I've been experiencing 5%-20% packet loss over the past several days on my home Charter High-Speed cable connection.
It's affected my home Vonage VoIP phone line.
I called yesterday from Vonage to Charter, but the packet loss was so bad, that the technician couldn't hear me and at times I couldn't hear him. I would have called from my cellphone, but unfortunately I don't get service in my house.
Then today my wife called me at work to say that the Internet was completely down as was the Vonage phone service. Of course, I knew Charter was to blame, so I then called my local Charter tech support number at this number 800-827-8288.
Their IVR was having difficulty detecting my DTMF digits even though I was not making a VoIP call. (VoIP often affects DTMF touch tone digits).
It didn't detect my touch tone digit, so I was then transferred to an operator who said "Charter Communications. Can I help you?".
I said "Yes, I'm having problems with my Internet connection."
"Charter Communications. Can I help you?"
I repeated, "Yes, I'm having problems with my Internet connection."
"Charter Communications. Can I help you?"
"hello??? hello? Can you hear me?"
"For quality assurance purposes I am stating that their is no customer response."
I was then hung up on. ARGH!!!!
I tried two more times - same thing. I could hear them, but they could not hear me.
Could be a major Charter outage. The fact that I could hear them but they could not hear me points to the possibility that Charter is using VoIP in their tech support department. Perhaps their upstream bandwidth is OK, but their downstream is flooded, which is why they couldn't hear me. Or it could have been Vonage that was to blame.
Anyone else willing to try calling the above number and see if they can get through to tech support? Post a comment if you find out anything.
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Just called their 2nd level tech support. They didn't give me much info as to the extent of the outage, but did say it was an AT&T router issue that has been going on for a month. I asked if it was a Northeast issue. They said it was more local than that. uh huh... I believe you...
No ETA on when it will be fixed either.
That's just wonderful...
The reason we cant give you a time frame on outages is because they dont give us one. the only people who know that are the people actually fixing it and half the time they dont know. and we do not use voip for our tech support lines we have a dedicated fiber line to the St Louis AT&T UBR switch. the reason they were not able to hear you was most likely RF interfearence on the bottom half of your cell phones transmit range caused by either a cordless phone in the area or the tower switch was haveing a problem. the cell phone swiches fequency on every outgoing call for security reasons and the feq it chose that time it was unable to transmit out on. just call back.
Thanks for the explanation Charter tier 2 tech. Looks like you're not using VoIP after all.
>>the reason they were not able to hear you was most likely RF interfearence on the bottom half of your cell phones transmit range caused by either a cordless phone in the area or the tower switch was haveing a problem.
Actually I was using my Vonage VoIP line not my cell phone. My cell doesn't work in my house. It actually could have been a Vonage issue with regards to only hearing one-way. Who knows?
Hmmm... sounds like your VoIP Phone was having a one way audio issue. How did you setup your VoIP phone with Vonage? Did they have you do anything in your router? And what kind of router are you using?
Well, if your having trouble with your charter internet, you are going to have trouble with your VoIP phone service.
For those of you that don't know, VoIP uses your high speed internet connection. If the internet connection goes down or becomes slow, you will also have trouble with your phone service. Call your broadband ISP regarding the internet connection.
Tom,
Just for clarification, how did you call charter from Vonage if you highspeed internet connection was completely down?
Good luck!
>>Well, if your having trouble with your charter internet, you are going to have trouble with your VoIP phone service.
Yes, of course - IF I'm using voIP over broadband - which indeed I am.
>>For those of you that don't know, VoIP uses your high speed internet connection. If the internet connection goes down or becomes slow, you will also have trouble with your phone service
Ahhhh, not necessarily. Charter and indeed most cable companies offer VoIP over coax using DOCSIS 2.0. It's not true VoIP and it runs on a managed network not over the public Internet - so no QoS issues. I talked more about it here in my Time to Dump Vonage post
>>Just for clarification, how did you call charter from Vonage
I used my cellphone. I get service at the end of my driveway. Why couldn't the signal reach 50 feet more to my house? grrrr.
I cannot believe what is happening with Charter Communications.
First, let me advise you that if you're going to use Charter, you're going to experience major frustration.
Why?
Because Charter wants your money, but offers horrible support.
I had Time/Warner for years. 2 months after Charter took over the local Time Warner cable network, My cable failed one night. I had to have it online and never really had more than momentary problems with Time Warner.
I contacted Charter's national support line. Imagine that they have one person answering for th entire country! Thats what the tech said. He said "We never hear of problems from Texas." What? How can one person support a more than a small area of a city much less the entire nation????
