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Charter misses customer service goals in Greenville


upstate29650

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IMO, Charter is one poor excuse of a cable company. I've used Comcast before, and they were far superior in their offerings, customer service, etc.

I wish our area would be more progressive, tos out franchise agreements, and make the market wide open to competition. The ability to choose from multiple cable providers would be great, and would drive down costs.

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Is Charter perfect? No, definitely not but from my exerpience in most cases they are failry responsive. In fact the last time I had an issue with my cable modem, they sent technicions out on a Sunday (granted they were 2 hours later than the "last possible" time available) but they seemed to get the problem fixed pretty quick. I've heard far worse stories from people in other areas related to their cable service. Remember Intermedia (Chart'ers predecessor)? I had far worse service from them.

The ideal situaoin should be that multiple providers are allowed in to have some competition but not likely to happen.

Oh, and I <3 my DVR too, so maybe I'm biased ....

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Say what you will, but Charter's customer service definetly sucks! Last time I called I had to wait an hour to get someone and they were in Texas! Why am I talking to someone in Texas when there is a building right down the road. Then the guy kept asking me the same question which had nothing to do with the problem. After getting very frustrated with them and threatning to try a different service, they finally sent someone out and he still didn't fix it!

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Is Cable not like Power Companies- in that you can only have one per market?

I think it is the monopoly exception. It would be atrocious to have five cable lines by five cable companies in the same area. It is just more money to spend for servicing the lines, etc. Charter Communications has to make a profit somewhere, and we the customers can only pay so much.

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Like all customer service type things it's about who you get. Sometimes you get people that really help and sometimes you don't. a few years ago I would have been complaining like the rest of you, but I guess I've been lucky lately.

Yeah you have, because I have never got good, speedy customer service with them.

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I think it is the monopoly exception. It would be atrocious to have five cable lines by five cable companies in the same area. It is just more money to spend for servicing the lines, etc. Charter Communications has to make a profit somewhere, and we the customers can only pay so much.

Cable is an exception, if the local governments in a service area allow for competition. From what I understand, existing cable lines would be "leased" by competitors to deliver their product.

As an example, if Comcast was allowed to enter the market, they would deliver their products over Charter lines, and Comcast would pay a user fee to Charter.

Other innovations we don't have is cable via phone lines (Bell South is trying to roll that out fairly soon), and wireless cable tv.

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Unfortunately cable companies are not regulated by the Public Service Commission in SC. I think they should be since they are a monopoly and the PSC's job is to create artificial competition.

Hopefully BellSouth will be able to give them a run for their money when they are able to get into cable.

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Unfortunately cable companies are not regulated by the Public Service Commission in SC. I think they should be since they are a monopoly and the PSC's job is to create artificial competition.

Hopefully BellSouth will be able to give them a run for their money when they are able to get into cable.

Although the South Carolina Public Service Commission doesn't regulate cable television systems (that is left to the individual counties and municipalities), they still reserve some regulatory authority and my experience with Charter has been that they respect that. Of course, I'm usually speaking to someone in Louisville, KY about my Internet Service.

All-in-all, the service I've had from Charter in Travelers Rest has been great. I've heard the horror stories from my friends and relatives down in Greenville.

http://www.scstatehouse.net/code/t58c012.htm

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Well, I have DirecTV and DSL, and I haven't had any problems with my service. Even in really crappy weather, I still don't have those problems. I've had this crazy idea that municipality could own fiber lines, and in turn lease them out to anyone or company for usage for data, telco, and CATV. We already have a similar system in place, that's called the interstate highway system. I'd like to see the competition here like there is in Charleston. Comcast and Knology are the two providers there. Bellsouth is already ahead of the cable game Likewise, I'm ready for high speed access faster than the 6MB service I'm getting with Bellsouth DSL now.

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Well, I have DirecTV and DSL, and I haven't had any problems with my service. Even in really crappy weather, I still don't have those problems. I've had this crazy idea that municipality could own fiber lines, and in turn lease them out to anyone or company for usage for data, telco, and CATV. We already have a similar system in place, that's called the interstate highway system. I'd like to see the competition here like there is in Charleston. Comcast and Knology are the two providers there. Bellsouth is already ahead of the cable game Likewise, I'm ready for high speed access faster than the 6MB service I'm getting with Bellsouth DSL now.

Price-wise, Bell South seems to be priced about the same as Charter for cable TV. I was hoping to see some more aggressive pricing. :(

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Hmmm I have a moral delima with Charter. When I moved into my new house about two years ago I just plugged in the cable cord just to get it out of the way and I had all the channels. I just figured it was a promotional thing but they never shut it off.

I have never made any attempt to steal cable but they have never shut it off...Is this stealing or just them being slack. One good thing about this is that I never get madd when it goes out. I never have to worry about calling the cable guy, it is all just a bonus.

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What I think is funny is how the cable commercials have tried to suggest that satellite companies are out of service more frequently than cable service, due to weather and the like. What's funny to me is that, unless there is a REALLLLLY long cable I'm not aware about that stretches from earth into space, the cable company gets their signal from a satellite to. :rofl:

Besides, in my experience with both cable historically has picture problems more than satellite, including thunderstorms.

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I have had Dish Network for the last 5 years and I will say that over that period of time it has been out for maybe a total of 30 minutes due to storms. Outages are very rare on satellite. I like Dish as it also include Sirius Satellite radio on its music channel line up now. I liked it so much that I put Sirius in my car.

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What I think is funny is how the cable commercials have tried to suggest that satellite companies are out of service more frequently than cable service, due to weather and the like. What's funny to me is that, unless there is a REALLLLLY long cable I'm not aware about that stretches from earth into space, the cable company gets their signal from a satellite to. :rofl:

Besides, in my experience with both cable historically has picture problems more than satellite, including thunderstorms.

Actually most feeds from networks are done over wires...there is too much delay transmitting 22,223 miles up and then back down, with all the latency of the satellite itself added in too.

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I had dish network & really enjoyed it. Outages were minimal & short-lived. I don't have home telephone service, as my cell plan is very good, and for me, hard-wired phone service is a redundancy I wasn't willing to pay for. So, to get my internet, I bundled it with cable tv. I miss my dish, but I can't live without broadband internet, and since dsl is a phone company product, I went with cable.

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So, to get my internet, I bundled it with cable tv. I miss my dish, but I can't live without broadband internet, and since dsl is a phone company product, I went with cable.

That is one area where cable really beats a satellite system. The satellite broadband is too expensive, and much slower than cable.

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