This is why DirecTV has so many new subscribers

[smileyeagle1021]

Wow, I know cable companies are famous for being the suckiest of the sucky, but the Charter reps my mom has been dealing with may have just pushed her over the edge to calling DirecTV (as many of her neighbors have).

She recently got a new TV and is trying to program the remote (which by the way is the charter provided remote that came with the cable box). She entered her account information, and the website brought up the information for the wrong remote. So, good job on keeping track of what equipment you've given your customers
So, she clicks on the online chat button, she starts by asking the guy if he can direct her to the correct instructions, he verifies her information, and then rather than either walking her through the setup or directing her to the correct page, he starts playing 20 questions with her about what services she has and if she is interested in upgrading at this time.
So, she calls into technical support to ask them to walk her through it and she gets an agent who may or may not have heard of remote controls. She kept trying to get her to go through the menus on the cable box and in no way even coming close to programming the remote for the TV. After about 15 minutes of this the rep suggests that mom can pay for a tech to come out and reprogram it.
Excuse me, you want us to pay to have someone program a remote because your website has the wrong information and you have no clue how to do your job? I don't think so.
So, she hangs up on the rep (somewhat sucky, but understandable considering the balls it takes to suggest a customer pay for a service tech because you can't do a simple troubleshoot).
Before she has redialed to try for a different rep, she gets a call from the Charter sales department, the sales person starts "we notice that you just called into customer support. We hope that after your positive experience with our support department that you may be interested in bundling your internet service with us as well."
Umm, good experience, we had to hang up on the rep because they didn't know what they were doing, refused to transfer us to someone who could help, and wanted to make us pay for a tech to come out to troubleshoot a friggen remote... this is not the time that you want to be asking us about signing up for your internet service.
The rep she has now isn't being too much more successful with troubleshooting, but at least she is troubleshooting and trying to solve the problem. I will give this rep credit, she is doing a good job of trying, and she is at least willing to admit the possibility that it may be a problem of incompatible equipment. The other reps I'm not sure knew enough to even consider that it is a compatability issue and offer to put a note on her account to allow the local store to exchange the remote without charging any equipment fees. I do believe she may have been the company's only redeeming value.

[elsporko]

Did the rep say they would have to pay the tech no matter what? I was told with my internet I would only have to pay for the tech if the problem was something that was my fault, although it took the person about five minutes to make it clear that I would probably not have to pay. They just wouldn't come out and say it clearly for some reason.

But yeah, Charter employs a bunch of morons. I had to have three people on the help line and a tech in person fix my internet. The first person I called told me he couldn't help me at all because he didn't understand the problem and couldn't ask for help himself. The second person fiddled with the settings but it didn't fix the problem. The tech who came in person said the second tech didn't know what he was doing and had screwed up and fixed my settings, except it didn't work the next day and I stopped getting free cable. Finally the last person fixed it and said nobody else I worked with knew what they were doing.

[bean]

Oh Charter, how I loathe thee...

I had Charter briefly when I lived in Denton TX. Denton's not a big city, but certainly not small either, sitting around 120,000 people living in the city.

A cable tv AND cable internet outage, lasting for nearly a week, and affecting everyone around UNT and downtown? Really? Yup. And had to argue with them over the phone to even get a credit for the outage (they wanted me to pay full price for the month even though their service was unavailable for a good portion of the month).

Only reason I even had them for internet was I couldn't get DSL unless I wanted to pay >$200/month for IDSL... too far from the CO, CO was old, building wiring was crummy and old....

[BlaqueKatt]

But yeah, Charter employs a bunch of morons. <snip> Finally the last person fixed it and said nobody else I worked with knew what they were doing.

yay we must have hoarded all the good techs up here...never had much of an issue with them....

[fma_fanatic]

Charter, oh how I hate thee, let me count the ways.

We had continual problems with Charter and I would not recommend them for internet even if they were the last provider in the area. I'd rather go back to dial up, it's that bad. During the day, there wasn't a problem, but at night, it would get progressively worse until I'd call in and complain and suddenly it'd get better again.

The straw that broke the camels' back was when I called to complain that they'd dropped our package, again. The sales rep I spoke to told me "well, if you hadn't moved, your account wouldn't be messed up." That had me calling AT&T for DSL and DirecTV for TV service.

