Charter Spectrum → [HSI] 100 Ultra? Nope Nope Nope!

Just curious what town in CT you are in. Glad to hear you might be on your way to a resolution.

Icarus, I don't have much to add to your specific problem, other than to say I feel your pain. I had a Charter TV freezing problem that took weeks (and me literally going door to door in the neighborhood) to resolve.

Here's the link: »CATV issue- box freezing and reboots..

All I can say is stick with it and don't let up.... it worked for me (eventually)! Good luck!

Lets call it Exit 16!

JimCT,Thanks! I got another call this evening from someone working out of the Worcester,MA office and it seems they are now all over this and working to resolve it. Theyre supposed to be in contact with me again tomorrow. I am cautiously optimistic!

Just in case you need the phone number of the Worcester MA office, it's:

(508) 853-1515

Good luck with getting the problem fixed.

Icarus:
I'm curious...did you call the Stamford, CT direct number I gave you...if so how did the procedure they use work?

I did. They transferred me to the escalations dept which was actually in Louisville,Ky. They talked to the people at my local office and figured out what was happening and called me back. I then later got a call and some followups from the New England escalation people out of Worcester,Ma. Its sounds complicated but actually went very very well. Great people all around that phone chain.

I have been trying to get my 100 Ultra connection fixed for over 11months, all I ever get is the run around....

During the day the connection is 30-60mb at night it is an erratic 3-25mb max with erratic pings/modem dc's, in addition to macro blocking on upper TV channels....
I had a digital voice line with Charter also which never worked so I canceled it. Now I am at a loss as to what I can even do. Out here my only other options are 3mb DSL or satnet...

If a charter tech ever happens across this and can actually help I would be amazed, Charter seems not not give a S##t about how their network runs sadly. It seems to be all greed, no maintenance/upgrades, and definitely no respect or loyalty for customers:(

here are a few internal (aka not real world tests from tonight)

»speedtest.ookla.com/resu ··· 5781.png
»speedtest.ookla.com/resu ··· 8671.png
»speedtest.ookla.com/resu ··· 6348.png

Up top are the modem levels...

Take the advice I posted earlier in this thread and file a BBB complaint. I got a phone call from Charter Corporate within 48 hours and a full credit of my internet bill for four months. They don't like to have bad marks when it comes to the BBB. My congestion issues were finally cleared up after this, even though it did take a full 4 months after the initial complaint. They even had a head line engineer call me and explain how they were going to fix my node. It was nice to not have to pay a single internet bill for that time period.

Yep, if you can get escalated, you'll get it fixed. FCC can't really apply pressure to internet issues but I filed an FCC complaint about a TV issue and they were tripping over themselves to fix it.

Made a complaint with the BBB, we will see what happens..

I can not even describe the level of frustration I am currently experiencing, it is hard understand why a company does not seem to care about their product or customers. Being stuck in a monopoly or duopoly is so !@$#!#$!

Good move filing that complaint.

You see, ever since Tom Rutledge became the CEO of Charter, the company could care less about what the customer needs or wants. All the current brass tacks care about is their own salary and the shareholders greed, nothing more.

I went through this same thing earlier this year here in CT as well. I called the support number, and told the lady that I think my node is overloaded at peak times, and that I think they need to split the node. She said oh, ok, let me take a look. She logged into something and then said Oh, yes, the local node has errors that are saying it's exceeded its maximum allowed connections. They said they would dispatch a crew to check the node, and also send someone to the house (not needed, but they wanted to anyways).

They sent out a contracted tech from another company who replaced my modem, and put new ends on the lines. He said he couldn't do anything else, and if it was still slow, to call back, so I did. This time, the support person didn't know squat, and couldn't escalate the call without sending another tech, so I said sure, whatever, just get someone here and I'll deal with it.

The dude shows up (actual charter tech this time), and I tell him the whole story, and he's like well, what do you want me to do? I can't fix the node if it's overloaded. I told him that I didn't expect him to fix it, but to call someone else to get the ball rolling, and get the node fixed. He said he'd call his manager, but to let him take a look around anyways. He didn't like the way the drop was run from the pole (not that there was anything wrong with it), so he re-ran that, and anchored it good to the pole, so it was done properly. He also put an attenuator on my modem since the signal was hot (literally straight line from the pole to the modem w/ no splitters). That got the signals in check, but he then called his manager, and I could hear him outside saying "yeah, he already knows his node is overloaded, the support person told him it was". After the phone call, he said his manager was going to get a crew out to the node to split it, and to give them a couple weeks to get it straightened out, but if it wasn't resolved by then, to call back.

