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 Review by GreenJello 
Posted: a few hours ago
member for 8.9 years, 3290 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Maryville,Blount,TN
 $133 per month (24 month contract)
 about 7 days
 "Fast and reliable"
 "One provider for all services, poor billing"
 "Bundling services is a better value"
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I'd been a Bellsouth FastAccess DSL subscriber for many years. I was getting a 1.5M for $32. Attach my landline to the bill and I was paying $67 altogether. My cable bill was $67 as well. And that was with a discount that was soon to expire. Charter offered all three services for 24 months at $118, plus a $50 coupon of the next months bill. That's 5M broadband service and unlimited local and long distance calling, and a premium movie package. I needed to add additonal channels to the cable to get what I was getting now and I leased the modem. That brought my total to $133. Still a better value than I had before. I only had 2 calling features and no voicemail. Now I have 10 features with voicemail.
The order process was satisfactory. I really couldn't say if I missed out on anything. The representative took all my info and scheduled my install for phone & internet. I received automated calls advising me the appointment was on schedule. The technician showed up and placed the equipment where I had picked out. He needed to replace the telephone modem as evidently it had not been wiped clean from its last user. The tech also installed a powered splitter to increase the signal strength. My AT&T phone number ported over with no problems.
I've used the service for a week and speedtests have exceeded the 5M. I have no complaints about how this transiton took place. I have neighbors who have this service and my wifes workplace also has it. They are also pleased with the service.
I did have issues with my bill. I ordered services a week prior to my billing cycle. The bill charges me a month in advance. The new charge for the cable package was on there. It also charged me a partial month charge for the new service, but it still had my previous package on there, which should have come off. Talked to 3 different reps to clear this up.
I know many are not pleased is various parts of the country with Charter, But I would have to say in our neck of the woods, it does just fine. I hope that my subsequent updates to this review are just as positive.
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Review by creb
UPDATED: 4 days ago
Fair warning: reviewer joined this month
Madison,Dane,WI
$89 per month
"Fast speeds. They don't seem to enforce their bandwidth caps."
"Wide variance in dealings with their technicians. After one year of rock solid service have gone through disconnect hell since."
"Great speed, though the lack of any competition in Madison, WI makes any review a bit stilted."
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Location: Madison, WI
I've had Charter for a year and three months. For the first year, I may have had 3 disconnects in total. Solid service. I also know for a fact I've gone way over their bandwidth limits (unfortunately, they do technically have them), but haven't ever actually been penalized for it. I started with their 16 Mb/s service, and it was upgraded by them during the 2008-2009 winter to 20 Mb/s. While there is rarely any instance where I actually achieve those speeds (due to virtually no websites/commercial servers allowing you to download at those speeds), I know they are achievable as I do get those speeds when using Usenet (yes, I just broke the first rule of Usenet  ).
Then my service was disconnected at the beginning of UW-Madison's school year 'by accident'. Sort of understandable due to the huge rush in new and discontinued services I suppose. I had a horrendous experience in getting it re-connected as I went through two technicians who didn't know where the cable boxes were, and so they couldn't switch the service back on (resolved when I figured out where the box was and showed them the location).
Bad experience, but I could live with it, especially after having had a rock-solid experience for the previous year.
Then, starting the week of November 9th, I started getting disconnects multiple times an hour. Today is November 24th and no resolution is in sight. I have gone through numerous tech support calls. I have had to pay money to get a technician to come out and take a look himself. I have two continuing lines of support attempting to solve this problem (one with the regional office and one through the direct support forum here). As of yet, I've yet to get a hint that either line of support has any idea as to what is causing the disconnects.
At this point, I have mixed feelings. I know Charter can be great. I went through one year where it was great with maybe 3 disconnects in total. I have seen them at their best. For the last three weeks, I can't go an hour without 3 disconnects and a resolution doesn't seem to be in sight. Add to that the audacity to charge me to send a tech out when I am paying them $80+/month, and no reduction to my monthly bill during these weeks of constantly interrupted service, and I suspect I am now seeing Charter at their worst.
