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uniqs
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chartersucks
@charter.com

chartersucks

Anon

Charter only gives you 70% of the contract speed you buy

I spoke to Jason #825834 at charter communications. He's a senior tech support agent. I was stating that I had a 30meg down contract and was only seeing 16. He said that the speed you buy is only the maximum. Apparently they base the speed you should have on 70% of the real speed. For example, if you have the 100meg charter, expect only 70. If you have the 30meg charter, expect only 22. Just to make sure I wasn't misquoting charter communications policy, I asked him 3 times in different ways about the standard speed cap. I even mentioned that you only get the purchased speed with speedboost hits for the first 4 seconds. He said "I don't know what speedboost is", I then googled the term and found out that power boost is the term that charter uses. When I said that I meant power boost, and does he know what that is, he said "I do". I then asked him, so you were playing dumb when I miscalled it speedboost, even though you knew it was the same thing. He actually said "yes". LOL

He also was trying to sell me a docsis 3.0 rental when my 2.0 can handle 44megs speed, which is twice as much bandwidth as what's being delivered. He said that this will give me more speed. I told him my 2.0 can handle 20 just fine, they dropped my speed to 16, and the only explanation they have is that I have to pay for the 30 megs if I want something faster. I'm locked in to a 2 year price fix, yet they violated their contract by dropping my speed down to 16 from an average of 20. I'm thinking small claims court.

Now the way they fool you when they show up to install and prove to you that you have 30megs and not 22 is through something they call power boost. Powerboost will "boost" you to your contracted speed for about 3.5-4 seconds. Which is just enough to encompass Speedtest.net speed rating since it only does a 4 second download to test speed. To bypass this, start downloading something for 4 seconds, cut it off and run speedtest immediately. You will see a SHARP drop in speeds.

So when you compare verizon fios with what charter offering, make sure you are comparing apples to apples as far as bandwidth.
sancraig
join:2003-11-05
Saint Louis, MO

sancraig

Member

Ok Ill bite. Who would ever choose an offering from Charter over Verizon? The bandwidth packages are better in my opinion from Verizon.

Having a Docsis 3.0 modem can actually help, with Charter channel bonding almost everywhere now. I've heard of many people with Docsis 2.0 modems struggle to get 20 megs.

Good luck in small claims court, They have offered solutions to you that you haven't tried.

DocDrew
How can I help?
Premium Member
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
Ubee E31U2V1
Technicolor TC4400
Linksys EA6900

DocDrew to chartersucks

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Get a DOCSIS 3 modem... trying to get 30 mpbs with a DOCSIS 2 modem on a single shared channel with a capacity of of only 38 mbps is tough, especially when standard tier is 30 mbps for other customers. Switching to a DOCSIS 3 modem will get you multiple channels (often 4 or 8) so that shared bandwidth is much higher at 152 or 304 mpbs that you can take your 30mbps chunk out of. I saw similar slow downs with my DOCSIS 2 modem, so Charter gave me a DOCSIS 3 modem and my speeds instantly returned to the 30 I was paying for. Your DOCSIS 2 modem will never get 44 mbps, that's RAW channel speed on a European 8 Mhz channel which doesn't include network overhead.

BTW, as far as I know Charter's minimum for tech support is around 70% of your tiered speed, it's not what they "give" you. The modem's are provisioned a little over your tier you're paying for. They just won't show much interest in helping your slow speed until it drops to 70% or below.

UCRAYCRAY
@bankone.com

UCRAYCRAY to chartersucks

Anon

to chartersucks
Umm.

I have Charter and I consistently get ABOVE 30Mbps speed.

Your DOCSIS 2.0 modem is the problem.

Get a 3.0, they're free under new pricing - it will help.

The reason you only see PowerBoost up to 30 is because your channel is saturated...3.0 will fix this.

Also: »Charter Spectrum

next time...

gwalk
Premium Member
join:2005-07-27
West Mich.

gwalk to chartersucks

Premium Member

to chartersucks
70%, 30meg.....don't I wish.
Try being stuck with Hughesnet sat Internet and get 25% of a 1.5 meg for $80 per month and no other choice.

vaxvms
ferroequine fan
Premium Member
join:2005-03-01
Polar Park

vaxvms to sancraig

Premium Member

to sancraig
said by sancraig:

Ok Ill bite. Who would ever choose an offering from Charter over Verizon?

Some people, myself included, have no choice. You can have Charter or you can use dial-up.
And unless Google decides to dump a big wad of $$$ here I'll never have a choice. Verizon has publicly stated more than once they'll never provide any type of service in this city.
88615298 (banned)
join:2004-07-28
West Tenness

88615298 (banned) to sancraig

Member

to sancraig
said by sancraig:

Ok Ill bite. Who would ever choose an offering from Charter over Verizon? The bandwidth packages are better in my opinion from Verizon.

