US Cable Support > Charter Internet/TV > 37% Ultra 100 Price increase??

reply to Janemba

Re: 37% Ultra 100 Price increase??

Doesn't matter what the reason is you're canceling. Charter just may get the message eventually, if they aren't as totally brain dead as they currently are appearing to be.

Good luck on who ever you're switching to.
--
The Firefox alternative.
»www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Yep, it looks like this new team of executive management headed up by Tom Rutledge will ONLY respond to a significant number of subscribers CANCELLING to get the point across.

Obviously the stick is needed, not the carrot, with this brass tack crowd.

reply to Janemba
I cancelled the 100/5 package after my contract expired. The price increase, from the contract to regular cost, plus the new price plan, makes it not worth it.
--
Google is your Friend

I want to do the same. But, as I said before. If I ever want to get the service again in the future. I am not willing to pay the $200 activation fee for them just to hit the switch. The new speed increases have to be coming soon. It usually a annual thing. I cant see them raising the rates just because and not give a upgrade.

New management means things will not be as they were. Just because they are "due" to have a speed increase, looking at past history, means nothing with this new management team.

reply to KoRnGtL15

Nothing personal and I understand what you are saying. I don't know. I was doing some numbers and it will be at $85 a month each year $1,020. Compared to $55 a month each year $660. Guess I never really looked at the numbers and thought $30 difference was not to bad for Ultra. Now that I am seeing it. Over 1k a year for internet only is a lot of money.... They need a in between tier like business....

reply to KoRnGtL15

How do you know this? This is Charter we are talking about and I kinda find it hard to believe. My local office is horrible.

reply to Janemba
Price increases always suck.

That said I generally get 100/5 even during peak hours so I'm reasonably happy with charter the last couple years. As for the overall price, in 1993 when dsl was just rolling out in our area (and no cable internet at all yet) I begged for someone to come along and take my money and give me decent speeds in return.

Unless charter goes belly up and I have to move to slower u-verse I'm never going backward in speed, price be damned.

And before someone says it's "asinine" or "sad", trust me, I'm not sad.

reply to senseotech

NormanS:

You reflect my views as well. I think that most consumers don't even realize that you don't need more than 30mb to stream live reasonable quality HD video...all they know is that marketing departments from various service providers tell them that the faster, the better. They do no research themselves.

Uninformed consumers make it difficult for those who are informed to get reasonably priced service.

My experience is that lowest ping times are more critical for a better internet experience than faster speeds.

They can do all the research they want to get "informed", but it isn't going to do any good, if there is no competition in their local area.

DSL to me is not competition.

What it all comes down to is that Charter is too greedy to offer a lower speed tier to their internet packages. They also penalize the customers who only want to have internet and not bundle TV and phone. In general things were much better before the new management took over and increased prices and cut services all across the board. Why not got back to the days when they at least offered 4 distinct internet packages that suited all walks of internet users. I tried the 100/5 package for about 3 months and found that it was overkill for me. I also could never achieve the advertised speeds due to oversaturated nodes in my neighborhood. It was not a good value given that I couldn't achieve even 70% of advertised speeds.

reply to NormanS
That's it in my subdivision...IFITL. No U-verse coming here, if that's any better.

Besides, Charter reliability would have to suffer VERY badly for me to go back to AT&T. I had horrible service experiences with AT&T; just the opposite of what the BellSouth teleco experience had been for years.

In my case, SBC was an improvement over Pacific Bell (one of two ILEC companies under The Pacific Telesis Group; bought by SBC in 1996). Prices went to Hell after SBC/AT&T bought Bellsouth; they started jacking legacy SBC prices up to the legacy Bellsouth levels.

Still, DSL is competitive in the S.F. Bay Area. Our MSO is Comcast, whose prices run higher than the other MSOs. And I found the AT&T 3.0 Mbps tier to be a reasonable compromise of cost vs. speed, even at BS price levels, when compared with Comcast. Plus we have at least two DSL CLECs with decent tiers for the price.

BTW, I fired them, and hired Sonic.net, LLC because of cap-and-overage; low-cost ($19.98 for the data line item), moderately high speed (4.9 Mbps on the loop AT&T would only offer 3.0 meg service on) was a bonus.

Because Comcast isn't in a solid monopolistic position here, they do have a low-end retention tier called, "Economy". DSL speed for near DSL price. I am reasonably sure they'd rather not have their users on that tier, but with DSL providers offering decent plans, plus a couple of very small FTTP providers, it gives them a chance to keep customers.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Comcast also has that "economy" tier here. Comcast is just outside the village limits of where I live (3 houses down)

As much as I don't like Comcast crap, I'm glad to have Charter here in the village. I've said it before though that I've NEVER had an issue with Charter's internet or tv even, except for the brain dead way they seem to want to run the business!

Glad to hear that you actually stopped and did the math on the yearly costs of the "little" difference in price between the ultra and the other tier. Makes it sound a little different that way, doesn't it?!