Charter Cable tv (long backstory...sorry)

[Aethian]

I know I was going to stay away from the boards for awhile but I have a little problem with tech stuff and I was hoping one of you could help me.

I have Charter cable...in my area it's the best priced and somewhat the best service. There is one tech I refuse to have on my property but thats something different involving him having knowledge that he shouldn't have.

As some of you know I went to Australia when I returned I was greeted by Mom who claimed that the tech (whom I have problems with) confiscated my equipment and called the cops on me for being a thief. (Since I supposedly left the country with a very LARGE unpaid bill.)

Going down to the local store I was told that my account was 90 days past due, shut off 35 days prior, and that I needed to pay for the equipment I hadn't handed over yet. Which was all news to me since I had a balance of 95 on my bill (yes I was bad) from the previous month and had been using my service up to the day I left. Mom not knowing what to do handed over all the equipment.

So I paid what I owed, paid a reconnect fee (which was MORE then what I owed by three times) and was told a tech would be out to my house between 8am and 10am the next day. He showed up at 3:45 called my Mom a not so nice name and then tried to enter my home without me opening the door to him. I told him to hand over the boxes and I would put them back to where they belonged. He thrust the cable box at me, thrust a modem at me, turned around and went back to his truck getting out some tools.

Watching him for a second I went in and put the cable box where it had been and hooked up the modem. When I realized the modem he gave me was not a wireless one I went back out to find his truck and him gone. The time is now 3:51 and I am flabbergasted that he just up and left like that.

But everything is working somewhat and I call the company to make a complaint that I wasn't given the right Internet setup. I'm told a different tech will be out TODAY from 1pm to 5pm...it's 5:15 and I have put them to a NCNS.

And after all that here is my biggest concern...my cable box acts like I'm disconnected and routinely flips on and off by itself. The little modem they gave me will sometimes give me Internet abilities and then randomly freezes before starting again. So was I too much of a SC to these people and are they doing it on purpose or do I have fubared equipment? I have talked to people on the phone and online who say that everything SHOULD be working okay since it appears to be working okay on their screens but I'm not seeing that okay here. That and the cable box is starting to freak me out. Like just now it popped off and then popped back on and went through a (I kid you not) count down before giving me the time and then popping back off again.


I know I've made some mistakes with some of you here but please this is freaking me out, help?

[Anriana]

It's possibly they gave you crappy equipment because they didn't like you. It's also possible that you just have crappy equipment. Most of our stuff is used. I would definitely ask for replacement equipment.

If you do call again, ask if the person has Drum and ask them to take a look at your signal history. If they're especially incompetent (likely), you'll have to tell them to click on the numerical value for Upstream and Downstream Signal Level to display it. This will show the history of your internet signals and whether or not they're fluctuating. If they are, that would explain the internet freezing for periods of time. Make sure to ask for a credit for the time since the fluctuation started until they schedule a tech to work on the problem.

You're owed a $20 credit for the install tech being late and a $20 credit for the second tech being late. Make sure you get them! They're called On-Time Guarantee credits. You said you had them put the second tech as a NCNS so hopefully they gave you this when you called that in. You should also, at the very least, get a credit for Home Networking for the period you didn't have a wireless gateway.

If you don't mind sharing your account information with me, I can pull up your account and check the signal history/make sure the credits are applied. I can PM you my corporate email address and you can send your information there, if you're comfortable with that. If you're not cool with sharing it with a random internet stranger, that's cool too.

Also, why do you have Home Networking? Unless you're completely technologically incompetent (and if you can post on a forum you're not) it's kind of a rip-off. You're basically paying $10 a month to rent a router from us when you could buy one for $100 tops.

[Aethian]

Sending you a PM Anriana.

[Pedersen]

Slightly related story from me, and took me a while to troubleshoot. Here's the short version: I got a high def cable box from comcast. Got it plugged in, and after a period of time (usually around 4 to 6 hours), it would start resetting. Resets would get closer and closer together until it entered a continuous reset loop. At that point, I had to unplug the box and wait several hours before I could use it again.

The damned thing was overheating. Returned it, got a new one, and the one works just fine.

If that box is like the one I had, it just needs replacing.

Just putting this in to provide more support for Anriana's recommendations.