Charter Communications

I have multiple concerns about the way that Charter Communications does business. When I was in college, for computer programming, I needed to get a always on Internet connection. I had to log into multiple servers at the school from my home, The most likely canidate was Charter Communications. I didn't pick Charter Communications, it is the only cable company in the area. You may be thinking that I must live in some remote area, in fact the population of the area is about 100,000. Charter Communications knows that they don't have any other compition in the area, with the exception of the satellite industry, therefore they don't really seem to care how much they charge or how and if they fix things when they go wrong.

Charter Communications Customer Service

If anything goes wrong with your charter cable service or charter high speed Internet service, it won't do you much good to call the Charter customer service. There have many times where I needed Charter Communications high speed Internet service to work, and it would be down for a few hours and sometimes days. When I called the customer service, I waited for an hour and a half for someone to talk to me. While I was waiting for Charter customer service to pick up, I watched the Charter Channel that is devoted to telling us how great there service is. They mention multiple times that Charter High Speed Internet is always on, when in fact it wasn't on at that time. I finally gave up on waiting for customer service to pick up, and decided to call the new sales line, to my amazement, they picked up the phone immediately. I have worked in a call center, and we always balanced the people on the phone so that we had the same wait times for new sales as for customer problems. We did this because in our business, return customers were just as, if not more important than new customers. Charter doesn't really have to worry about return customers because they have monopolized the area that I live in. After I started talking to the Charter Communications Sales department, they said that they would transfer me to the customer service department, I of course said “no”. I tried to explain that I just want my Charter High speed Internet service to work, and she said that they are having problems right now and that it should be working within a few hours. I was happy that I finally had a answer, however, I don't agree with there advertising. I learned a long time ago that you shouldn't use words like “always”, when I asked the Charter Communications sales department about there advertising, they said “it is always on”. I replied to this with, “it's not on right now, is it”, they were stunned. I feel that Charter Communications should have to follow the guidelines of truth in advertising, just like any other company would.

Charter Communications Billing

Apparently Charter Communications and any other cable company doesn't have to charge a stable rate every month. In my expirence with Charter, they like to slowly up your bill every month. I never saw the same bill for an entire year. Charter Communications is able to do this because they are allowed to monopolize an area. When I contacted Charter Communications and asked why the bill goes up, they told me that it is to cover the costs of running new lines and customer service, which they don't really offer customer service. I could understand if they were hurting financially, however they were founded by Paul Allen. In case you are unfamiliar with Paul Allen, he also helped found a small company called Microsoft. Paul Allen is the Chairman of Charter Communications, and hold 53% of the common equity interest. In 2003 Charter Communications had revenues of 4.8 Billion dollars, I feel like this much revenue should help stabilize the cost of cable. In a more competitive marketplace, Charter Communications would not be allowed to get away with this type of manipulation of the system. I don't hate Paul Allen, in fact I do feel that he is a very intelligent and often over looked business man, however I also feel that the consumer has a right to know how much there bill is going to be, and not be surprised every month, or six months, when there bill increases. It may only be a few dollars, but that doesn't make it ok to do. A small increase in millions of bills adds to the revenue to the company and helps increase the value of there stock, which is what Charter seems to be concerned with, not the customers best interest. If you live in a major city, where Charter might have some compition, they might do things a little differently, but in a lot of smaller areas they are monopolizing the marketplace.