US Cable Support → Charter Internet/TV > [HSI] For gods sake whats it take to get good service

[HSI] For gods sake whats it take to get good service

Some of you may be familiar with my last chain of gripes ( »[HSI] *RANT* Charter Business Internet ) well here we are again with no service, and awful customer service. There was a power outage today when a transformer blew a few blocks away. When the power came back, no internet.

I gave it about 45 mins and then called. The gentleman I spoke with ran me through the usual reboot and shenanigans and then started a ticket when he couldn't reach the modem from his side. He told me at 2:30 Eastern that since it was still early and I was a business customer that someone should be out today. I just called to check on my ticket (a little after 5) and the man I spoke with confirmed I did have a ticket, but he had no confirmation of when the local office may get to it. He said since some offices are open till 7 I may still hear from them tonight. At this point my wife, and I both depend on a broadband connection for our jobs and the level of service just sucks. Is there any sort of escalations that I can formally take to complain to corporate?
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The second person called back at 5:30 and said that I wouldn't see anyone till my appointment window of 8-10 the next day.

Tech called at 8:26 and said he was in the neighborhood and would be here shortly. Around 9 his supervisor called to see if he was here yet. Wife told him no and he said he was going to look into it. Man arrives about 9:30-9:40. Parks his personal truck in the driveway and puts out his cones and comes to the door. Wife comes downstairs and answers the door as I am coming up the stairs(split level home). He identifies himself, wife sticks out her hand and he says "you're having a problem with your internet service?" turning to me as I come up the stairs he weaves between her and the still open door and puts out his hand to shake mine leaving her hand sitting there in midair.

Bad move to ignore the wife.

Asks to see the modem. He comes down, looks at the modem and tells me "I think its your modem but I am out of SMC's. Do you use the wifi", I said no its disabled. He said well I think I can get you one of the SMC but it wont have the wifi and I was like ok whatever. He said he wanted to go out and check the lines. While he went out I briefed the wife on what he had said since she had stayed upstairs. She reminded me that the person I spoke to on the phone last night had said that another modem in the area was unreachable. So I walked out to the NID on the side of our house where he was busy trying to saw through the end off one of our cables on top of my power meter with a 10" blade knife rambo would love. He told me he couldnt find his snips, and was going to replace the ends and the splitter because when there is a power outage the splitter is one of the first things that can go. I told him about what the guy on the phone had said and he said, he hadnt been working yesterday so he didnt know anything about any other customers in our area out. I went back in and updated the wife. About this time another truck pulled into our cul de sac and setup. Wife saw one of our neighbors go out and talk to the new guy. So she went out shortly after, she was MAD. He was in what looked like an offical Charter pickup truck and turned out to be the first guys supervisor. She told him that they needed to fix things or take their equipment and leave. Since the neighbor was down it was obviously her modem too. She came back in.

A short while later yet another subcontractor pulls up in his vehicle. He was evidently the one with the meter. They converge at one of the lawn warts (just splitters, nearest amp is up the street). After looking at the neighbors they opened ours. I went out to see what was up. They informed me there was no signal at all in our area, and that they would have to call a line truck to go check out the amp up the street. (btw if amp is wrong feel free to correct me I am referring to the large Alpha boxes). I came back in and we waited. All this while the wife was HOT about being snubbed in the home she bought and paid for. All that on top of the lackluster service and her being unable to work was taking a tool on her mood. Then the supervisor came in to update us. He told us dispatch was sending a line truck and they should be in the area soon. He was planning to leave and call us back to make sure we were up in an hour. My wife explained to him about the disrespect from the subordinate. He then asked what was the story both with the issues we have had with charter. So we explained the hisotry of issues(in part detailed in the link in my first post here), as we were doing so the first tech came back in and was standing with him on the landing. After we finished with the history we have had with Charter, the supervisor turned to the first tech (the 3rd tech had left) and said "about earlier....", the tech says hold on. Walks out the front door and spits/dumps his chewing tobacco out off the side of my porch. Mind you, we have dogs who were barking the whole time that had been here locked in the garage so basically he dumped chew where my dogs can get it and possibly eat it and get sick. He then walks back in. The supervisor starts again, "she feels that you were disrespectful when you first arrived when you walked by her to go talk to her husband while she was trying to shake your hand". The tech says "well lets talk about this a minute". "When I came I itnroduced myself and as I was coming in I talked to her but saw her husband coming up, I had called earlier and spoke with him so contact had been made with him. So I talked to him. I did not see her hand and he was my point of contact". My wife got angry and said, "look you didnt have to ignore me as you came in, that was disrespectful." He said "I was not disrespectful, I didnt see your hand, there is a difference between being disrespectful and not observing something". She said "So you are going to argue with me?" He said "I didnt disrespect you I just didnt see you". I will be honest my wife was raising her voice, and then he started to. He said "I have apologized, it was a misunderstanding, and I didnt disrespect you!" At this point his supervisor turned to him and asked him to leave, because it was just escalating, which he did.

