Beware: Charter TV Sucks Balls

For the love of all that’s holy, I can’t believe how bad Charter sucks. I had Charter Internet and TV. I ended up dropping their Internet service because it rarely worked and when it did, I never got the speeds I was paying for. Considering all my horrible experiences with Charter, I didn’t dare try their telephone service, though they certainly tried to sell me on it enough. Even better, they would try to sell me their phone service while I was calling in to confirm that their other services were once again down. Even better, when I called to cancel my service and told them why, they still tried to sell me their other services. I realize they’re reading from a script but come on, I couldn’t help but to laugh audibly and ask them if they were really that stupid.

Well now that I’m free of their crappy Internet service, now I’m noticing their TV service is just getting worse and worse. You can’t watch a full movie, game, or even the local news without having pauses, stutters, pixelation, etc. I seriously don’t understand how this shitball company stays in business (minus the various market monopolies they have) by providing such horrible services. I can’t wait for the day when Charter absolutely fails in the market so hard they are bought out.

I really don’t want to have a satellite installed on my roof, but I don’t see any other option at this point. I had better quality TV with old school rabbit ear antennas than I do with cable TV from Charter. There just aren’t enough options in our area, which is in no way considered “the sticks.” This place is well developed, matter of fact it’s over developed. This just shows how long Charter (previously TCI) had a monopoly in the area and only one other company is just now starting to play catch-up. So without choice, people are stuck with the only option available. When a new option arises, everyone is rightfully skeptical and wait to make any changes. Well, I for one am glad I’ve started to make changes and at this point, I’m certain I will be making more.

Seriously, Stop That!

I can’t believe in this day and age that you can still visit a site that wants to take control of your main browser window by resizing it. Are you kidding me? That shit went out as soon as it came in. It’s totally annoying and way too intrusive. I can understand doing this to a popup window, but a main window? No! Typically websites entirely in Flash violate this rule more than any other, however I’ve been noticing a few other relatively high profile sites doing this crap. Once it happens to me, I’ll never visit that site again.

Another gripe I have is websites that use fonts that are unreadable unless you’re using ClearType. Not everybody uses it dipshits. Matter of fact I’d be willing to bet most people don’t use it. Just stop, or I’ll never read another damned thing you write – because I can’t without straining my eyes until it feels like I’m having forks jabbed in them.

Just these two examples alone make me feel like I’m bitching about midi music in the background of a web page, or animated cursors on a web page. That’s how ridiculous these things are and nobody should be implementing them. So stop.

Beware: Charter Internet Sucks Balls

I have never, since 1992 seen such horrible service from an Internet Service Provider. If you have any other options for an ISP, I highly suggest you explore those other options. You definitely won’t find a positive review of Charter Pipeline at any respectable consumer information site. I’m not even talking about not receiving the speeds as advertised or you pay for, I’m just talking about availability. Charter’s Internet service is down more than it is up on most occasions. People pay a monthly fee for their unbelievably shitty service, Charter never pro-rates their bill due to outages on their end. And they will rarely admit to the outage being their fault. The best you can do is argue until you get a certain amount off your next bill. That amount never goes above $15 – $20. That is all their lackies are allowed to issue. In the end, if you use Charter, you overpay for a service that you don’t get to benefit from in the slightest.

You should also get in the habit of checking your bill. On numerous occasions we’ve seen billing errors. It is up to you, the consumer to catch Charter’s mistakes, report them, and make sure you receive compensation. Paying your bill is a hassle in itself. I can’t tell you how many hoops I had to jump through just so my wife could pay the bill over the phone (which thankfully isn’t provided by Charter or it wouldn’t work.)

Don’t dare call any of their service representatives unless you are ready to translate thick Indian accents that will absolutely not deviate from the script sitting in front of them. The scripts they read from immediately put the blame on your end. Before you know it, you will be rebooting your machines, unplugging everything, swapping out cables, etc. All this before they will even type a fucking zip code into their machine to see if outages have been reported. And by the way, they don’t even log reported outages as a problem until a minimum of 10 different people/locations have called about the same issue. So there you are, stuck – and awaiting a bill for service you do not get. How this company stays in business is a mystery.

Here’s a report I ran testing out the connectivity through Charter.
Outage report as seen by new jersey USA
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DOWN 2007-08-01 21:32:48 - 2007-08-06 02:48:57 (6076 minutes)
** You had 39.72% reachability during the period

Outage report as seen by california USA
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DOWN 2007-08-01 21:32:57 - 2007-08-06 02:48:57 (6076 minutes)
** You had 39.72% reachability during the period

Outage report as seen by san francisco USA
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DOWN 2007-08-01 21:42:58 - 2007-08-06 02:48:57 (6065 minutes)
** You had 39.84% reachability during the period

Speed test history
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2007-08-01 21:20:42 2824/233 kilobits per second down/up

The results speak for themselves. Up to 60% of the time, there is no Internet connection. That’s pitiful and it just gets worse.
You can read my full review from 2007 here.