Would I recommend Charter? I don't know. The only real alternative here is AT&T's DSL service and a limited region of Madison can get their U-Verse DSL service. I've had DSL in the past and didn't like it. Slower speeds than cable, and based usually off ancient telephone line architecture. I would be loathe to have to make the switch. I am hoping there is a breakthrough soon on my disconnects, but if another week goes by without a resolution, I will be forced to do so.
I would still recommend Charter though. When it is working, it is the best service available in Madison, WI. At worst, you have problems and can make the switch to an alternative.
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 Review by Recon66
UPDATED: 5 days ago
member for 7.5 years, 788 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Worcester,Worcester,MA
$300 per month
"Speed is great as is most of the high end tech support"
"Billing and 98% of the Office don't know their ass from their elbow"
"You PAY and then get screwed by their billing and office staff"
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If you like being shafted money wise Charter is your best choice.
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Review by ke4rzi
UPDATED: 6 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 240 visits, last login: 4 days ago
Columbia,Maury,TN
$40 per month
about 3 days
"Reliable, decent ping to midwest, actaully hits 3 Mbps. unlike ADSL."
"Ping is not very good to North East and upload would be nice at 384k +"
"Charter's speed is what they claim and priced very competitively and very reliable with decent ping to midwest."
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Charter used to have terrible internet just a few years ago and it was way overpriced. Since then the local power company came out with their own cable tv and internet business and low and behold Charter dropped their rates for the first time ever. Really dropped their rates from like $70 for 3 Mbps to $40 normal price and for my first 6 months of Charter's 3 Mbps./256k I am only paying $30 a month. What's worse is that if you went back to Charter from one of the Satellite TV services or my local power company's cable tv then Charter will give you $25 a month off your cable tv bill for an entire year. I'm afraid that they are going to put my local Power Company's cable tv/internet service out of business though but, my local power company/ Cable TV company is charging $65 a month for 3 Mbps. That's $25 higher than Charter's same speed offering and CPWS's ping times are a lot higher than Charter's. I'd have stayed with CPWS if their ping times had been decent just to try to support the upstart competitor to Charter. But, with high ping times and uncompetitive pricing CPWS is going to have to do something to earn new customers.
Update: 11/22/09
Holy Crap, Charter tried to pull a fast one.. I had been having trouble with my Charter internet losing connection last week and on top of that the speeds were way off when it would connect. Well I get an e-mail notification about my bill and they had tacked on $40 to my bill because they had sent a technician to my house. The tech had discovered that there was noise in their system and that was causing the problem and on top of that someone at Charter had removed the provisioning for my modem and entered in some number that did not pertain to my modem. I had called Charter the day before the tech came and the person on the phone had reprovisioned my modem and it worked fine for an hour or so and then it would not reconnect. When the tech guy got here he called Charter to check the provisioning and the mac address they had for my modem wasn't even close to what my mac address was so he got that straightened out. So both problems were Charter's and they were going to charge me $40 for their technician's visit to discover that they had problems on their system and that they had my modem mixed up with somone else's. Their upload speed is still not right but, atleast it's working and they did take back the charge after I called in to see what was up. I had to threaten to cancel the service before the guy on the phone finally did it though. He kept explaining that there was a service charge whenever a tech guy paid a visit and I kept explaining that both of the things that were wrong were Charter's fault and had nothing to do with my house's wiring or my modem or computer. Charter had just increased the upload speed to 1 Mbps. within the past month for free but, during the crappiest part of their problem last weekend my upload speed was slower than dialup and that was to their own speedtest on their own network. The picture should be attached to this review.
Attachments:
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Review by tvc_oldie
Posted: 7 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 12 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Traverse City,Grand Traverse,MI
$50 per month (12 month contract)
"when it works it is great"
"service phone tree, reliably is worsening"
"Not getting my money's worth"
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Charter was the only viable option when I signed up 5 years ago.
I am supposed to be rcvg 10/1 but often see less then 1/1
There has been a neighborhood problem for a couple years that is recently becomind bad enough that service is not available for several hours per day.
