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The fact that I have to write a Part 3 tells you all you need to know about how happy I’ve been with Charter HSI.

Part 1.  Part 2.

On the 13th, I got an automated call from Charter.  It was a reminder that I had a technician scheduled to install my Charter HSI the next day, between the hours of 8am and noon.

Wha???  If you’ll recall, I did a self-installation of my Charter HSI; why the heck would I need a technician out here for a SELF-installation?

The best part was that I got the message stuck on my answering machine, and I didn’t find out about the call until past midnight of the 14th.  I quickly called the number left on the message, got to an operator, and asked to have the appointment canceled.  He put me on hold, and the system disconnected me not much later.

(Argh.)

I called back, quickly got to another rep, who immediately advised me that the account holder (my sister, who was still at work) had to call in to cancel the appointment herself.  I left her a note on her desk to try to call Charter as soon as she got home, and then I went to bed.

I was told that the technician never showed up between the scheduled time, so I figured that either my sister got around to canceling the appointment, or the techs weren’t going to show up at all.  Fast forward to 4:00, and guess who shows up?

I immediately told the tech that I had done a self-installation for my HSI service, and therefore, I had no need for a technician.  The tech muttered something to his partner, and then walked away.

Fast forward to this morning, where I woke up to flu-like symptoms (I LOVE that term).  I fired up my laptop, and immediately noticed that I could not connect to the internet.   I quickly checked my modem lights, and saw that I wasn’t getting four solid greens.  I called up Charter HSI tech support, and while navigating through the IVR, I was told that there was a service outage in my area.  No problem, I thought.

Several hours later, the outage was still going on.  I called HSI support again, and again got the recorded message of the outage in my area.  I then ‘borrowed’ a neighbor’s wireless connection, and started researching this supposed outage.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon speedtest.net (just out of curiosity) that I noticed that the problem might not have been an outage.  Speedtest.net reported that the ISP that my neighbor was on was, lo and behold, Charter HSI.  Either I was one unlucky SOB and the outage just barely spread to my house and not my neighbor’s, or something else was going on here.

I fired up Charter’s Live Chat support—hey, I had great luck with them last time, if you’ll recall—and immediately got connected to a rep.  Again, I asked if there was an ongoing service outage in my area, and she confirmed this.  Then, after a bit of questioning, she asked me what ISP I was using.  Not sure what she was specifically asking, I told her that I was on a neighbor’s connection, but then added that I was 100% sure I was a Charter HSI customer.

That’s when the rep hit me with this:  according to my sister’s account, we did not have Charter HSI among our services listed.  Huh?  Immediately, the rep advised me to call in to rectify the problem.

I called in, got a real friendly rep, and quickly explained my situation.  I also asked the rep to check to see if there were any ongoing outages in my area.  She responded by telling me that there was no longer an outage in my area.  Wait a sec; the Live Chat rep told me, five minutes earlier, that there was still an outage going on.  What gives?

I then told the rep what the Live Chat rep told me (that Charter HSI was not on my list of services), and while she did not confirm this, she did notice the outstanding installation appointment on the account.  You know, the installation appointment for my SELF-installation.  Yes, on my account, it was noted that a tech was to be sent out for a SELF-installation.

The rep put me on hold for a good fifteen minutes, and then came back on the line to announced that she had ‘closed’ the issue.  She removed the installation appointment off the account, re-established HSI on the account, and assured me that I would still be getting HSI at the promotional rate of $29.99 a month for six months.

What probably happened was, upon telling the tech that his services were never needed, that triggered Charter to assume that I never signed up with HSI, and so they removed HSI from my list of services.  Next month’s bill is gonna be a ton of fun to go over; I better not see any HSI dis/connect fees.  And does anyone know if Charter charges a customer for a ‘missed’ installation appointment?

- Time for a mini-review of the latest episode of The Office.

“The Lover” might have been the craziest episode to date.  Who didn’t see Jim and Pam’s marriage get off to a rocky start?  Lots of yelling in the episode; I hope the cast had lots of Ricola on hand.

I love Dwight’s new offensive against Jim.  Come on, who didn’t see anything suspicious about the pen Dwight put on Jim’s desk?  (By the way, can you legally record someone without his knowledge in Pennsylvania?)  I can’t believe that some Office reviewers out there actually felt that the writers couldn’t keep the Jim-Dwight rivalry fresh.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see Dwight costing Jim his promotion by the end of the season, only to have Dwight passed over as Jim’s replacement.