[Falor]

The sales rep I spoke to told me "well, if you hadn't moved, your account wouldn't be messed up." That had me calling AT&T for DSL and DirecTV for TV service.

We had to go with AT&T after our last move, but it took about a week for us to figure the fact out. It would have been nice if Time Warner (or Comcast, not sure which it was at the time, it was near the switchover around here) had told me our new address (two miles from the old one) was off the cable grid and couldn't be set up for my cable internet connection. Instead I had to call them several times wondering why they hadn't gotten a tech out to me yet

[Midorikawa]

I used to work for the cable company back in Texas. I noticed my cable internet stopped working, called in, asked them to reprovision my modem (common problem caused by what was later found to be an errant cron.)

...Then my TV stops working, and the rep tells me "Ok! All fixed!" and hangs up on me before I can ask what just happened. O_o

Believe me, you don't get any better help when you're an employee than when you're just a customer. It was found that they went and removed the cable boxes on accident, freaked, and rather than ask for help, hung up on me. Yes, I got them fired over it, but only because they had been there for a full year longer than me, and I'd been there for a year at that point.

I'm a happy DirecTV user of 2 years, and will NEVER go back to cable. :-D

[sld72382]

One of my former co-workers used to work in a call center that was contracted to answer tech support calls for Charter.

He said that Charter would purposely shut off service to an area (called a planned outage) just so the customers would call in to report it and be given hard sales to be upsold services.

After hearing that and other stories like these, no wonder Charter is losing money.

[Indica]

My hometown had a .. 'special' cable company. It wasn't Charter, but boy they were dumb. Notoriously dumb. The satellite TV providers went on TV and declared they loved that cable company, they were getting so many new customers because of them.

Of course, the cable company just shrugged its collective shoulders and changed nothing. I understand that it wasn't until they were bought out that customer service actually *gasp* improved.

[Victory Sabre]

I'm also a person who "loves" Charter.

We had 2 cable companies in our area. Charter and Astound. Before Astound came along Charter had a really crappy line-up, and was extremely expensive.

Soon as I moved into my present apartment I got Astound, and got one hell of a deal with them, and loved them, and their service. If there was ever a problem, the service center was local (in fact right behind my apartment building).

Sadly the parent company of Astound decided to sell. You can guess who bought them out. Yeah Charter.

The first bill after Charter took over was $20 more than the previous one, Well over the agreed 7% maximum it was supposed to be. There was a loophole that it only applied to basic cable. The worst part is they weren't even giving me the channels I was paying for.

I dumped the internet right away, and digital cable box with DVR, when it became combined with Charter.

I dumped the phone 2 months later.

The only reason I still have cable with them is my apartment faces north, thus I can't get a dish. If I could I'd have a dish I would in a heart beat. I did decide to get a HD cable box again so I could, at least get all the channels I'm paying for with expanded basic. That, and I like to watch the Vikings beat up the Cheese-Heads in HD.

[ZedOmega]

I should be glad I've never heard of Charter until now, then. Just from that story, I'm afraid of the mass amounts of headupassitis these people might be suffering from.

[Estil]

I would LOVE to switch to DirecTV to get much more HD channels, but the problem is one, I don't think our apartment complex allows dishes, and second, what about the fact that I still need high speed Internet and will still have to get it from my cable company (and pay $10 more/month for not being a cable customer) when by DirecTV's own admission, their internet service is 3x slower than the one we have (I did a speed test using DirecTV's own website/speed test)?

And now we're supposed to be getting into this new 3D TV? Umm, how about getting all our HD channels set up first???

[Nashida]

We have Charter here too, and the only reason we have it is because Verizon was getting to be unreliable.

At least 6 times in the last 5 months we'd lose phone and internet, but not cable. This made taking an online course very difficult, for obvious reasons. I was stuck driving down to Starbucks and using Wifi there just to get coursework done, I didn't trust my home connection. Our phones would just have "Check tel line" on the screens, and if we tried calling the house from our cell phones, we'd get a prerecorded message that says this is a "known problem affecting the area".

And the one time we did have a tech out for it, he goes "Eh, es okay, noting wrong wit it," and leaves. Within an hour it was all down again.

I keep begging the mom-bot to switch to something else so we all don't become bald with all the hair-pulling, but she won't until Verizon brings FiOs to our area, and refuses to put a dish on the house.