I have my own equipment... Moto SB5120 and sometimes a Cisco SOHO router if I need more computers connected at once.
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Review by Kital
UPDATED: 7 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 294 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Park Hills,Saint Francois,MO
$135 per month
"Works good during non peak times"
"Presales information was different for each rep i talked to."
"Service is great"
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I signed up over the phone with charter, before canceling dsl (was great for a while, but after a storm a few months back it was never the same). I ordered the 10 megabit package along with the phone, and i already had the television service. Having had charter internet before with some local line problems I was some what reluctant to give their service a try. My thought process was if they upgraded to 10 megabit and started offering phone service they would have found the faulty wiring/equipment and fixed it. The reason for the low presales info rating was as follows. The first lady i talked to told me i could not do a self install for the 10 meg package, thinking that seemed weird i called and asked another person and they said i could and they had never heard anything like that. I go pickup my modem and am online an hour or so after.
The techs that came out to install the phone service were polite, and did clean work. They ran all new phone wiring and made everything look nice. They showed up on time but forgot the phone modem so one of them ran back for that while the other ran the lines. Everything was up in less than an hour.
Since the install the service has been extremely solid. I haven't had one down time of note, even through an ice storm that had several surrounding homes out of power.
The speeds are remarkable (Even during peak times)and the latency is very nice. The latency is on par with what dsl offered so I wouldn't say its the best part of the service. That would have to be the 10megabit downloads & reliability. On average trace routes I am out of the charter network under 15ms and for most east coast servers I run around 30ms in the games I play.
Anyway, overall I am happy with my experience with charter this round. Definitely an improvement since i tried them last.
[update 10/17/2007]
The service was great for quite a while, but I am beginning to have severe speed/latency issues during prime time. From 5-6 to about 10:30-11, I'm lucky to get 1 megabit down, and my latency on my 3rd hop is sky rocketing. Traceroute following:
Tracing route to google.com [64.233.167.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 6 ms 7 ms 8 ms 10.202.240.1
2 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 68.112.13.49
3 234 ms 239 ms 240 ms 24.217.5.126
4 226 ms 232 ms 219 ms 24.217.2.130
5 237 ms 227 ms 223 ms 208.44.154.173
6 217 ms 218 ms 212 ms 205.171.139.13
7 221 ms 224 ms 227 ms 205.171.139.162
8 246 ms 239 ms 242 ms 63.144.64.134
9 253 ms 265 ms 251 ms 209.85.250.237
10 279 ms 288 ms 289 ms 66.249.94.133
11 280 ms 273 ms 272 ms 72.14.232.74
12 256 ms 261 ms 246 ms 64.233.167.99
That is not actually the worse, generally it reaches 4-500. I understand most techs at charter don't listen to complaints about latency, but receiving less than 10% of my 10megabit package's speed is not acceptable either. Sorry to say, I may be forced to leave soon.
The service is still fast and has low latency the rest of the day.. but the time I actually use it(after work, before bed) is when its the worse.
The speed tests I ran all over the country show an average of about 800 kilobits per second during these trouble periods.
[update 11/21/2009]
Well, I stuck it out, and for the last year or so the service has been fantastic. Running the 20/2 megabit package now and receive the full speed all day, no more slow downs. I am happy I decided to stick around although the price isn't really acceptable unless you bundle.. for phone, t.v.(hbo,etc) and 20/2 the package comes in at around $130. I was paying 145 for just t.v. and internet without the movie channels.
Strange pricing, but I'll take what I can get when it comes to saving money.
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Review by dbslayer
UPDATED: 8 days ago
member for 103 days, 136 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Covington,Saint Tammany,LA
$59 per month
about 58 days
"Fast, reliable, stable, Online support via forum and twitter"
"Phone support"
"Extremely happy customer after 42 days of service"
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Highlights
Charter phone support has to be the WORST experience I have ever had.
Charter online support has to be the BEST experience I have ever had.
This rating reflects my experience with the online support process.
