Charter cable under fire for poor service – again

“The residents who packed the Opelika City Council chambers Tuesday had plenty of negative things to say about Charter Communications during a public hearing on the company’s franchise agreement with the city.

The statements were typified by stories of poor customer service, lack of local contacts, broken promises and steep prices.

George Wingard came to the podium with a stack of newspaper editorials, which he said documented customer dissatisfaction with the company.

“My primary problem is prices, prices, prices and customer service,” he said.”

Article

Charter Communications get lowest customer service rating

Not just among cable companies but ALL companies according to a survey of Forrester Research.  The survey of 4,500 consumers found Charter Communication at the absolute bottom of the 114 companies surveyed in a dozen industries.  Here are some of the highlights:

*It ranked 111th for its TV service with a score of 40 out of 100.

*It ranked 114th for its Internet service with a score of 32 out of 100.

*In a category ranked “enjoyability” it ranked 20 for TV and 16 for Internet service. Again this is out of  a score of 100.

News release

“Poorest customer service of any cable company in the country”

Is it possible there is a silver lining to  Charter cable’s possible demise?  Could another cable company take over and offer its customers decent customer service? With comments like those below, it appears the bar is very low.

“Paying more for less

Charter Communications over the last three years has raised our rates twice, yet reduced the number of channels we receive. Now we are told it possibly is not going to carry Channel 4 and I find this ludicrous. These people have the poorest customer service of any cable company in the country. They give you hours that they are coming to repair your service, then don’t show up. They have become so arrogant, they don’t care about customer service. I think Charter need to be on the hook and I think our legislators and state government need to do something about this.

Cable runaround

I am calling regarding Charter Communications taking off KMOV as of Dec. 31. First the company takes away many channels such as Hallmark. Now it is going to take off KMOV. I called the number to lodge my complaint, and what do I get, a man gives me a different number to call. I call, it’s no longer in service. So once again, Charter is going to give its customers the runaround.”

Link

Charter Communications layoffs & update

According to a press release  from yesterday, the company is laying of 75 employees as part of a “corporate restructuring” because these jobs, “serve duplicate functions.”  Should we take away from this that Charter has a lot of redundancy in its corporate operations?  That perhaps the company hasn’t been managed terribly competently?

This brings me back my post about a class action lawsuit filed back in November where a woman claimed that a Charter technician came out to install her cable and caused major problems with her wiring.  Turns out the fellow was unlicensed, according to her complaint, and that when the company sent out someone this year, the problems persisted.  As a class action, it assumed a large number of people also had problems with Charter’s installation and the comments to my post backed that up.

Here’s to hoping that fewer Charter Communications employees will assist the nation’s third largest cable television provider to become more competent in its delivery of cable service during the new year!