I would. Charter 30/4 meg for $55, FiOS 15/5 for $75 a month. No brainer. How is FiOS better?
Expand your moderator at work
88615298

1 recommendation

88615298 (banned) to gwalk

Member

to gwalk

Re: Charter only gives you 70% of the contract speed you buy

said by gwalk:

70%, 30meg.....don't I wish.
Try being stuck with Hughesnet sat Internet and get 25% of a 1.5 meg for $80 per month and no other choice.

Hughesnet offer speeds up to 15 Mbps now

»www.hughesnet.com/?page= ··· ing#gen4

gwalk
Premium Member
join:2005-07-27
West Mich.

gwalk

Premium Member

True, but the key words here is the famous "Up To".
Most report getting 30-40% of that during non-peak hrs.
Many in the Kbps range.
Couple that with the data caps and its a joke.

psafux
Premium Member
join:2005-11-10

psafux to chartersucks

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to chartersucks
There may have been a miscommunication. Back when I worked there (left ten years ago) they had to have a threshold between where they would troubleshoot and try to identify speed problems when subscribers called them in. The magic number, as I recall, was 70% though I am not certain it was ever an officially communicated thing. Subscribers shouldn't only expect 70% of their bandwidth (many get 95% or higher in my professional experience both as my time with Charter as well as before & after) but the tech team can't take the time to troubleshoot and explore every slow speed call. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is beyond the scope of my post here.

The main problem is there are a wide variety of factors that can affect the internet speed and many of them are beyond Charter's (or any ISP's) control. If they spent the necessary time troubleshooting every possible angle they wouldn't have time to help all the other callers. The 70% threshold was sort of the cut-off between investing time and energy vs. not. Slow speed calls were a common call and easily the highest time killer overall due to the variety of issues that can cause it and, unfortunately but perhaps moreso, the naivety of the user who we had to verbally instruct to get to the cause of the problem.

In my opinion the reps that work there nowadays are less tech-focused and more sales-focused. With the onset of their more or less successful "service to sales" program over ten years ago they lost a ton of excellent techs because they had poor sales numbers (and because the techs didn't want to sell, they wanted to fix). Since then they have consolidated repair functions in their call centers (HSI support and television support used to be two separate teams. HSI took video calls but television support was not cross-trained on HSI and did not take the calls). Now all "broadband customer care" positions take all calls and they are less focused on the skills the employee brings but rather the sales performance that they can prove.

Back in the day many of us could troubleshoot and follow a logical troubleshooting path without referencing a thing though there was a troubleshooting matrix to follow. Nowadays that is largely out the window - these people follow the script and most likely have never had any hands-on experiencing diagnosing and repairing these types of problems. They look for keywords to follow their scope of support matrix -- in most situations it works fine but in situations such as yours its not going to.

Regarding the "playing dumb" issue - the rep was likely hoping you'd drop the case so as to not call him/the company out on the performance problem. Probably not the wisest move on his part - there are those that last in such positions for a long, long time because they do an excellent job and actively work to resolve issues and there are also those that are working for the sake of working who find themselves out the door quickly due to customer relation issues. With any luck there is more to the context of the situation and it was a one-off; if not you can be relatively certain he will find his walking papers quickly as customers complain if he continues the behavior.

Just my two cents. (plus a dollar or two perhaps).

ilikeme
Premium Member
join:2002-08-27
Stafford, TX

ilikeme to chartersucks

Premium Member

to chartersucks
Are you in the DFW area? I am and have the options of Charter or FIOS and there is no way in hell I would ever get Charter over FIOS! Charter is much more un-reliable and slower based off of experience and many reviews and complaints I have heard from friends, family, and online.

Pashune
Caps stifle innovation
Premium Member
join:2006-04-14
Gautier, MS

Pashune to chartersucks

Premium Member

to chartersucks
Just again to emphasize, the only time you're ever gonna see 30 megs on a 2.0 modem is when there's very little traffic present on that channel or it's 3 AM.. and that's still a big maybe.

The highest theoretical maximum you'll ever get from a single-channel modem is 33-35 megs. 38 mbit is the max raw speed for U.S. networks. Account data overhead into that and you're left with around 30 megs per sec on a clean, low traffic frequency.

D3 allows you to use 4-8 channels and your speed is spread across them when one channel isn't enough.
Expand your moderator at work

GlennLouEarl
3 brothers, 1 gone
Premium Member
join:2002-11-17
Richmond, VA

GlennLouEarl to sancraig

Premium Member

to sancraig

Re: Charter only gives you 70% of the contract speed you buy

said by sancraig:

Who would ever choose an offering from Charter over Verizon?

Anyone who gets 0% of what they're paying Verizon for when they try to watch in the evening movies and shows from Netflix and several other sources but can't get past the utter failure of Verizon to deliver.

chartersucks
@spcsdns.net

chartersucks to 88615298

Anon

to 88615298
Exactly my point. Don't want to pay for bandwidth I don't need. They sold me 30mb. Get only 30 during power boost which means my modem CAN HANDLE THE SPEED. It's not a chanel bonding issue, it's charter telling my modem to cut back down to 16. they just want another $10 a month for the docsis 3 modem rental. I'm not giving it to them. I'll go by one at frys to test it out.