Note: The “Charter Direct” forum support staff are the PRIMARY reason I am a Charter customer AND a very happy Charter customer. These same Charter support people also provide support via twitter. Follow Umatter2Charter on twitter or just post to the “Charter Direct” forum at dslreports.com site. This forum is private between customer and Charter.
UPDATE: It has just been in the last hour I posted this review and then realized I should point out the "Charter Online" support person I did all my discussion with is Umtr2chtr2 .. they have several in their team.
General Overview
I wanted primarily a fast, reliable, and stable connection no matter what the price.
I pay about $13 / month more for Charter Internet which includes $5 for modem rent.
I was a Bellsouth DSL ( AT&T now ) customer from 2000 until 2009.
Both Bellsouth/AT&T and Charter are stable and reliable, but AT&T (6Meg) is not nearly as fast as Charter (20Meg++).
My choices are Cable or DSL.
Install Process
The first 23 days were a waste of time when using the “Phone process”.
Using the “Online process”, the 39 days from my first post to the “Charter Direct” forum to my completed install was long, primarily because my neighborhood is only 2 years old and cable had to be run under the road to my side of the street.
Speed
Unbelievable ! My 1st 2 weeks using 5 or 6 test sites were consistently showing I was getting very close to what I pay for which is the 20Meg download and 2Meg upload. Then Charter implemented Powerboost and now these same test sites show my speed always over the 20Meg download and up to 34Meg which is the best so far ( using speedtest.net site ). Also sites with lots of pictures are a bit faster too. Big downloads and uploads are VERY fast and OBVIOUSLY MUCH faster.
Stability and Reliability
It has NEVER gone down yet. My speeds are ALWAYS faster than the FASTEST I ever got with DSL and usually 3 to 5 times faster. I work from home using VPN a LOT at all times of day and night. I download and upload large files regularly as part of my job. I use the Internet for personal use a LOT for many things.
It is too bad that AT&T is lagging so far behind because I use to like them. Although U-Verse is being rolled out in my area, it is not available to me yet. And it has a slower max speed than Charter offers today. While AT&T is deploying U-Verse with a max download of 18Meg, Charter is deploying the latest Cable speeds of like 60Meg download! And 60Meg download will probably get to my area WAY sooner than AT&T could ever offer something like this.
Equipment
Renting modem from Charter which is "Ubee U10C018 Data Cable Modem". I am using a Linksys router model WRT610N.
Note: I have been working with computer software since I graduated college in 1981.
Well enough for now. I will post updates and could provide more details.
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Review by slmetcalf
UPDATED: 9 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 943 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Athens,Limestone,AL
$55 per month
about 10 days
"Umatter2Charter Guys"
"Reliability, Customer Service, Supervisors for Customer Service"
"It is beyond horrible and customer service is useless"
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We signed up for charter in 2006. Nothing else was considered as there are no other options in our area. We did have the cable and internet but dropped the cable due to horrible reception that charter could never correct. We have kept the internet as their are no other hsi options where we live. We have the 5mg package. Over the course of the last year our connection has become a problem. The product is sub standard. Problems are so bad that our internet drops at least once a day for 10 minutes. Just as mysteriously as the connection drops it comes back up. Problems still exist even after changing out modem. We own our modem. If I had an alternative to them I would drop them in a heart beat.
Update problems thought to be corrected 2 weeks ago are happening again. In the last week my connection has dropped 4 times three of them were for more than 20 minutes and the last one today was for more than an hour with 100% packet loss. What these people refer to as broadband barely passes for usable internet anymore. Have contacted charter yet again and waiting to hear back from the tech today. Well the rep that I talked to today told me incorrectly. I had them verify that it would be today that a tech would be coming out. I was assured that my connection would be fixed today. Customer service is useless. If I could tell them where to go I would but I have no alternative for internet here.
Update was told yesterday that someone would be coming today between 3pm and 5pm no one has called and no one has showed up and it is 4:45. Guess I will be calling again in 15 minutes to find out what excuse they have for not calling or showing up yet again.
