Charter or Brighthouse? (Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills: house, neighborhood, living)

[coastalnc]

I hear those are the two options in the B'ham and surrounding areas? Any thoughts on them? We've always had (and loved) Time Warner so I don't know much about the other two...... Thanks!

[Back Again]

There is a 3rd choice and that's the dish - satellite.

As far as Charter and/or Brighthouse, you do not have a choice. If Birghthouse services your area, Charter will not and visa-versa, so you do not get to pick one over the other. I can not speak of Charter, but the service from Brighthouse is VERY lacking. I have found that with Brighthouse, the right hand does not talk to the left hand - meaning the service desk has no direct contact with the maintance people - all done via e-mails. Several time, we were told a maintance person would come over and we needed to be home, yet, it seemed as if no one came and when we called to follow up, we were told they came but did not need to come into the home, so there we sat all day for nothing. We have also been told we did not need to be home, and you guessed it, we come home, only to find a tag on our door stating "Sorry we missed you"

[GinaVol]

Charter's customer service agents were always "off shore" when i called with problems (with some frequency) We like dish a lot better...

[Bravo35223]

As you have already seen from your visits here, the Birmingham metro area is essentially located in a forest. And the cables run on telephone poles through that forest.

YOu will also learn that we get a lot of windstorms here. Storms that blow trees over cable lines...sometimes your cable can be out for several days.

For that reason, and that reason only, six years ago I went to satellite. There are an extremely high number of satellite customers in our area.

My DirecTV dish is located on the peak of my home which is located on the top of Shades Mountain. This dish has survived every windstorm thrown at it. During Katrina we had gusts in excess of 60 mph and my little dish kept on plugging away while we ran the house on generator power. Power out for five days and neighbors with Charter cable were out seven days.

There are numerous reasons to choose satellite over cable, but the #1 reason is reliability....

[coastalnc]

Who provides your internet service? My past experience with DSL is that it is just too slow....

[Historic Bessemer]

I have brighthouse cable and internet. The customer service sux.When I got the service the lady who signed me up said that the "special price" would last forever on this one time "special deal" ! After a year the price skyrocketed by 40 bucks! I was able to raise enough hell that I got them to honor that "special price" for 3 more years!

Turns out it was special after all!


Lets not talk about Alagasco customer service. I don't think I have ever experienced anything that bad!

[Bravo35223]

Originally Posted by coastalnc

Who provides your internet service? My past experience with DSL is that it is just too slow....

Charter is my provider and unfortunately AT&T does not provide DSL service in my neighborhood.

As a result of the classic "monopolism" of this situation, I am charged the princely sum of $62.00 per month for my internet service.

However, it is extremely fast.

I just ran an internet speed test through PC Pitstop:

1) Dowload speed: 4968K
2) Upload speed: 485K

So, if you want speed, Charter can provide it. Frankly, if
DSL was available in my neighborhood, I'd take it....slower but half the price

[coastalnc]

Anyone know which company (B'house, Charter) services which areas? For example, Chelsea, Mountain Brook, Pelham, Vestavia. Neither company shows their coverage areas on their websites. We're just curious as we house-hunt.

[Threestep2]

Bravo - doublecheck with AT&T. A number of changes in the Birmingham market since the BellSouth merger.
We had weekly issues with Charters internet service and not a single problem with AT&T since July 2006. Let's not discuss Charters TV or loack thereof.

[drfranklin]

If I remember my Birmingham cable history, Brighthouse used to be "Birmingham Cable" (before it was bought by Time Warner Cable many years ago) - it is only available to those living within the city limits of Birmingham.

Charter (which was "AT&T Cable" [I think] before being bought out by Charter in the '90's) is available to those in the surrounding areas (Hoover, Vestavia Hills).

Believe it or not: BellSouth made a foray into the cable arena (in the '90's/early 2000's - my mother had this - this was not the "DISH" plan - it was a separate cable entity). This service was only available to those in Vestavia Hills (I believe this is defunct now - but it sure made cable rates competitive in the Vestavia area). Vestavia used to be the ONLY area where one had a CHOICE at cable systems. Does anybody know if this is still available?

I'm not sure what cable systems are available in the other outlying areas (northern suburbs, far southern [Pelham, Calera, etc] and eastern suburbs [Chlesea, etc]).