Charter Service Takes It On The Chin

A pile-on in the blogosphere is never a good idea, but after my experiences with the Charter Communications customer service, this story that thousands of complaints to the Better Business Bureau is no surprise.

You heard me. Thousand of Complains to the BBB.

So many Charter Communications customers are complaining of poor service that the Better Business Bureau thought it necessary to issue a warning this week to consumers.

"Customers doubt Charter's commitment to service," the headline reads.

In 36 months, the BBB received more than 2,000 complaints and reports of poor cable TV, Internet or phone service. Last year alone, 1,112 customers filed complaints.

Charter has been trying to get us to sign up for their phone service for some time. We are Vonage users, but we were the first people in Chesterfield to get the phone. The problem was the phone was rarely used, except to fend off telemarketers. Vonage doesn't sell their list to telemarketers. Call it a perk.

But don't think Vonage is blameless. After a week of intermittent problems receiving incoming calls, we called Vonage Customer Service and were told that service interruptions were going to be a regular part of our experience.

I asked what that meant, sure that the customer service agent had misspoke. She had not. I was told that Vonage service was going to experience times when the phone just wouldn't work, and that no plans to fix that were in the offing.

Look, I know there are problems with the lawsuit, but Franki and I are big fans of Vonage. We want them to succeed. But we can't afford to have the phone not ring when customers call. I had several proposals out, and in general, when someone calls, I'd like to be able to answer the phone.

We can't trust Charter. Vonage is unreliable. It's enough to make me get a phone from SBC. How scary is that?