Well the tech did not show up to my house they claim to have called me. Phone never rang and I was home all day. The last supervisor that I spoke with claims they called yesterday also but said I was not home again untrue. Explained that this was an ongoing issue but they refuse to dispatch a tech on the grounds that we did not answer the phone. Can't believe that customer service is so horrendous. Out of all of the broadband providers I have dealt with Charter's Customer Service is the worst. Price was the one thing that I could say is good about charter but not even that is true anymore for the product quality that I get.
Update 10/12/2009
My appointment that should have been Friday got pushed until 7:45 tonight not happy about that but the Umatter2charter guys have been great and are doing everything they can to help me with my problems. Customer service however continues to be the worst that I have ever dealt with. Although a handful of the reps I have spoken with have attempted to help and even fewer have actually worked with me regarding my issue
Update 10/13/09
Technician finally showed last night at 7:45 which was bumped twice in one day. Connection dropped last night just before the tech arrived and very briefly did this morning around 11:30am. Was told that a supervisor would be coming today still have yet to hear from them if or when he will show. Umatter to charter guys are still working with me and that is greatly appreciated.
Update 11/5/09
I was informed yesterday by the local office that I have been dealing with since my problem was escalated a month ago that my problem is corrected. My better judgement tells me otherwise. Still experiencing packet loss as much as 39% just this morning. If the connection were fixed the packet loss would not be there.
Update 11/19/09
Well my better judgement was right. My connection has dropped 3 times in two weeks since the problem was fixed on Oct 22nd.My modem has continued to reset in this time frame as well My most recent drops were late tuesday night early wednesday morning and late Wednesday night early this morning. All they can tell me is my connection has been steady which it has not. I have now asked for the plant manager to become personally involved as this has gone on way too long
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Review by matt314159
UPDATED: 9 days ago
member for 3.8 years, 352 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Hesperia,San Bernardino,CA
$85 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"Most of the time, it just works...and FAST!"
"When it doesnt, good luck getting somebody with a triple digit IQ to help you out."
"Explore your options. Sometimes Charter is the best value, sometimes it's not"
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**UPDATE NOV 19, 2009**
With Charter's Ultra60 coming into town I just had to take the leap. I walked into my local office, was quoted a contract price of $29 for the basic 5mb + $55 for the Ultra60 Upgrade. When you think about it, $85 a month for 60mb/s down and 5mb/s up is freaking INSANE! Three years ago, when we were all stuck at 3mbps down for $40 a month, this was unfathomable.
Anyway I received a SB6120 modem and agreed to the 24 month contract. I don't mind the contract, actually. I was tired of playing the 6 month promotion games. I don't have to keep the 60meg service for two years, just the $29 5meg service. If money gets tight I can drop the service down penalty free.
So far I can't get any speed tests to show me that i'm actually getting 60mbps speed, they all seem to top out at 20-30mbps, but downloading via astraweb on usenet shows I'm getting around 5MB/s download speed using 20 connections....that's 40mbit/s...I'd like to be seeing 50 or more but I haven't even had it for a day yet so we will see how it goes and go from there. I'll update more as I find out more. I like this speed tier since it is all-you-can-eat, no-caps internet. Not that charter was enforcing the caps before, but I like unlimited.
[/update]
----------------------------
I'm my family's designated liaison with Charter. I've got five different households (grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles) in my family that all use charter. When something goes wrong, i am the first one they call. I then go to their house and deal with charter on their behalf.
My biggest beef is the offshore tech support. No matter the issue, they will always step you through their prewritten script, with NO CONCEPT of what is actually going on at all, and no attempt to actually wrap their minds around the situation. Once I can bully through the 1st tier tech support and get somebody who 1) speaks English and more importantly 2) knows what they're talking about, I usually get results pretty quick.
Charter's "regular" pricing is atrocious. Their promotional prices are starting to get shorter lately, offering 3 to 6 months of the promotional rate instead of 12 like they used to.
