(Razor512)
Three hours. That’s how long Nate’s Internet connection goes out for, every day except Saturday. He has no idea why. His Internet service provider, Charter, has no idea why. All Charter is able to do is send technician after technician to check out the problem, replace hardware, and ultimately not solve the problem.
Since August of 2011 I have had 7 technicians in my house to fix my internet with Charter. I have literally had every piece of cable, hardware, modem, line, and pole replaced from outside my house into my living room.
My internet has gone out for exactly three hours every day sometime between 12pm and 5:30pm M-F and Sundays. (Miraculously not Saturdays).
I’ve had enough, I don’t really have an option due to regulation of the cable industry, I have limited choice for my home internet. I no longer want someone traipsing through my living room to tell me the signals are fine.
Most recently they agreed to send a line technician who would not need access to my house this past Friday. I happened to be home when the door rang. He asked for access to my house anyways, reviewed everything inside, looked outside, looked at the pole and agreed he would monitor my connection from his house (weird).
I again had issues Sun, Mon, so I called back, I utilized their community site, and again was told by a representative that before they could escalate the issue they needed to have a technician come to my house, they noticed some signal deterioration. If there was an issue why would it not be all day long, why just those hours. And why can’t the tech that was just here on Friday be able to escalate it.
I’m at my wits end. I just want them to admit there is a problem on their end and stop wasting my time at home by sending someone each time to tell me there isn’t a problem and the signals look good.
It’s not for raging competence that Charter has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen in the Worst Company in America 2012 tournament. It took a huge amount of persuasion on one reader’s part to make Charter fix the poor connection of an entire neighborhood when there was a concrete problem to fix.
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The problem is probably external, but finding it…
Back in the late Sixties, the computer at the company would fail every Monday morning. It took months to track it to the machinery at a neighboring company being turned on for the week, causing surges and drops for an hour or so,
really..
lets ask some questions FIRST..
Wired/wireless..?
WIRED?? someone is interrupting the connection SOME PLACE.. probably NEAR YOU..
ASK the tech if anyone else along YOUR LINE has the same problem..ask them to PING those modems..
Wireless?? THAT is a pain..someone could ACTUALLY, be taking over the line OR causing a signal loss due to radio interference.. even SUN SPOTS.. Rig up a reflector to direct all WIRELESS signal TO YOU..its not hard…aluminum foil on the back side even ON THE WALL..
OP, have you tried the Charter Direct forms at dslreports? They were able to escalate some of my more complicated problems when I was a charter customer. Not sure if that’s what you meant when you said you used their community site or not, but thought I’d throw that out there, in case any of the other 77 comments haven’t mentioned it. (I’m at work and can’t sift through them, sorry)
Is the OP accessing the internet through a wireless router in the home? If so I would look to a neighbor having some gadget that is interfering with the signal. For example, wireless security cameras can be found that run on the same frequency as the wireless router and completely blank them out. It happened to me. Look around for some repeated activity nearby. Wire the computer directly into the access point with a cable and see if that eliminates the problem.
Check the basement of gnomes.
I’d like to share a personal anecdote that may be of interest.
A pal used to work at a print-on-demand facility, using one of those ginormous copy machines that’s 15 feet long. It was in front of a window. Every day, at a certain time, the copy machine’s computerized ‘brain’ would freeze and the screen would display gibberish. A few restarts, and it would correct, but no-one could figure out why it was always at a certain time.
Eventually, while looking out the window, someone noticed that at the given time, a telecom company across the way realigned its dishes to another satellite, in effect pointing them right at the copy machine, which somehow caused the dichorotron whatsits or whatever to crap out.
The point is: what’s happening near Nate at this time? Power grid switch-over? Change in stoplights? It’s curious. Still: Charter should be able to detect the problem on their lines during the timeframe. Anyway.
I think I can fix your problem, as I had a similar issue with my digital cable service from Comcast. Something is wrong with your account, and a computer somewhere is interupting your service. The only way to fix this is to cancel your service, and have a new account made up. Mind you, you cant just have them disconnect and reconnect you. You need to have a whole new account. BTW good luck convincing them of this. I argued for almost a year before someone at Comcast finally would do that for me. Then POOF, no more problem.
Log into your cable modem and your router and check that the “Hours of Use” settigs have not been activated. If so, that could easily be set to deny access from this hour to that hour.
reminds me of the story of an IT DIrector that had a problem with the main server going doing a couple of times a week in the middle of the night. He tried everything and couldn’t find the problem. So finally he decided to stay the night and see if he could watch it go down. after several hours the janitor walks into the room empties the wastebasket and then walks over to the server rack unplugs the server and plugs in his vacuum. after a few minutes he finishes unplugs the vac and plugs in the server. The IT guy looks at him and says do you vacuum in here a lot…couple of times a week says the janitor.
It could be possible that a router, or cable modem with router is set to not work during those times. I know on my router I have options that prevent certain programs or all programs to stop working at times setup like a schedule. Do you have someone’s old router?