What did he say after I explained that for no reason, my cable modem just stopped working? You're not in our system. I said that I've been a customer for 7 years with T/W. He said, "well, you're not in our system. sorry." I said "this is a major problem for me since my business depends on this connection. He said "I can't help you. You're not in our system." I said who knows how to help me? He said "Call your local office at 8:00 in the morning." I said "thats many hours away!" He said "I can't help you."
I have never and I mean never ever spoken to such an uninformed, low grade level of help in all the times I've called even to India for tech support! CHARTER SUCKS, but whats funny too is that they know they suck!
I am about to find a new provider. I've been told repeatedly that Charter is horrible, awful, very bad. I am now a believer.
If you have Charter for your provider, RUN! Don't walk! Get away from them as soon as you possibly can and find a stable provider that has good support.
DSL sucks, but one thing about it is that it rarely goes down, and the phone company knows how to fix it and offers better support than Charter. At least this is what I've been told by friends who have DSL.
I don't want DSL, but I don't want high prices with horrible service.
LOL!! Charter is a joke. They're a horrible company to work for, and i can't imagine having to use their services. So many times i felt so bad for the customers, and there was nothing i could do for them based on charters policies and procedures. They want their employees (yes, even the tier 2 tech support) to sell, and thats all they care about. Its sad. I quit there because i couldn't stand lying to people anymore, and i felt like a used car salesman or something. Their internet is really bad though, and extremely over priced. The people that do the tier 2 support are hired off the street, with no experience. Its hillarious!!!!
You should appreciate this then: http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-Eight-Charter-Champ-Shirts-going-fast_W0QQitemZ260140431458QQihZ016QQcategoryZ57990QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
eBay > Charter Champ
Almost spit my coffee out this morning laughing so hard. This is good!
HA! I love the smell of sheer hate exposed to digital medium. I can tell you EXACTLY what one of the main problems is with Charter, besides outsourcing CSRs, and outright lying to customers.
As installers and service technicians [yep, i'm on of the many souls lost in this shit trap company], we are some of the lowest paid technicians in the communications field, and we all know it. We have higher paid individuals with 'cherry-pickers', who find , repair and maintain any problems from the headend to the taps on the pole...the only problem is these retards are so completely jaded from the personal hell they've survived as entry level into the company, that they seem to take more naps on the clock than maintain plant.
this means the guy who shows up to install your service, usually over-worked by noon, hasn't seen his family in 4 days nor taken a lunch break in weeks, receives MORE work to do, barked at him by extremely uneducated supervisors who want thier bonus for guarding a coffee pot.
when we show up to your house, chances are, your service wont work right, and we'll know it from readings; we'll also know that there's a shiny new nap in it for a system tech as soon as a report is made on it, so we think, "fuck it! this customer's already treating me like a slave anyway..."
[...thats only for the arrogant assholes though, FYI. It will probably work quite well if you didnt treat the brow-beaten cable man like shit when he came to your door.]
a few tips: (1)Be nice to your installer[act like a human] he'll respond accordingly,(2) don't call customer service, ask at the local office what city the techs work out of and find THAT office to visit,(3) remember, the guy carrying that ladder through your fucking field and crawling under your nasty ass house while your dogs pee on his goddamn tools, makes less than your local home depot worker, and slightly more than the guy at McDonalds,and NEVER gets out of work on time...and most important...
...move to a comcast area lol I did :p
Actually charter is a good company to work for good pay. they do hire people right off the street like most people do (i.e. people that have some telephone skills/technical skills)They are geard alot tward sales and give me trouble about my sales but thats every company i have worked for UP SALE UP SALE UP SALE thats why they make money..... the real problems at charter are outsourcing install tech so they dont have to pay for possible damages to customers house the contractor does.... outsourcing cca customer care associates wich is somthing that they purely do to save money those are the people that are lieing keeping people on hold for a half hour and things like that... People like mr. vonage above crack me up when they call in , yeah its not my problem body charter has to follow or try, fcc regulations for its own telephone network like their going to deplete there tech resources for vonage,.,. their are quite a few people that have ligitament problems but most people have no idea what they are talking about and have no credible trouble shooting skills to even figure out what a power cord to a phone cord is .. eugh ...
Charter SUCKS. It is the worst service I have ever had whith any company. They are too big and no one knows what is going on!
I have never in my life experienced such terrible and non caring technicians. If I ran MY company like that, I'd have been out of business a long time ago. I have their total package (ten megs, cable and phone) and I can't even get the most simple of inquiries answered. I can ONLY get canned responses that tell me to phone in... where they can waste my time and get absolutely nothing accomplished. I'd leave them 2morrow, but unfortunately there are no other suitable options for high speed in my neck of the woods. To be honest, their service is not too bad. Perhaps I'm one of the lucky ones. But surely, they are overpriced and their support is an outright insult to those who sadly require it.