At my house, we have options. Verizon 3mb/768k DSL is available for $29 a month, and Dish Network is always a thorn in a cableco's side, so I use this to my advantage. If you know how to work the system, you can strongarm them into giving you decent rates. But you have to be willing to walk when you call their retention department. My latest achievement was getting 3mb HSI for $19.99 for 12 months. It happened because I was ready to walk away for good. I had Verizon install DSL at our house (we had 30 days to "test drive" it before we got locked in a contract) and I was pleased, so I called charter to cancel. They offered me some half-hearted 3 and 6 month deals, and when I was adamant that I wanted to cancel, because I had found it cheaper elsewhere, they finally relented and gave me the $19 rate for 12 months. So I actually sent my DSL modem back to Verizon and canceled Verizon instead of charter. Lucky for me, just a couple weeks later, every southern California customer (that I know of) who had 3mb cable internet through charter, was put on a special "5meg preview" tier, which is good through February 2008. So for the last 6 months, I've had 5mb internet for $19.99/month. And I'll gladly ride that wave into '08.
Last night our cable modem got knocked offline, and through talking to my family members who also have charter, discovered that it was an area-wide outage. The modem knocked off around 11pm,and when I got up this morning at 6am, it was all back and running normally again. This was, however, the first time in OVER A YEAR, that we had had an outage like this.
Bottom line: Shop around, and play the companies against each other. If charter wins pricewise, go with them. If not, I'd recommend whatever the other alternative is, because Charter is definitely NOT worth any kind of a premium price.
------------
Update: 2/13/09
It's been a little while, and I'm now on the 16/2 package for $55 a month. Overall I'm still very happy with them, but with their new CAPS, I will be keeping an eye on the competition if something ever comes along that is as fast. But until then I'm still overall very happy. We've had a couple of outages in the previous year, but nothing too bad. I still avoid calling tech support like the plague. Speeds during peak times lately have been between 6-12mbps when they should be 16, but since I do most of my downloading between midnight and 7am, it hasn't gotten in the way too much. Though if they don't straighten that out in the next month or two, I'm going to have to do something about it.
Followup comments:  KoRnGtL15
Premium
join:2007-01-04
Grants Pass, OR | ? Whats your complaint? The pricing. Ok whatever. Go wheel and deal to get the better price. But 1 outage in a year and your complaining? | |
| matt314159
join:2006-01-18
Hesperia, CA
 ·Charter Pipeline
1 edit | Just because it works doesnt mean it's a great company Tech support is my biggest complaint with them. Just because there's no outage does not mean I don't have a reason to complain.
Say, for instance, the time I bought my grandmother a surfboard 5100 so she could quit paying her modem rental fee. Called and got the modem put on the account, only turns out they didn't take off the other modem, nor did they mark the one I swapped onto the account as my own, even though I specifically told them, I was swapping out the leased modem with a modem i bought with my own money. I had to bang supervisor's heads together to get them to understand that I was not going to pay them $3 a month to use a modem that WE OWNED. Stuff like that.
We've had some billing issues as well, that were a hassle.
Overall, charter really isn't that great of a company, though in our area of southern California, there are relatively few technical problems (Thank God I don't live in riverside). So like I said, Charter isn't my first choice of a company, but its livable. The service works, but the support structure (by that I mean the CSR's, Tech agents, etcetera) is subpar. | |
| KoRnGtL15
Premium
join:2007-01-04
Grants Pass, OR
| ........ I agree with what you say about the support and what not. They pulled the same thing on me with the modem deal. Ive had my own since day 1. And since the bill is just paid. I got to looking and they charged $3 extra bucks each month. This was 11 months worth. I called customer service and there was no hassle with credit being credited to the account. My only choice for service out here is Charter and Qwest. Qwest only offers 1.5 mb dsl service. Way to slow. Charter offers 3mb, 5mb and 10mb. Im on there 3mb plan but with a 5mb preview until Feb 2008. Its $29.99 right now and in Feb im staying on the 5mb plan. Which jumps it up to $39.99. While pricey. I simply dont have any other choices in my area for service. Which really stinks. Service has been pretty reliable. | |
| | matt314159
join:2006-01-18
Hesperia, CA | Re: ........ You listed the only company I've heard that most people agree is actually WORSE than charter, and that's QWEST. I've heard nothing but horror stories about that company. You definitely made the right choice in sticking with charter. | |
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 Review by jopfef
UPDATED: 11 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 4233 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Saint Louis,Saint Louis,MO
Contract price not specified.
about 1 days
"VERY fast speed, and it's rock solid."
