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OPINION & EDITORIAL

Ditch Charter, get unhooked

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by Badger Herald Editorial Board

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Charter Communications has taken advantage of its government-sponsored monopoly for long enough. Although we cannot comment on the quality of service they provide to other portions of the state in which they have contracts, the St. Louis-based company's ineptitude when dealing with Madison's downtown area has been nothing short of astounding.

Students have a laundry list of complaints against 2003's no-bid state contract winner, including:

Atrocious customer service and prohibitively long hold times. Its allegedly faster online "customer service" department will probably tell you what a great question yours is for the phone lines.
- Employment of under-trained contracted technicians. Often, these contractors are not even capable of contacting Charter themselves should problems arise.
- A remarkably inflexible appointment schedule. Students are sometimes even asked to pay for the parking of contractors or delay service appointments indefinitely.
- Frequent outages, which are unexplained by any known apparatus.
- Overpriced service that, at approximately $60 per month for the Internet alone, is unreasonable for students. A federal government study in 2004 found that areas with true competition have experienced a 15 percent to 41 percent drop in rates.
- Frequent billing for un-received services that forces students to call in to get back their own money. Whereas an agent will offer deals to retain a customer, the deals accepted are often never applied to your account.

It has become evident that Charter is taking advantage of student clients simply because it can. Its government-sanctioned monopoly will not be challenged or improved unless students make it a political issue. If Charter is incapable of providing a reasonable standard of service to a significant portion of Madison, its contract with the city should be strictly scrutinized.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin complaint line can be reached at (608) 266-5481.

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Anonymous (September 14, 2006 @ 2:31am):

Finally! A legit student issue! Charter is awful. I applaud the Herald for this stance.

Anonymous (September 14, 2006 @ 4:52am):

http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/cable/index.html is worth a looksie too. Good luck trying to get something other than condescending platitudes from Ald. Compton, though.

Anonymous (September 14, 2006 @ 12:30pm):

"Overpriced service that, at approximately $60 per month for the Internet alone, is unreasonable for students."

wow, Charter is bad, but you guys are really getting screwed. I pay $20 for internet...

Anonymous (September 14, 2006 @ 12:35pm):

I agree with this editorial. If you have a laptop, or wireless card in your pc, give this a shot:

http://www.madcitybroadband.com/

Apparently the network in the State Street area is a little messed up because of the construction, but they say they will get it done. And it's sooooo much cheaper than charter.

Anonymous (September 15, 2006 @ 12:36pm):

I used to work for this hell hole of a company for a year in the HSD department - which was all I could take -- customers I worked with were livid with the quality of service they received for the money -- and now Fond du Lac's call center is trickling over to Africa so they underpaid foreigners can take your calls -- ha ha, good luck all you subscribers! I am now a happy employee of Time Warner cable. Cheers!

Anonymous (September 18, 2006 @ 12:23am):

http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/cable/customer.html

The link above is from the City of Madison, rules pertaining to the requirements that have to be met by charter communications. Read them carefully. Appts, Charter appts are to be for no larger than 4 hour windows, this is a set process in place for charter. So far as service problems go, keep in mind madison is the largest area for charter in wisconsin, and the oldest area, with the construction and upgrades being made to the systems Outtages should be expected, when they are planned notification can be given by both the Customer supports reps in the madison office, Wisconsin Call center; which is actually in wisconsin, or an informational scroll on the weather channel. For unplanned outtages, once they area disconvered the only thing known by the reps is that a tech is paged and working on the issue, they dont know anything else because if they were to keep calling the on call tech, usually working alone for late night outtages, this tech would not be able to resolve the issue for the Madison customers. Prices, yeah those are high, but then again with the market in Madison and the problems going on, the higher cost hopefully is going toward replacing and fixing equipment so that another outtage will not take out the entire souther portion of wisconsin as what happened a few months back. But come to think, there has not been a madison specific outtage lasting more than 2 hours since that time. And finally, if you dont like waiting on hold for customer suport, try to respect and listen to the reps, its not their fault you have a problem and if you are nice they will find a way to resolve your issue. Although if you like to yell at a rep for 10 minutes about a problem out of their control, keep in mind that is most likely the exact reason you were on hold, another customer berating the rep nonstop not letting them do their job, or just point blank not listening to them as they try to help with a charter related issue. Also if you want shorter hold times, remember, for problems with your cable service call the cable company, for problems with your TV set call your Electronis store you bought it at. For help with your computer, call your warranty support, for help with your router, call your router company, for internet problems, call your ISP. Call the right person for the right help, then customers who need help in other areas can get that help more quickly. So students, parents, subscribers, and editors before you attach a company make sure you cover all angles, not just the one perspective that you think will get the most attention.

- A Time Warner CSR -

Anonymous (September 18, 2006 @ 3:24pm):

In the few years that I have used their services, these are a few of the problems that I have encountered:

-They overcharged by $40 on one statement and it took a large amount of work over the phone for them to fix the problem.
-One major connection problem this summer for a 2 day period.
-The service reps that handle "live chat" do not know anything about the local charter services.
-The phone system is a bit of a mess as when you call it automatically directs you to a call center based on your area code. Getting transferred back to this area, the call somehow gets dropped frequently.
-They are not equipped to handle the rush of students that need cable hookups in the fall.
-Last year, when the tech guy came to turn on the cable, he had to ask me where the box was.

"So students, parents, subscribers, and editors before you attach a company make sure you cover all angles, not just the one perspective that you think will get the most attention."

I feel like we should play a game of how many things are wrong with this statement.