I loved the whole opera scene with Jim, Dwight, and Andy.  Too funny.  I absolutely loved how Toby now thinks he and Michael are friends, and I wonder if Toby’s willingness to help out Michael has anything to do with his feelings for Pam.  I could imagine Toby’s friendship with Michael not lasting past one more episode.

(Oh, I REALLY loved the scene where Toby walks in and both Jim and Michael yell at him.  Toby’s “What did I do?” was priceless.)

Surprisingly, I didn’t particularly care for the whole Michael dating Pam’s mom storyline, though.  The scene in the conference room?  Didn’t do much for me. I hope this is not something the writers plan on pushing all the way to the season finale.  The last thing I need is a “Is Jim’s marriage already over?” end-of-season cliffhanger because of Michael dating Pam’s mom.

(And for the record, I would definitely be bothered if my mom dated my boss, especially if my boss were Michael Scott.  Was Pam overreacting?  Probably.  Was it justifiable?  Probably.)

All that being said, however, I wouldn’t mind seeing one Michael/Pam’s mom-Jim/Pam double date.  Oh, the possibilities!  In a dream world, this happens in the next episode.  Michael acts the way Michael does in front of everybody, and then realizes at the end of the episode what dating Pam’s mom is doing to Jim and Pam.  He then does the right thing and breaks it off with Pam’s mom.

I can dream, right?

Tags: charter cable, mini-review, the lover, The Office by Peter
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Time for part 2.

On Friday, I called Charter Cable, quickly got someone in the sales department (amazing considering I had to deal with Charter’s IVR), and started my Charter Cable inquiry with a patented “I’m a soon-to-be-former AT&T DSL customer.  Can you offer me a deal on Charter Cable?”  The rep responded with a seemingly sincere “I’m so glad to hear that!” before attempting to ask me questions geared towards figuring out which package was ‘best’ for me.

I already knew that Charter’s 5/1 plan was good enough for me, so I quickly interrupted her and told her which package I wanted.  The rep verified that the plan was $29.99/month with an additional $3/month fee for the cable modem rental.  I then asked if there was any way I could simply give a tech my modem MAC address—a SURFBoard 5101 which I knew would work with Charter—and get online immediately; I was able to do this back in my Adelphia days.  The rep explained that this was not possible; I had to allow a tech to come and hook up the cable modem.  Fine, I thought.  I told the rep I’d call back later to put in an order for the 5/1 plan.

A few minutes later, I called back, and Charter’s IVR wouldn’t cooperate.  I got transferred to some random drone who, despite my pleads, would not transfer me to someone in sales.  I again asked for a deal on Charter Cable; this time, I forgot to lead with the patented “I’m a soon-to-be-former AT&T DSL customer” line.  The rep explained that the only deals she could offer me were $44.99 a month for 5/1 and $54.99 a month for 10/1.  Huh?  What happened to the $29.99 offer for 5/1?  “Well, I can only go by what the computer gives me, and the computer won’t give me $29.99 for that plan.”

I asked her to transfer me to someone in the sales department, and the rep refused!  I quickly hung up on her, called back, and managed to successfully navigate the IVR again to a person in sales.  Again, I asked about the 5/1 plan, and the rep offered me the $29.99 price again, but only for six months.  Six months?  The first rep never mentioned anything about a six-month term (although, as Krunk pointed out, she also didn’t say that the $29.99 plan wasn’t a promotional rate).  I quickly navigated to charter.com, looked at the price of the 5/1 plan—$29.99 a month for up to 12 months—and realized immediately that “six months” = “up to 12 months.”  Fine.  Almost defeated, I accepted the terms, and that’s when the rep snuck in this haymaker:  “There will also be a $49.99 installation fee, which you won’t have to pay immediately, but it will appear on your next bill.”

Wait a freaking second.  “A $49.99 installation fee?”, I inquired, to which I got this utterly astounding reply:  “Yes sir.  You don’t expect us to send a tech out and not pay him, do you?”  Before I could pick my jaw off the floor and respond, the tech continued, “You know what?  I could reduce the cost of the installation fee, but only if you sign up for Charter Phone!”  I responded with a simple “No thank you,” and before the rep could ask me if I still wanted to go through with the Internet order, I hung up on her.

So you might have guessed by now that I was absolutely livid by what had happened to this point.  I then realized that my best option appeared to be sticking with AT&T DSL and my Christmas tree-like DSL modem.  That’s when I decided to go with the Hail Mary equivalent of customer service:  Live Chat.

