UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

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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