1.1.1.1 and they're already up beyond 2.1.3. From the looks of other forums like Comcast and Adelphia, customers have no problems getting this done. Charter seems to be the only provider that does not give its support engineers the ability to flash a single customer's modem with different firmware revisions. (By the way, I bought the 5100 on the advice of a customer service rep when the rate plans changed to not include the rental modem.)

I can say that for myself, Charter's level of customer service overall has been quite poor. I can't believe it took me over 10 different people at Charter before I got to someone who was sympathetic to my problem and didn't just tell me "We can't do it. We don't even have the software / tools to do it."

4) Up until recently, the price plans that Charter offered really pissed me off. The different tiers were clearly priced in such a way that it did not make any sense to get any of the basic plans. I couldn't even eliminate a rental fee by buying my own modem up until the beginning of this year. This has gotten much better (I think) and that does please me.

5) New Product Technology Introduction - From what I can see here in MA, Charter is VERY far behind other providers in their offerings. Comcast has offered 3 meg download (I forget the up, but I THINK it's 384?) longer than Charter has even had the 2 meg service. Not sure what Adelphia is at..
Also the HD Programming is significantly behind Comcast and Adelphia. Take a look at the HD channel lineups and you will see that Charter's offerings pale in comparison to Comcast / Adelphia. Take NESN (New England Sports Network) for example. Comcast has had this channel in HD since LAST September. Adelphia and Cox also offer it. Charter does not.
Then take a look at the DVR offerings. Comcast / Adelphia had DVR set top boxes long before Charter did. I'm not sure if Comcast has DVR with HD built in, but I'm willing to bet they do.
Other companies also appear to have set top boxes with DVI and firewire capabilities enabled. Charter does not.

6) Television Channel Picture Quality - I have a 55" Mitsubishi Rear Projection television, and I have to say that most channels really do NOT look very good. I'm assuming this is due to compression reasons as I have had numerous technicians come out to my house and tell me that my signal is very good.

With all that being said, the actually delivery of the services I do get has been for the most part outstanding over the past several years. My High Speed internet service is good enough that I trust it to carry my telephone line service as well. I have no land line from Verizon anymore.

My connections have been for the most part rock solid. With the exception of the past week or two, I can't even remember another time when the connection went out due to a problem not in my house under my own control. It's been awesome.

Thanks,
Jason Bibeau
MCSE, Sun Solaris Certified Administrator (as long as we're touting our certifications)