At Wits End With Cable Provider -- Need Suggestions

I've been a Charter Communications customer for going on 9 years now. I've definitely had my share of ups-and-downs with their service, but mostly down -- to the point I have written their CEO on several occasions.

Keep in mind that I have no real alternative to high speed Internet even remotely close to these speeds. Charter knows that they have a captive market in this area and seems to take full advantage of that fact by offering poor service (IMO). I feel I shouldn't have to monitor a service I'm paying for to ensure that I'm getting value for my money, but that's what I'm having to do.

My current situation is this...

In September 2007, I upgraded my internet service to 16M/2M. Silly me -- thinking that they would actually deliver anything close to that, but nonetheless I upgraded anyway. In the meantime I've been keeping somewhat detailed records of speed problems by way of a spreadsheet (over 900 speedtests since 9/5) showing times, dates, speeds, averages, even broken-down by time of day to show how bad prime-time is. BTW, I'm averaging about 10.5M down during prime time which is even less than Charter's guaranteed 75% of the advertised speed (which is pretty crappy in and of itself but that's another argument).

After calling several times over the period of a month, I finally let them roll a truck. On Saturday I had a tech come out to the house to see what was going on. Beyond finding that my account was improperly provisioned in one of their systems (which really did nothing from what I can see), he did nothing that I haven't already done dozens of times. We took my Linksys router out of the loop with little or no difference in speed. But he thought he did his job as the speeds went from a little over 5M down to about 12M during the course of the 30 or so minutes he was here. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I knew that later that night it'd be right back to more of the same slow speeds.

I know that calling support gets me absolutely nothing at this point -- except for may another truck roll. Based on past experience, a letter to the CEO will get me better service for about a month or so, but it has always degraded to where it was before if not worse.

What I'd really like to do is write the CEO and say "Look dude, if you're only going to provide 50% of my service, I'm only going to pay for 50% of the service." I know that isn't the way to handle the situation but so far Charter hasn't offered any long-term solutions.

So... after that long rant....

How would you handle this situation?

I might caution a bit more testing, frankly. If you are getting 12M on a nominally 16M link, you may actually be OK. Remember that there is another site involved too - the site that is downloading to you - and a pretty complex network in between it and you.

I had the same apparent problem when I first took out high speed DSL (at the time, it was 6 Mbps - seems slow now, but only a few years ago that was FAST). I was getting a little over 4 Mbps on my tests and like you, I was not pleased at all. One of their techs provided me with the insight I needed though. He had me do an FTP transfer from my machine to an FTP server that was geographically close by and on their network. Boom! 5.95 Mbps or so.

My line, and my service from the originating office to my house, was more than capable of the rated 6 Mbps, but when you hooked it up to a remote server (as more or less all of them are) and traversed through servers, routers, network connections, etc., end-to-end throughput degraded somewhat. When you think about it this way, you can see that this is to be expected really.

Now I have 15 Mbps Verizon FiOS. Every now and then I will see 13 or 14 Mbps on a download, but never 15. The 13-14 only happens infrequently. I don't worry about it any more. Of course when I first got this line, I did the same sort of "local" FTP test and verified that I was getting 15 Mbps from my house to a Verizon local FTP server. Since then I have been happy.

You may need to accept that just because your "pipe" is 16 Mbps wide, you may not be able to get other sites to routinely stuff 16 Mbps down it.

My two cents.

I had an older apartment once that had a lot of speed issues and even service drop-outs for just the Road Runner service. Every time I called someone out, it would be working fine at that moment, so they'd either go through the motions or do nothing. Finally I got a sympathetic ear to escalate the matter and they sent out an upper-level technician. After a little inspecting through the crawl space and around the apartment unit, he said the problem was simply the lines. As I said... it was an older apartment, and the cable line simply needed to be replaced/updated. Worked great once that got all done.

Anywho... my general point here is that they may not be sending out the sharpest tacks on staff. You may need to insist on escalating the matter so they send a more senior expert out, or just hire a pro yourself to inspect your lines.

Believe me, starting to say, "I'm not paying, or I'm paying for what I get not what I'm supposed to get always gets them talking"

When I bought a 2002 Expedition used from a dealership he convinced me I was getting a really good deal, that was bull. They screwed me on the financing and when I got home I found my car on their website for 4 thousand dollars less than I paid, same vin, everything. I printed the page, called them a dozen times demanding the manager, even went to the place the next day. I went in and demanded the manager and they said he was too busy. The 3rd day I had it I called and said, "Don't say anything to me cause I don't want to hear it, I want the manager to call me back or the next call will be my lawyer" He immediately called me back threatening with his lawyers. I told him, "I don't have a lawyer, but hey it got you to call me back didn't it?"

In the end I talked him down until he gave me my trade in back and gave me the down payment back.

Then I casually told all of our regulars at our restaurant down the street the story of my experience and they spread the word.

