(kinda long) Charter Communications

[Osce0la]

SUCCS

Yesterday I get a text message from my wife telling me our cable wasn't working. I call Charter to see what is going on and they tell me our cable has been disconnected completely ("from the pole") due to nonpayment. I told them we made a payment a couple of weeks ago and they state that they have not received a payment since Sept. 6. I pulled up my wife's checking account on the system here at work and see the debit for the payment on her account...I explained to them that my sister and her husband used to live in the apartment that we live in now, and asked her if she would check to see if maybe it somehow posted to my sister's account. Sure enough, our payment for our cable (that is in my name, under my address and phone number) posted to my sister's account. They then tell me that I owe them $152 today (yesterday), plus a $25 re-connect fee...I explain to them that I am not paying a re-connect fee because we paid the bill, and they screwed up by posting it to the wrong account. She tells me I can go to the Charter building not too far from where I work and discuss it with them - so I do. I get there and tell them what is going on, they ask for my phone number, and it pulls up not only my account, but my sister's account from when she lived in that apartment, plus my sister's account at her current address...Finally after about 20-30 minutes they get my sister's account debited for the $97, and credit my account for the $97 - and then tell me I will have to pay a $25 re-connect fee :mad:

I asked them why I should have to pay a re-connect fee when they are the ones that screwed up and they can clearly see by the date my payment posted to the wrong account that we made the payment on time. They then decide to waive the fee but tell me they can't get anyone out there to re-connect our cable until Saturday between 1-3 PM :mad: Middle of football season, and I have no cable until mid-afternoon on a Saturday :mad: I ask her what our current balance is and she says "$152, but that is because the $97 credit won't show up until tomorrow". So I ask "So we only owe about $50-$60?", which she said was right. I then told her we still have not gotten the bill for this month (which she said many people have been complaining about over the last couple of weeks) and asked when our next payment was due - Nov. 14.

I decide since they screwed up, I should not have to wait 2 days for them to re-connect my cable, so I call Charter again today to see what they can work out. The guy tells me our account is past due and that we would have to pay $125 today to have our cable reconnected :mad:...WTF? We owed $152 yesterday, they credited our account $97, and now they say we owe $125? :confused::mad:

I explained everything that had happened to him, and he looked and saw that there was a $97 adjustment made to our account...He says we will have to pay the past due amount and a $25 re-connect fee...Again, WTF?!?! I ask him how in the hell we can be past due when our payment isn't due until next week, and why in the hell would I pay $25 for them to fix something they screwed up? His reply "I'll waive the $25 fee since it was our error, and I will take out the $97 since I see that adjustment...let me grab my calculator...so we will need $77 from you today for us to be able to re-connect your cable"...Let's say it again - WTF?!?!?! :mad:

How in the holy hell do you take $97 out of $125, and end up with $77? Which is basically what I asked him "How in the hell do we owe you $77 today, when our bill isn't even due until next week?" To which he hung up...I called them back a few minutes ago and now their automated crap is telling me my phone number (the same one I used to call them yesterday and today) is invalid. :mad:

I have had Charter for about 2 months, and I am already about to drop their a**.

:mad:

[StoopTroup]

Go down there again...

Be a Man...

Tell them that this is all garbage!

Take a gun with you too. ;)

I hate all Cable Companies.

Hang in there.

[Osce0la]

I am going back down there in a little bit. I figure if I get down there around 3:30, that gives them 2.5 hours to get to my apartment (which is about 15-20 minutes from the Charter building), and get my cable reconnected before they close at 6.

I would just like to know how in the hell they made a $97 adjustment to an account that had a $152 balance, and ended up with $125...then I would like to know how they took an account with a $125 balance, subtracted $97, and ended up with $77...

A woman I work with has DirectTV, gets 3 times as many channels as me, and has DVR, but pays only $10/month more than me...I think I may be switching to DirectTV.

[crawfish]

My life has been bliss since dropping charter.

Well, at least it's been better since I haven't had to deal with them. :O

[handcrafted]

That reminds me of the time a coupla years ago with Cox Cable, when I started getting 48-hour cutoff phone calls each month, and each time it was about a week after I'd gotten the bill in the mail, and 2-3 weeks prior to the due date on the bill. When I called up Cox to let them know I was not happy about this situation, I went through one lady who was worse than clueless, then got a supervisor on the phone who proceeded to tell me that a) they bill in advance of service (this I knew), b) the bill is due on the date that it's mailed, c) the "due date" on the bill is actually the "thirty days past due date". Now the due date was usually the 21st of the month. The bill was dated the first of the month, and I usually got it around the 5th. So (hang with me) if the due date on the bill is really the "30 days past due date", then that means the bill is due before it's even printed, and past due by the time it's mailed to me.

After a few seconds of mental WTF?s, I inform her that based on her statement, what she is telling me is that my payment is past due before I even get notice that I owe it. This simple bit of logic is completely and utterly lost on her, and she continues to repeat a-c above. This exchange happens 3 times before I realize that she is dumber than a bag of hammers and how on earth did she get to be a supervisor, anyway? I just said thank you and hung up, dumbfounded.

So I just started ignoring the cutoff notice calls and figgered if they cut me off, I'd just go with DirecTV. Well, guess what? The cutoff never happened. Kept getting the calls, but it never happened. Eventually Cox changed management and the calls stopped. They re-did their billing practices and now they don't "bill in advance" anymore, and I got on the auto-pay plan so I don't have to mess with them.

[soonersweetie]

I absolutely loathe neolithic incompetence, and communications companies (whether it's wireless internet or phones or cable) are full of it.

Hope you set them straight.

[crawfish]

When I had Charter, there was a lot of construction of new houses on my street. Everytime a new house came "online", they'd have to adjust the output levels on my box outside, or my cable/internet signal would degrade. Of course, they never did this beforehand; I'd suddenly see my internet disconnect constantly, and/or my digital cable signal would start looking blocky.

Their policy was to assume you'd screwed up inside the house...so they'd send their "inside guy" to check it out, he'd notice the levels were down and would schedule the "outside guy" to come fix it. It usually took 2-3 days to get the outside guy scheduled to come to your house - after 2-3 days to get the inside guy. After the second time I tried to convince them to just send the outside guy, but they would not...meaning, when they screwed up my signal it would take a week to get it taken care of. This happened SIX times.

I have not had to have Verizon come out to fix my FIOS connection even once in the >2 years I've had it.