Anything But Coffee

Warning, this rant is long but it has to be said. Usually I’m pretty docile and not very confrontational but I just got off the phone with Charter Communications which handles my Cable TV and my internet service and their lack of customer service and inability to correct a problem on their end which results in taking money from me which I do not owe them pushed me over the line, so here’s my little rant about how much Charter Cable sucks!

Poor Quality with Charter Cable TV and Internet Service

A little background on my Charter Cable experience. I have had both my cable TV service and internet service with Charter Cable since June 2009 and have had nothing but problems ever since.

My wireless modem crapped out after 1 month so I have to plug in directly, my internet signal drops at least 5 times a week for 10 to 30min at a time, the cable signal drops a few times a month for up to 45 min at a time, their guide is always wrong and if I want to check the guide around midnight well good luck seeing descriptions because it takes them up to 30min to populate the episode descriptions for the next day.

All that, plus the volume level on each channel is different, their commercials are annoying and they always seem to cut off commercials in the middle of them.

Charter Cable has Horrible Customer Service

First off, I have to say, I have not dealt with a customer service representative as bad as the one from Charter Cable that I just had in a long time. I used to work where I received customer complaints so I understand where the caller is coming from. I understand the frustration when they have a simple question and just want an answer and the person on the other end just wont answer it. I also understand that sometimes the tier 1 support customer service representative just may not have the authority to do what is being asked by the customer. Most of all, I know that a pleasant attitude will go a long way in resolving the situation and making an angry customer happy.

Now that being said,  I received a billing statement today May 21, 2010 that that said:

• Previous Balance: $0.00
• Balance Due:        $82.73
• Due Date:           5/28/2010
• Late Fee Date:     6/03/2010
• Final Notice Before Disconnect!

Just looking at that, how can they be threatening to disconnect my service if I have no late charges, the bill isn’t due till 7 days later and isn’t late till 13 days from now? I go online to check my billing and see I have all my payments up to date but there is a late charge. How can there be a late charge if all my payments are up to date? I decided to call Charter Cable customer service to find out whats going on.

From the beginning the representative had a negative tone. Maybe she had a bad day at work, maybe she has personal issues in her home life, what ever it was it’s no excuse to give a customer a negative attitude.

She goes on to tell me I owe $196.00 including late fees. At this point I’m really confused as to how it suddenly jumped to such a high number. She insisted I was late and and was snapping that I pay my bill. I tell her I have the history of my payments from their online payment system up in front of me and in the 11 months (since June 2009) that I have been a customer all my payments add up. I asked her to show me where the late fee was because if it has only been 11 months that I have had service, and there are 11 payments accepted, then there can’t possibly be a missed payment. I guess that was too hard for her to figure out because she got even more upset and told me look you’re late you need to make a payment. This went on for about 15min where all I wanted was for her to show me which month was missing a payment. Finally she mumbles maybe there was a processing problem on their end but that I was still late and I need to pay my bill and then hung up on me.

I called back and this time, I get a very helpful gentleman who easily looked over my account and said that I wasn’t late and that I am current and had no idea where the other person got her numbers from. At this point I was content and decided to go online and make my monthly payment like I always do because I didn’t want to pay the “convenience fee” to make a payment on the phone with the customer service rep. Sadly I should have made the payment with them, but more on that in a minuet.

Charter Cables Online Billing System is a Rip Off

I log into my online billing system with Charter Communications and go to the “one time payment” option to pay my bill. I choose to manually make my payment each month because with all the problems I have had with Charter Cable; well honestly I just don’t trust them to set up an automatic withdrawal payment and this is the perfect example as to why.

I fill in the amount to be paid, my credit card information and hit send. I get my confirmation number and everything looks fine. I go back to my recent activities section and I notice there are 2 payments to be processed from the 1 payment I just made. I didn’t click the button twice, I didn’t refresh the page or resend the information. Their system literally processed my payment twice. Even the confirmation number for the payment was the same. If I made 2 separate payments then there would be two different confirmation numbers right? Obviously their billing system screwed up.

So now I’m back on the phone, for a 3rd time tonight with Charter Communications customer service, telling them the situation and asking them to cancel one of the payments because I did not authorize the second one. The person informs me that they are not capable of canceling the payment. I tell them it was just made, they haven’t even processed it and that I did not make two payments, their system made a mistake and I would like one of the payments canceled. Again she tells me that because I made the payment online; which is Charters preferred way for customers to make payments, they are not capable of canceling my payment. If I had made the payment over the phone (for an additional convenience fee of course) they then would have been able to cancel one of the payments. What a sneaky and convenient way for them to steal money from their customers.

I find this hard to believe that they can’t remove this payment just because it was made online so I ask to speak with her supervisor. After a 10 min hold the customer service rep comes back on the phone and says they can not cancel the payment. At this point, with all I have gone through I decide to be a little more stern with her. I tell her “I asked to speak with a supervisor, not to be told an answer to a question, please put me through to your supervisor.”

Poor Service from Charter Communications Supervisor

Suddenly the supervisor is available and pics up the phone. I tell him the situation, that their system took an unauthorized payment from me and that I would like that canceled. He tells me he can’t do that. The normal procedure is for the customer to fax over a copy of their billing statement that shows the double payment and then put in a request to have it refunded. Considering there is a “normal procedure” for this type of “mistake” only leads me to believe that this is not anything new and that they have had this problem of double billing before.

I proceed to tell him I do not have access to a fax machine, I do not have a billing statement because the charge hasn’t gone through yet and that I don’t want it to go through because I am on a very tight budget and can’t have any extra charges or I’ll be thrown into the red. The manager continues to just tell me about the normal procedure. I tell him that obviously if that is the normal procedure and this isn’t a normal situation then there must be an alternative procedure. How can they have the ability to cancel the payment if I made it over the phone but can not do it because it was a technical issue on their online billing. He admitted that there was an issue with their online billing and that he will put in a service ticket for IT to look at it but refused to cancel the payment, I have to wait for it to go through. Again so they can get their greedy hands on money that is not owed to them. Probably in hopes that the customer will forget about it or feel that the situation is hopeless and just let them keep the money.

Out of curiosity I ask where he was actually located and to my surprise he says Mexico City. I asked him if he thinks its right for a company to knowingly have an online payment system that double charges its customers and then is not able to cancel the payment until they already take the money out, and that the only way they can refund it is if it is made over the phone but they charge extra for that service and really pressure the customer to make the payment online which gives the possibility of the customer being charged twice?

I guess he finally understood that it’s a rip off and admitted that it wasn’t right but he was not authorized to cancel the payment. I asked for his supervisor or who ever was authorized to cancel it and of course, he was “in a meeting” and suddenly hung up on me.

After all the effort’s Charter Communications go’s through to take unauthorized money from their customers, and the only person, in another country, that is able to cancel the payment is in a meeting, at 7:30pm on a Friday night seems just a little too convenient and highly unlikely to me.

Bottom line is that Charter Cable has horrible customer service and customer support and obviously, getting a payment stopped or canceled through Charter Cable is an impossible task. I can only hope I’ll be able to cancel it through my credit card company before Charter gets their greedy little hands on my money.

Anyway, sorry for this rant but I had enough and this all had to be said. Time to look up packages and rates with Direct TV.

Randy Home Poor Customer Service Charter Cable, Problems with Charter Communications