"Zip for price due to being an employee"
"Can't beat the speed!"
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(ratings above consensus)
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11-17-2009: Moved this fall, to a little house in the woods on top of a very big hill -- and had Charter re-installed the day I moved in. Install tech looked at the outside line after he couldn't get a good signal, said it was badly damaged, and then saw the squirrels running around in the trees. *grin* He immediately ran a new line and arranged to have it buried this time, to prevent any more damage from my friendly little "neighbors". Bury crew was here the next day, and no problems with any connections at all. Still have just the TV and the internet service; not paying for phone service as I pay a ton of money every month to have my BlackBerry phone and need it more than I need a house phone. Still running at 20 megs with no problems, and very happy to have the service on top of this hill; wasn't sure Charter was up here when I moved, but happy that they are!
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5-5-2009: Still have Charter cable installed, and still working for Charter. The only problem I've had was a 9-day delay in getting the outside line put back up when a boom truck went by and pulled it down (had the boom partway up). Due to the stupidity of the person who took my call, the work order was entered incorrectly, and it took NINE DAYS for a tech to get out here and restring it. Once that was done, no problems.
I'm now running at 20 megs, and it's great! Today, just for fun, I installed Windows 7 RC 1, and it's running on Charter. Way better than Vista, and my laptop is hitting top speeds now. Very pleased with that, and will probably upgrade when the final release comes out.
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9-23-2008: Well, it's back to Charter cable for services again. I moved in June, and the DSL that was available here absolutely sucked on speed. So out the door with it. I'm a Charter employee, so had the TV and the internet installed, and it's running just fine. I jumped to 16 megs for the internet, and it's awesome! AT&T doesn't have anything close to that, needless to say. The only problem I had was when a boom truck drove by with its boom up, and snagged both the Charter line and the electrical line coming into my house. Utility company was here in less than 30 minutes. Even with all my ranting and raving, it still took Charter NINE days to get the line put back up. Disgraceful.
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9-13-2007: I'm still gone from Charter, but that will probably change within the next few months. I'm in the process of looking for a home to purchase, and depending on the availability of cable being there, plan to have Charter installed again. It'll be free this time around -- it's one of the perks of being an employee. *grin* I find it quite humorous that my current living situation dictates that even though I work for Charter, I have AT&T DSL at home. I did just upgrade to the 6 megs on the DSL, to see if it's any good; I'll know when the new modem gets here -- I'm running the DSL here on an old 5360!
I'm NOT a fan of the bundle setup that Charter is offering. I don't own a television, haven't owned one in years, and see no need to own one. I also don't need a phone, since I depend exclusively on my cell phone. The phone line here is used strictly for the DSL line; there isn't even a phone hooked up to it. So I don't know how that will fall out if and when it comes time to install Charter again. Time will tell!
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It's been awhile since I posted an update and there have been some changes, so here goes. I'm gone from Charter even though I loved the speeds that I got; very consistent, as tested with the tools here at DSLR. I was on a special rate at Charter for the last several years. Not only did I lose that rate ($26/month), but I went straight from it to the new rate of $58/month -- and that's just for Internet service!!! I don't have cable TV here, so that was just too rich for my blood. Called Charter and cancelled the service, effective the day of the new rate hike, and called AT&T and ordered DSL.
My Linksys BEFCMU10 modem is packed away for another day. I'm currently house-shopping, and it will most likely be put to use again after I move. For the time being, I'm using an old Speedstream 5360 that I had lying around here; it does the job admirably well, and is hooked to my Linksys router before branching out to my systems.
I was very unhappy with the massive increase in price with Charter. I still think they have the best speed in town, although I'm not at all interested in their 6meg offering. I am sad to depart from them, but have to do what's best financially right now. I think those prices for naked internet are ridiculous. :-(
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