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Charter sucks redux

Cable wireI apologize for the lack of updates to the site by me for the last 4 days. You see my cable service was down yet again. This time, it went down sometime very early Friday morning. Figuring it might be a Clarksville-wide issue, I waited until Friday evening before calling Charter on the off chance that the problem which would resolve it’s self.

I called, navigated the myriad options available with Charter’s automated phone system and finally reached a real person. I read the support agent my signals and was told yes, I had a problem, and that they would have to dispatch a technician to my house. But oh so sorry, the first available appointment was Tuesday, November 21st between 8am and 12pm.

It is a sad commentary on Charter Communications, and their service, that I considered myself lucky that the matter was going to be resolved before the Thanksgiving holiday at all.

So I was stuck with a long weekend with no Internet. I don’t have any television service to fall back on, so my primary source of information and entertainment was not available. I was fortunate that I had just purchased Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 for the X-Box. It gave me something to do, keeping me from being bored stiff.

On Monday night. I called and confirmed that my appointment was for the next day, and yes the recording assured me that they would arrive there the next morning between 8am and 12pm.

I wake up about 9am on Tuesday morning. Right off I call Charter, and again confirmed that my appointment was still on schedule. I then got dressed, drove to Sonic and picked up a unsweetened tea and a bacon, egg, and cheese toaster sandwich, and then I went home to await a technician. About 10am I receive a call informing me that a technician was out today, and that they wanted to reschedule my appointment for the following day. Well since I work from home quite a bit and had been without service for four days already, I told them that would be unacceptable. The Charter rep said, “ok”, and hung up the phone. Noon rolls around and I still hadn’t seen a Charter repairman. I call up their service line and speak to an agent to remind them of the appointment and to let them know that I expect the companies I do business with to keep their agreements with me and that I was disappointed that they were late.

About 15 minutes later the Charter repairman shows up at my door. First he checks my signals, and finds there was indeed a problem.

So he goes out to the box on the side of the house to check the signal there. The last technician had placed an access prevention device and a seal, on this box . He had no trouble removing seal but didn’t have the proper tool to remove the access prevention device. He tried to remove it with his multi-tool, but was not successful. Before he could give up I pulled out my toolbox and asked if anything in there would make things easier for him to open it. He said selected a small screwdriver and said it might do the trick. Minutes later he had the access prevention device off. He removes the splitter which was recently added and tested the cable signals straight to the pole and did not find any issues. When they hooked up my upstairs neighbor on cable the technician had installed a TV signal filter on my line since I just purchase Internet and not Television services from Charter. So I suggested that the problem might be a bad filter. After testing the line on my side of the filter the agent agrees. So he removes the filter and hooks me back up direct, problem solved.

I want to thank the Charter serviceman, he went out of his way to get to my house as soon as he got the call that my repair call had not been answered on time. He was professional and very thorough in testing the issue and finding the problem.

I want to publicly state that I have never had problems with Charter’s people, just the company behind them.

During the run-up to the recent referendum, CDE’s general manager Ken Spradlin repeatedly stated that their telecommunications services would operate under the same response time frame as their electrical service. If I had CDE’s services my problem would have been fixed within a few hours instead of having to wait 4 days as with Charter Communications. That being said I am eagerly looking forward to the day that CDE’s TV, Internet, and phone services are available. Once they are ready to deliver the services to my home, they have my business.

Bill Larson
Bill Larson
Bill Larson isĀ  is politically and socially active in the community. Bill is a member of the Friends of Dunbar Cave. You can reach him via telephone at 931-249-0043 or via the email address below.
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1 COMMENT

  1. I had Charter… Stayed with them for as long as I could. Each time they upgraded their network speed I was one of the first in line. Then they went through a period of not enough subscribers at their highest speed and reduced our service without reducing our rates. Once BellSouth was in my area with their Fast Access DSL, I tested it and discovered I didn’t have the nightly slowdown as multiple users in my area went online. I currently have BellSouth FastAccess 6.0 DSL services with their free dedicated (which is really nice). It appears to be the best thing going in Clarksville at this time.

    I just reviewed the CDE site to see what they planned on offering and learned that service would be available to everyone by the end of 2008 (handfull currently had service). I was looking for more information on exactly what speed they were looking at offering, what prices, and what included / extra features (ip addresses, mailboxes, webspace, etc) Does anyone have this information or a CDE URL posting it?

    PS: Competation is a very good thing so long as your selected service provider makes enough profit to reinvest and support / expand its infrastructure and services. If only one company is offering service there is no incentive to move forward; and if too many are offering service there is not enough profit to reinvest and maintain current or provice additional costly features.

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