Maybe I've read all of the "fine print" wrong, but I thought the upper limit was the max "possible" speed not the max "guaranteed" speed. Being that it is cable and there are other users, not to mention the infrastructure full of so many variables behind it, I'm happy to get 12Mbs on a 15Mbs line. Now if you were getting 1 - 2 Mbs consistently, then I would complain, otherwise my advice is "be happy with it", you're not alone.

An excellent point baggss. Cable is a shared medium. Unlike DSL, you do not have a link to yourself. You share the total available cable bandwidth with everyone else on that stretch of cable. That all by itself will typically reduce the throughput experienced by any one user.

According to several folks I've talked to within Charter, Charter guarantees 75% of their advertised speed. I'm getting at least 1.5M less than that consistently. Sure, I've hit 12-13M on occasion, but I should be hitting that consistently (IMO) and at some point in the day/night I should get close to advertised speed (near 15-15.5). I have hit 15+ maybe 3-5 times since September, but not often.

mac57 said:

An excellent point baggss. Cable is a shared medium. Unlike DSL, you do not have a link to yourself. You share the total available cable bandwidth with everyone else on that stretch of cable. That all by itself will typically reduce the throughput experienced by any one user.

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Which is why I think they've oversold the node I'm on and why I'm getting such crappy speeds.

Well, that would prove that the physical line equipment and the equipment in your home are all up to snuff and able to do the job. It is almost guaranteed that you are running into congestion caused by network traffic, other users, etc.

Charter may have planned their network for the 75% grade of service, but if your area has experienced an unexpected surge in new subscribers, the facilities may not longer be "wide" enough to handle them.

The thing is, what would you want them to do about it short term, right now, to answer your complaint? They likely can't do anything to immediately make the problem go away. You can persist in complaining, and if you are not getting your promised 75%, this is a legit course of action, but you should perhaps be shooting for a reduction of your rate, or a refund, or some financial treatment of the issue. I fear that a short term technical treatment may not be possible.

For this and many other reasons, I have always shied away from cable internet and stayed with telco DSL. Of course, in our area, we have that choice. I did hear you say clearly you had no other options. So, hold them accountable to their promise, but expect (and ask for) financial compensation, not technical.

Thats my proverbial two cents... again. That's four cents total for this thread!

mac57 said:

For this and many other reasons, I have always shied away from cable internet and stayed with telco DSL. Of course, in our area, we have that choice. I did hear you say clearly you had no other options. So, hold them accountable to their promise, but expect (and ask for) financial compensation, not technical.

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The area in which I live is growing in leaps-and-bounds. Builders cannot build houses fast enough for all of the people moving into the area.

I have no other options that will get me close to 15/2. I can get 5M/768k with AT&T DSL.

I'm afraid you're right about the financial compensation -- they may not be able to consistently deliver those speeds, but then again, they couldn't deliver 5M/512 either.

Unfortunately the electronic highways are the same as the surface highways in areas that are growing quickly - they get overloaded and slow down. I fear that there is nothing you can do except impatiently wait for them to upgrade their network.

As a fellow slave to Charter, I feel for you. I can't count the number of times I've considered canceling them because their operations are run by a bunch of chimpanzees on a banana break. Connection issues, billing issues, service issues, you name it. Unfortunately, my only recourse is the telco, and they're not any better from what my neighbors tell me.

To commiserate with other Charter subscribers, visit here: http://www.dslreports.com/comments/1581

While you're there, try running some speed tests: http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

They give you several servers around the country to connect to. It would seem obvious, but you'll still be surprised by the difference in speeds depending on the distance traveled.

Just this evening, I got these results:

L.A. 12 miles away: 4,537kbps down/465kpbs up
Miami 2,327 miles away: 2,947kbps down/416kbps up

All I can say is that we should all be sending letters to our Congressman demanding a breakup of local monopolies of cable services.

EORI said:

To commiserate with other Charter subscribers, visit here: http://www.dslreports.com/comments/1581

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A bunch of Charter sympathizers over there lately. I used to be a frequent poster on DSLR, but not so much any more.

good luck

In my case, money talks big.
Worked for me on a couple occasions, and the Better Business Bureau is a powerful entity as well, trust me.
SBC corporate called after that complaint, nice as pie, while the "manager" before hand basically said "live with it, you ain't gettin' nothin' else".
I did, and specifically mentioned the manger's name as the main reason for filing with the BBB.
Hair flew I'm sure at some level, and me, the lowly "customer" got my way in the end, plus a refund.
They can tech. you to death if you allow it.
After so many tries, complaints, etc. on the the tech. side, hit with the $$$.
Even if the node has been overloaded with new folks on it, they likely are not getting the paid service either.
To honor the guarantee (which they freely offered), the provider must upgrade due to increased demand or whatever.
If they won't, don't, or can't, you have a valid argument of "not getting what you pay for".
Legal folks call it fraud I think.

bubba said:

A bunch of Charter sympathizers over there lately. I used to be a frequent poster on DSLR, but not so much any more.

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You have to sift through the Charter moles who periodically pop-up to post some incredulously positive message.;D

Interesting Business Week article about Charter and their dismal customer service ranking: http://www.businessweek.com/magazin...60.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_companies