I can sum up everything about Charter in one screen shot taken from their support web site this evening::
http://rcmediaservices.net/images/
If you removed the Voip Box that is plugged into your Cable modem and then reset the modem you would be able to get online,
I do tech support for an Internet Company and Vonage just sucks all the signals, if you only have a 3Meg speed and are talking on your VoIP phone, of course you are not going to get online or will experience packet loss(becaue you are on your VoIP phone!!) & there is proof that you are online as the VoIP runs of your internet, but before anyone freaks out,
please, just remove the Vonage box and try resetting your modem and even restarting your computer I bet you would be online!
CHARTER SUX!!!!!! They have the worst customer support ever! Anyone heard of a Monopoly!
Charter does suck!
I'm a comm tech who is sent all over the country to fix networks... And it never fails, i get home from a trip and guess what I've got Charter problems...
Always my problems are in Chicago, either with a Chater Switch or congestion between the charter SDP switch and their provide either bbnplanet.net or Level3.net.
I call their "tech support" and get some damned person reading from a book; "sir, do you have a router connected? and later they say... sounds like a bandwidth issue i can transfer you to the sells department who can talk to you about the 10Mb service in your area."
MORONS!!! That's what causes the problem! Sure Over sell, over sell, and over sell... Great for the bottom line sucks for your customers. And those who don't know better!
I just wish Charter had a number for Tier 2 or 3 tech support.
I love 3 - 20 % packet loss with a ping jump in Chicago from 19 to 160~170ms IN ONE HOP still in Chicago! Thanks Charter, once DSL is in my area I'm switching...
I've been a SBC DSL customer for years and I'm saddened by the fact SBC & AT&T can not provide service to my area!
Charter needs to hire a few qualified professionals!
Here it is guys. The moment you all have been waiting for. The TRUTH on Charter and their tech support lines.
It all comes down to behaviour on the phones. You wold not imagine the amount of calls we as Tech Support receive with a customer yelling in our ears just as we pick up the call. Is there a reason for this or do you just like to point the finger at someone else? IF YOU ARE ARROGANT ON THE PHONE, WE WILL PUT YOU ON HOLD A LOT AND TRY TO PUNT YOU OFF THE CALL QUICKLY!
Our tools suck, which is no joke, I'm here to tel you the truth after all. Half the time they load, and other times we do it manually. If we search by your phone number and nothing comes up, almost everyone will say you are not in our records while in-fact you are, this is the tool we use not automatically finding you. When I get this problem, I search by State and then First/Last or SSN.
80% of all our calls, then customer is actually online, but will in-fact have a router. As soon as we hear this, OUT it goes. Charter cannot and will not be reliable for the happens of your router so they tell us for you all to by-pass it. AND here's another thing. USE YOUR DAMN IMAGINATION! Draw the damn thing out if you have to. If we say, "Directly connect the modem to your computer". Why is that so hard for everyone? You have ONE ethernet cord and two boxes. One being the modem and the other being the computer. Now. Lets get a piece of paper out and draw two boxes and a line connecting the both. TA DA! There you have it. A direct connection.
Now. I know you all are getting very upset at the fact that every time you call in we try to up-sale you. Well this is not us so please DO NOT get angry at the agent. We as agent are yelled at constantly being charter is not making enough sales for the total amount of customer they have. EVERY call at the end or in between fixing your problem we are supposed to ask probing questions and at the end try and up your bill to atleast 1cent. YES. You heard me. We have the option to EVERYONE to add either a new phone line, a phone service, a digital box and whatever you want by just 1cent. Now you know why charter does not have ANY contracts. That and they have the right to up your bill at any time in regards to your taxes in whatever state you live in.
This is not even close to being the end of what actually goes on on the other end of that phone with charter. I will be keeping an eye on this page and if anyone has a question, PLEASE! write something and you WILL be told the truth. No one deserves to be lied to. No matter how arrogant some of you guys are to us when you call in.
Is charter bandwidth shared? I think it is. Does charter throttle bandwidth? I think they do. Does charter actaully provide the amount of bandwidth that I pay for? I think not. Does charter mess around with monthly bill and also charge for one month in advance inorder to confuse the consumer into paying more than what they were quoted? I think they do. Can you answer these questions honestly? I hope so.
Question for Tech support:
Why does Charter service go up and down so much and drop out Voip calls?
Also,
Why are the Spam filters set so damn high that they block most normal (NON Spam) emails that include any URLs and other content?? It has become so bad that I have had to start using Yahoo! & Gmail email accounts.