Hi supervisor apologized and tried to smooth things over but the sheer amount of disrespect this guy showed was unbelievable. Let me be clear at no time in my presence did he apologize. The supervisor said he would take care of things. When my wife left the area he thanked me for not punching the guy. I told him there was no reason to resort to violence and besides I didnt know where the 10" knife had gone. He laughed a little uneasily at that. We talked for another 5-10 mins about the ongoing service issues and then the line truck arrived and turned around in the cul de sac. I walked him out and went to check my NID, it had been left open by the tech. I pushed the cabling back in and closed it. He apologized again and walked over to the line truck. About 5 mins later he called the house, told the wife the line truck had found the problem and it shouldnt take longer than 30-40 mins to correct. That if we had any more issues, we should call him. She came down to my office and while she was explaining to me the line came up.

We are back up and running but for how long, I just dont know. She at this point is sick to death of the problems and as the old saying goes "when the wife/momma aint happy no one is happy". So who knows if we will keep charter of move on. This has been an utter #$@#$#@ nightmare.
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Wonder if the original issue will be resolved once the neighborhood problem is addressed.

Would be nice but I just cant get my hopes up for that at this point.

time for the nuclear route file an informal complaint with the fcc explaining your problems that gets things rolling

Filing a complaint with the franchise authority might prove more useful than to the FCC.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG

Sitting here working and suddenly the DS lite switches from blue to green and poof we loose connection. Call Charter "Your signals are too low, we will see if we can get someone out there today..."

WTF
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Fed Up With Crummy Cell Coverage?

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Please, I am begging. If anyone has an email address for an executive at Charter that I can reach out to please share, even an anonymous email to my user ID from here at pcsites .com would work.
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Fed Up With Crummy Cell Coverage?

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We spoke with a Business Supervisor, he was blaming the splitter on our house. He said the techs tune the signal power by using different splitters and likely the splitter we had now was causing too big a drop so thats why we lost signal again.

Spoke with neighbor across the street. She is out too. Her account is residential though. Poor girl had techs scheduled to come out Friday. It was the soonest a residential account appointment was available yesterday when she called. They canceled it for her when the lines came back up today. But now that I have spoken to the neighbor I know splitter issue is likely to be hogwash. More Voodooo tech.
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We are back up as of about 20 mins ago. The linemen are still working on the neighbor across the street. He did siginficant work in the box nearest the house. I can say for certain it appeared he pulled a 10' replacement of very stiff 1" dia cable and replaced it in the the ground and then either put back the large 4 legged piece of equipment in the box or he replaced it. Took him well over an hour.
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I spoke with one of the linemen at length after he was finished since we were his last stop for the day.

He explained to me that he basically "rebuilt the whole amplifier box". He replaced one of the trunk cables, and replaced the whole amplifier assembly. One of the things the earlier crew may have done he said was replace the amplifier inside of the housing that was part of what he removed.

He also found a 3rd trunk line that didnt appear on any of his information and may not have been hooked to anything at all. It was his opinion that this unknown cable/load may have led to what he called "micro reflections" that could be the cause for my random disconnects. Since the line is not documented, and he couldn't find anywhere it was connected to he left it disconnected for now.

He told me he plans to come back and rebuild all the splitters as well. The 3 splitters he pointed out to me he said while technically the weren't wrong, the trunk lines had no protective sleeves over their ends and he even noticed that mine was missing a terminator while he had it open so he walked back to the truck and got one to put on.

Out of all the Charter people I spoke with since April, he was the one most willing to listen, and not argue with what I said and this man isnt even supposed to deal with the public. I was quite impressed with his willingness to LISTEN.
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Unterminated cable runs, especially feeder or trunk, can definitely degrade service for those on that run of cable. The ingress (which can affect upstream SNR) and the microreflections (small amounts of RF energy reflecting back to the source) can cause major service disruptions, as you've found out.

Glad you got a tech with the knowledge, skills, and capability to address the these significant issues that affected the service in your neighborhood.

(314) 965-0555

Option 7 I think.
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