My history with Charter Communications is a checkered one. When I first got my cable and Internet service at my old home, I had issues with Charter. In September of 2007, I even wrote a post about my frustration with their bad customer service. Eventually they made good on their bad service, and I wrote about that too.

Fast forward almost a year and I’ve moved to a new home. My main concern when I moved was that my Internet would not be set up right away. Since I write multiple blogs and participate in forums, having an Internet connection is very important to me. I could have switched services, but I already had Charter, and it seemed easiest to just stay with what I knew. Part of me is laughing about that now.

The day of the move came. Charter contacted me to let me know the technician was on his way to my new place, which was more than they had done in 2007. I got to my new home and he was waiting. He set up the phone, Internet and television. It seemed to go pretty smoothly. I now had a cable box, which is something I hadn’t had before, but the technician assured me that I simply had to hook a few cables to the VCR and television and everything would work smoothly. My Internet and telephone seemed to be functioning as well. I figured we were out of the woods.

I was, sadly, mistaken. Saturday night I noticed I couldn’t access my e-mail. Since my e-mail from Charter is my primary e-mail address, I was concerned. I called Charter and was told the e-mail address needed to be imported from my old account to my new account. I didn’t know I had a new account, but I was willing to go along with it. I was told it would be taken care of and someone would call me on Sunday to let me know the account was working.

Sunday came and no call. So I called them. There’s a problem with the phones I was told, and the call centers can’t call the supervisors and a supervisor needs to move the e-mail. I’m not sure anyone there was aware of the irony of a communications company that has phones that didn’t work. I might have found it more amusing if I wasn’t so frustrated. In any case, they said the problem, along with the phones, should be fixed on Monday. They were very sorry.

Fast forward to Monday. Still no e-mail, and no explanation as to why there is no e-mail. Finally, after work, I called them again. After probably about 20 minutes on hold, the e-mail was fixed. Oh, and by the way, all the e-mails you got for the last three days are gone. So sorry.

Add to this the fact that I still haven’t figured out how to get the new cable box, my VCR and TV to work together, and you can see why I may be frustrated. I’ll admit I’m not the most technologically savvy person around, but I asked the technician if it would all work and was assured that it would. Now I’m left with a bunch of components that don’t seem to work together and no resources. I’m also still not sure why I have a box in the first place. I guess I’ll have to call Charter again and try to figure that out.

I’ll admit, I’m frustrated right now and probably shouldn’t write blog posts when I’m frustrated. I also know that part of being frugal is learning how to get the best value for your money and determining where you shouldn’t spend your money. In this case, if you have any alternative to Charter, I’d recommend taking it. If I can find another alternative here, I know I will be.

Posted: 08|26|08 at 7:09 am. Filed under: Money Saving Tips, Sanity Saving Tips.
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