US Cable Support > Charter Internet/TV > [Speed Issues] Nightly slow speeds..

reply to calc1

Re: [Speed Issues] Nightly slow speeds..

Not surprised at all by this. Something has happened with in the past 3-4 months for it to be this bad. And it continues. I think part of it. Is from a lot of Charter customers dropping tv and moving to internet only. Everything is saturated now.

reply to jchl89
i'm around valley and san gabriel. It was horrific last night barely managed 2mb down, but like clock work this morning.........

»speedtest.ookla.com/result/2036357776.png

The saga continues.

reply to calc1
Just an update. I called charter about the problem. The phone-tech-support said he noticed some small issue with my rx levels and that he would dispatch a ground-tech.

Phone-tech-support is rated on how many calls they take so they try to keep them really short. I was just being punted to ground support but I went with the flow.

Two techs came out and didn't find a problem (not surprised). They were nice enough guys but had little tools or knowledge about networking. I explained to them about traceroute and carrier peering. There we no tools on the linux laptop and without super user access we couldn't install any tools. I let them use my laptop and told them about traceroute and spoke about MRTG. They left and little changed for about a week.

My wife was sent a bill for $115 for the visit. bleh... She is pretty good at fighting with people on the phone and soon they got tired of her and refunded the money in a very threatening way... She was about the go over his 20 minute allowed time-per-call so he gave in. He told her she was recorded and this would be a one time exception etc. etc.

Speed has improved since. The VPN has stopped dropping out every few minutes. They found the malfunctioning router and typical of corporations they never said anything or refund any money for your lost business.

Charter will continue to abuse they're customers, because they are the only game in town (the monopoly). I'm just surprised...

I thought the business side would be better.

reply to calc1
I'm now seeing my night time crawling speed since last week and I'm with Charter for more than a year. Every night, around 8:30PM all the way to 1AM in the morning (I went so sleep so I don't check after 1AM), the internet speed (supposedly 30Mbs/4Mbs) dropped down horribly, mostly around 4Mbs/1Mbs. Last night was the worst, 1Mbs/150Kbs from 9:30PM to 1AM and basically we just quit using it. I've called Charter many times, and last night the call center said the signal into my modem is the worst she've ever seen in her career. This morning Charter tech came out early and everything is as good as ever. The tech said this probably is caused by congestion (too many internet subscribers download heavy stuffs at night time) and the ones in Charter who know it the most are those watching data usage, bandwidth etc. The tech said they couldn't do anything about this problem for me but to put my modem on watch list.

That's all there is to it.

@Inphoenix:

It seems like that "it's a bad signal into the modem", is the offical Charter EXCUSE for this issue and a LOT of other issues that are on Charter's end.

I've had it with them and I'll be cancelling in the next couple of weeks, the price is too high for speed I don't want or need, and the customer service has become HORRIBLE since
CEO Tommy Boy Rutledge started on the job.

5 "Aw sh**ts" for Tom Rutledge and his horrible attitude towards the customer. Do not advance, do NOT collect 2 million dollars.

reply to calc1

reply to calc1
»speedtest.ookla.com/result/2060657112.png

WORST night i've seen.....

I had to kick everyone off my network tonight because i needed it for work purposes. I have my modem directly plugged into my desktop just to get that.............

I've about had it, I can't even cancel service because i'm on a 2 yr contract Must i create a scene with customer service to get off without any early termination fees.

the cable connection is completely down, right now. modem isn't even online.

reply to calc1
I've been paying for their 100Mbps subscription since 6/12. Like many here I've been getting terrible download speeds in the evenings, typically 10Mbps. I thought they'd lawyered themselves an allowance for this in their terms of service, but apparently they're supposed to be serving *at least* 70% of advertised speeds at all times.

I finally called them about it, and explained that this issue is with their node and not with my connection, because the slow speeds are happening in the evenings when of course they're hitting peak traffic. Their customer service of course followed the script and ignored reason, telling me that in order to troubleshoot they'd need to send a line technician out to my house to troubleshoot.

The line technician, to my surprise, informed me that he doesn't have any tools to troubleshoot connection speed. Charter corporate actually took those away in the recent past. So he couldn't simply plug in a modem at the utility pole and check download speeds there to do some simple deduction. He also was not allowed to view the stats on my node. Instead he could only focus on the signal readings, which were slightly out of spec but not much. On the day the service was installed, I got 98Mbps so I knew it wasn't an issue with the connection.

The line tech ended up replacing every piece of wiring from the utility pole to the modem. It resulted in a minor boost in signal strength. Of course by the time he finished it was early evening, so even with the improved signal my download speed actually went *down* from around 50Mbps at around 2pm to 15Mbps by 5pm. When he contacted the office to set up another visit to my house by a level 2 line technician, he learned that Charter staff were indeed aware that my node was heavily congested.

I called Charter to ask about a credit for my months and months of bad service. They rejected my request because I hadn't been vocal enough about complaining about the poor service. They told me they wouldn't issue a credit of any kind until the level 2 tech visited today. I had my subscription downgraded to 30Mbps service.

Level 2 line technician visited today, and again confirmed that the node is congested and "has been for a long time."

I'd recommend that every single time you're able to confirm that the service isn't delivering at least 70% of the advertised speeds, call charter and have your complaint logged. If they aren't quick to offer a refund, register a complaint with the FTC, because you're being defrauded.

reply to calc1
I've been in the same boat (Stanley, NC area) for about 8 months now. I've been promised repeatedly that capacity is being increased for my neighborhood but it has yet to happen.

»Review of Charter by neilcar

Look at how quick they get off their asses...

Just to follow up on the local news story from last night.

According to WSPA 7 the customer reports that Charter made changes to the node to allow more bandwidth to his home and a technician arrived and spend time replacing cabling to the home.

The customer reports that his evening speed problems seem to have been solved.

I went to the WSPA 7 website but have not seen the video package of this update uploaded as of yet. It only aired on the station's evening newscast tonight.

reply to calc1

Re: [Speed Issues] Nightly slow speeds..