It took 15 days, and it was muuuuuch better. It's slowed down slightly since then, but it isn't unusable during busy times anymore

If you are truly in an area that has 8 channels, and this is really a 8 channel modem, which the Cisco unit is, they don't need to roll a truck to see that you are not getting 8 channels. This isn't a signal issue at your location. This is a bigger problem that you neighbors are experiencing as well. It's just that most people don't pay attention.

you mean "couldn't care less"

cryptic1911:

I'll give Charter some credit for how they handed that node congestion issue, because instead of DENYING it they acknowledged it and made an effort to remedy the situation in a reasonable amount of time.

The surprising and encouraging thing was that you were a
technically astute, knowledgeable customer and they LISTENED to what you said and responded in a reasonable manner. That is incredible. Most of the time folks like us get the same run around that clueless customers do.

And thats the problem right there.The majority of folks dont differentiate between bad service and quality service. I spoke to a couple of my neighbors and for them as long as its working at all,then its working fine in their minds. I was told several times that nobody else on my node had called to complain about service and apparently thats a big part of how Charter determines if there is an actual problem or not.

I completely agree with this^^

They keep telling me over and over that the only complains they get are from me... I live in an area surrounded by retired people (many are 70+ yrs old) who use the internet just for email and web surfing. Most have Satellite TV, and never see macro-blocking/loss of signal I see. When I moved into this house in August 2012 it was never even connected to CATV/HSI before...

Truthfully I have no clue if my area has been upgraded to 8ch bonding, but the issue I am having is not related in any way to my house wiring...

As an update to my previous post, they appeared to have done some hardware upgrades in my area a few days ago.. I noticed the internet dropped exactly at midnight, and I figured that was probably a scheduled outage, since it wasn't at some random time.

Well, I've noticed my scheduled downloads have been in the 11.5-12MB/s range, and doing speedtests to the Oxford, MA site (run by Charter) I got 102mbits last night. That's how it originally was when I got the 100mbit package, until the node got slammed, and speeds were in the .5-1mbit range. They had "fixed" it temporarily, and that got the speeds in to the 70's and 80's, but it fluctuated during primetime.. but it seems to be back to 100% now. I'm guessing they bandaided it before, and now maybe they actually replaced the node equipment, or lit up a new fiber in the area

if it happened at midnight, I wonder if they didn't add or activate more ports on the CMTS. Doesn't seem like they'd be out in the field replacing nodes at midnight.

8 channel download bonding is now in place for their Newtown, CT headend. Down at 12:01am back up at 4:45am.

Im pleased so far. The test will be tonight during peak hours. Im cautiously optimistic.

Ahh, cool! Thanks for the info. I was wondering what they did. I just checked, and Willimantic has 8 channel bonding now, since we go through Newtown's headend

Exactly correct. When I had my TV freezing issue, it wasn't until I went door to door and made every neighbor aware that we all had this problem before Charter fixed it.

To be fair, all the homes in the neighborhood (including mine) didn't report the problem for YEARS.... and that's not Charter's fault, that was all our faults. Shortly after the scope of the problem was realized... it was fixed.

Now with the 8 channels my connection appears to be back to normal with 100+/5+ speeds all day and night including peak hours. My thanks to those here who offered advice and helped both in front of and behind the scenes to get this issue fixed.

Overall I am a happy Charter customer despite the nearly 5 months it took to resolve these issues.When it works the way its supposed to I am very pleased with my service. Everyone I have dealt with from the phone people to the techs,quality assurance and eventually escalation people have all done as much as they can I feel. The obvious problem is communication both between Charter employees amongst themselves and Charter communicating with its customers to follow up. It should not take countless phone calls and tech visits to get to the bottom of what to me at least was an obvious problem...overloaded node. Someone must have known,or should have known,and had that been communicated to me weeks ago I would not have been nearly as frustrated as I have been. I have spoken to several folks at Charter corporate lately and they have all said there is a new push on improving customer service and communications when issues arise. I hope so!

It's all TALK until we actually have PROOF of that actual
commitment to GOOD customer service.
One sign of that change would be restarting the
Charter Social Media Unit.