(cue ultra-dramatic music)

Figuring that I had nothing else to lose, with the exception of a few minutes and the last bits of my sanity, I logged on to Charter’s Live Chat and began praying.  A rep named “Annyvette” logged on and, after verifying some information, asked me why I was only a customer of Charter Digital TV and not Phone and Internet too.

(After what I went through today, Charter should be lucky that we’re still a customer, period.)

I politely explained that I was only interested in adding Internet service and told the rep that I wanted 5/1 service.  After trying to rent me a modem, and then a wireless gateway, the rep then sent me this:

Did you prefer to send tech to your home to install the internet or would you prefer to do a self installation? The tech installation is $49.99, and will be billed to you on your upcoming bill. Which mistranslation [sic] option did you prefer to set up with?

Wha???  Self-installation???  That first rep lied to me about not having a self-installation option!!!

Five minutes later, the order was put through, and I was chatting with an Internet support rep, getting my modem provisioned.  I was up and running a bit later.

Happy ending, right?  Not so fast.  ONE STINKING DAY after I was up and running with Charter, I had to reboot my modem.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

Tags: at&t dsl, charter cable, high speed internet by Peter
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Sorry, I couldn’t come up with a snazzier title.

EDIT:  This is gonna have to be split up into two entries…I really need to learn how to better economize my words :P.

I moved back in with the parents in early July—long story, and I won’t get into it—and sadly had to kiss goodbye the joys of paying only $40 a month for 10/1 Road Runner Cable.  Excellent reliability (except for a disconnect at exactly 2:05 AM every day, and I never did discover why that happened) and 10/1 speeds for $40 a month?  Not a bad deal, eh?

So what did I come home to?  3/512 AT&T DSL.  Decent speeds, when I was the only one actually using the internet.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen very often, and to compound the problem, my brother started messing around with a webcam.  At times in the evening, the connection would lag like mad.  I also noticed that my ping times were horrible, usually around 150ms, according to speedtest.net.  I figured, for $25 a month, the speeds we were getting weren’t that unbearable.

A week later, I upgraded to 6/512 for $10 more a month.  All of a sudden, my ping times dropped to the low 20s, and evening lags appeared to be a thing of the past.  Everything looked good.

A couple weeks later, the DSL connection because virtually unusable in the evenings.  After dealing with drops every few minutes for three days straight, I called AT&T DSL support to report a problem.  I told the tech that I was having internet issues, and the tech could only tell me that he detected a weak signal entering my DSL modem. He offered to send a tech out to check the wiring leading to the house.  Before I could agree, though, the tech mentioned that I could be charged if it was determined that the problem with my connection was on my end.

Thinking nothing of that remark at the time, I had the tech schedule an appointment.  For reasons that elude me at the time—perhaps the local call center was closed—he could not get me set up with an appointment right then and there.  No problem, I thought; I was given the phone number to the call center with a support ticket.

I went weeks without having a single serious line issue again, so naturally (stupidly?) I never gave the local call center a ring.  Everything looked good, until about a month ago, when the connectivity issues returned. I went two hours with a complete outage before I decided to call tech support again.

This time I was advised to remove the DSL filter from the wall and plug the phone cable directly into the modem.  That’s when I noticed something peculiar:  connected to one of those wall-mounted DSL filters was a second DSL filter!  All the connections were made properly—the second filter was connected to the correct jack on the wall-mounted filter, and the DSL modem was plugged into the “DSL” jack of the second filter—but I thought it was odd nonetheless.

I removed both filters, plugged the modem directly into the wall jack, and lo and behold, I was able to establish a connection immediately.  Coincidence?  Hmmmm.  Anyway, the tech ran his tests, and again advised me that he was detecting a very weak signal going to my DSL modem.  Like the first tech I dealt with, he advised me to allow a tech to come by and analyze the wiring leading to my house.  This time, though, in a seemingly threatening voice, the tech reminded me that I would be billed if the tech found the problem to be on my end.  Frustrated, I asked for a clarification.  The tech explained that, if the tech found no issues with the wiring, I would have been billed for the visit.

Not at all wanting to take that chance—knowing AT&T’s reputation, I certainly did not—I declined the offer.  The tech then reminded me that I could always try to fix any internet connection issues with a simple reboot of the modem…and that’s when I hung up on him.  I looked at the DSL modem, saw that the lines remained solid green, and prayed that I wouldn’t have to call back.

The serious connectivity issues came back last week, and yesterday, I had enough.  Between the hours of 6-10pm, I wasn’t able to stay online for more than ten minutes at a time.  It was time for me to give Charter Cable a try.

Part two to come tomorrow.

Tags: at&t dsl, charter cable, high speed internet, tech support by Peter
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