Charter Cable has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but said operations will continue as normal. [Marketwatch] (Thanks to CaptZ!)
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This does not surprise me one bit. They were the worst run cable company I have ever dealt with.
I agree with bohemian on that, they were my prior cable provider, not saying the Comcast is great, but Charter was outrageous not only with their pricing, but also with their customer service (Both phone and service calls).
Guess that’s why they bumped up their prices by like $30 more than before >.> Probably time to switch to dish… just like all the other people around here have.
I have Charter cable and cable internet. This doesn’t make me feel very good…
@f3rg: And it won’t make you feel any better knowing that Comcast is already making plans to fill a Charter market vacuum.
@morgasco: The strange thing, at least 8 months ago Comcast was running billboards in my town. This is a charter area, so we can’t even get their craptastic service, but they were tossing money into the ether.
@menty666: Marking future turf? I wasn’t a fan of Charter either and looking at their site using my old address it would cost $65 a month for the internet service bandwidth I’m getting from Comcast for $45 a month… Still, I’m all for a service a little more wallet heavy if it means not dicking around with issues every few months, wasting 2 hours or so a pop.
@morgasco: i’m not pleased that Comcast will (obviously) move in and swallow them up but that being said: it can’t get MUCH worse than what we had (Internet Only subscriber)
@f3rg: I’ve been quite pleased with both the performance and customer service. I’m paying 71.49/month for top speeds and basic TV channels, but the crummier DSL in my area isn’t much less.
Funny I’ve had just the opposite experiences with them. Great service and I just got them to lower my price package and boost my internet speed. I sure hope that they get sorted out because frankly all I’ve heard about Comcast is wretched and they would be the most likely to move into the area.
Please tell me that I don’t have to go back to DirecTV!!! and Verizon!!!
Well, this isn’t exactly breaking news. Charter announced this a few weeks ago. Wanna hear something else fun? They are implementing bandwidth caps for subscribers…YAY!
What sucks is there really isn’t any other options for me above 1.5Mbps. =’(
@PHRoG: me either… go on the FIOS and U-verse sites and request info about when it’ll be in your area!!! The more feedback they get the more likely they are to add service!!!
Waiting until Comcast goes out of business…
@Addicted To Chocohol: Ssshhh! Comcastcares Frank is watching….
I have Time Warner Cable for my phone/tv/tubes, and very little to complain about- they aren’t perfect, but from what i can tell, they’re better than comcrap.
i wouldn’t be surprised to see some other cable provider buy off their contracts, and possibly their service centers- (possibly) a good time to enter a new market area?
@Gstein: I live in Minneapolis, which was once a Time Warner area, Comcast took it over about 3 years ago now, and the conversion was terrible. They kept and still have the old Scientific Atlanta boxes and modems (while my parents, also in a Comcast area 12 miles had the latest and greatest), couldn’t get the on demand features to really work at all for a year (I was only looking for the free value added movies, etc). There was also an issue of having them apply the University of Minnesota’s discount to the internet service, since even though I was paying Comcast every month, the billing system in my area wasn’t ready to handle this complex discount of 15% or so on my internet services…..FOR OVER A YEAR! I thought the monthly pestering via email of the Comcast rep to our University would help, but that wasn’t the case.
Is there such a thing as a good cable tv/internet provider?
@knightracer: I really miss my old cable company, BrightHouse Networks. Great, local service (though I rarely had issues to need the service). After I moved, I was forced to go with Charter. Horrible Internet throughput, high prices, and ugly MPEG compression artifacts.
Hooray! I helped! (By cancelling my cable. Talk about a ripoff!)
Who didn’t see this coming?
Charter is a terrible company. I’ve had charter twice (when i moved, i went back with them to see if they got any better, but nope, so i switched away again). I know so many friends who have had charter and decided that the headache was just not worth it.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when they started hijacking mistyped URLs into their own enhanced page. The only way to “Opt-out” was with a cookie they placed in your browser, which means that they still had access to see what you typed in, and the “charter enhanced domain not found page with advertisements” would come back if you deleted your cookies.
I submitted a letter to the FCC, and sent a complaint letter to Charter’s president then decided that it was not worth the wait, so I switched.
Three months later I got a call from charter and a letter acknowledging they got my complaint. Their reply to the complaint basically boils down to this: since they are a cable provider the law that protect consumer privacy does not apply to them the same way it applies to the phone companies.
Don’t get me wrong, charter has a very good network, the pipes are there, but management is screwing things up big time. They are also very pricey, but that is to be expected from a company that does not have enough subscribers to keep itself afloat.
If it sounds like I’m gloating, I’m not. But i can’t stop the strong sense of satisfaction i get every time i think of charter possibly being no more. The same kind you get after you kill a big boss in a classic arcade game.
Goodbye again, Charter.
@TNA5000: Simple fix, no messing with your cookies: use somebody else’s DNS settings in your networking TCP/IP properties instead of accepting Charter’s default DNS, and you stop getting the mis-search redirects. Check out OpenDNS. You should also start seeing faster page loads. Charter’s DNS servers are awful.
@scoosdad: You would think that that would do it, but no. Trust me. I’ve been using OpenDNS for a long time. It did not stop charter from somehow hijacking my DNS requests. Both my Router and the computer DNS settings were pointed to the open DNS IPs.
I figured Charter was filing after I read about them hiring an attorney to look into the possibility of doing so. Right now in the area I live in, I have Charter available for Cable and Internet or I can go with small-town phone company for my phone, dish, and internet services. They have an iron grip on the local phone service here, no outside competition. Their internet service is so slow, too.
I sincerely hope Charter remains in business, I don’t want to start looking for another provider. Other than customer service and a few billing issues, I’ve been happy.
Good riddance to bad garbage. I’ve had Comcast, Charter, and now AT&T uverse, and Charter was by far the worst to deal with.
great, now I’ll have to either go back to dialup, or hire someone to rewire the house phone lines because the previous homeowner thought they were handy with wiring…
You don’t have to start looking for a replacement. They are going to reorganize, not liquidate, so what will most likely happen is in some areas they’ll be bought out by other cable companies and in others they’ll just continue on as Charter for years to come.
I for one look forward to it in my area, because while Charter is a turd, Comcast is a shiny turd.