Charter high speed vs. ATT DSL!?!? (St. Louis, Washington: sales, credit, costs)

[inahandbasket]

Hi, All -

You all are a font of valuable information!!! So, what's faster w/ the most reliability: Charter high speed (5 Mbps - that's what we currently have) vs. ATT DSL Direct Elite (up to 6 Mbps download/ up to 768 Kbps upload)?

Thanks for any info.

inahandbasket

[DinsdalePirahna]

All i know is that my charter service constantly bogs down and drops connections.

ATT doesn't have service in our neck of the woods

[Marksman84]

AT&T has a high speed wireless DSL package for $19.95/month. My wife and I have had it for four years and have never had any issues whatsoever and are extremely satisfied with the product.

Ah, Charter, an embarrassment to St. Louis :

Charter has been criticized for poor customer support and frequent billing consistency issues, causing the Better Business Bureau to post a warning to consumers about the company:

"The Better Business Bureau has received numerous complaints regarding this cable, digital TV, and high speed internet access provider. Complainants primarily allege that the firm had improper billing practices, referred customer bills to collection agencies in error, provided poor customer service, used misleading advertising, provided defective internet or cable performance, used improper sales tactics or misrepresented the actual costs of installation and service, failed to properly install or maintain service, damaged customers' property, and failed to honor service appointments. "

PCWorld also ranked Charter's cable Internet service as worst among 14 major Internet service providers. In addition, Charter High-Speed is the second-worst-rated cable ISP on dslreports.com , and Consumer Reports indicated in their February 2008 issue that Charter's television/Internet/telephone bundle collectively is the worst of all major national carriers.



It has been reported that on Monday, January 21, 2008 during a routine sweep of inactive accounts, Charter accidentally deleted the email accounts of approximately 14,000 customers; even worse, the removed data is now irretrievable. Initial reports stated that the company would not compensate users in any way but the company has since decided to give a $50 account credit to each user affected (whoopee! $50 off of unacceptable service).

In May 2008, Charter announced that it planned to monitor websites visited by its high-speed Internet customers via a partnership with targeted advertising firm NebuAd. But after customers voiced their concerns, Charter changed its mind in June.

Is it any wonder that this (dis)organization is in Chapter 11 Protection?

I hope this assists you in your decision.

[bmw740er]

WOW Marksman, I am impressed. You not only knew the info but put it together nicely. Wish I had known about AT&T before.

[OA 5599]

Originally Posted by Marksman84

AT&T has a high speed wireless DSL package for $19.95/month. My wife and I have had it for four years and have never had any issues whatsoever and are extremely satisfied with the product.

Are your AT&T services bundled, or is DSL the only thing you get from AT&T? The reason I ask is that I just signed up for AT&T DSL in St. Louis but they are charging me $40 a month for a 3 Mbps connection. I don't have any other AT&T services, however, so no bundling discount.

To the OP, I haven't started using the service yet, so I have no input on how well it works. I too have heard horrible things about Charter.

[DinsdalePirahna]

We are bundled with Charter. Even the cable TV is subject to outages and dropped signals.

They even tried to charge us for a service call because we called about lossy signals. (The problem was on an outside community box)

my Mother in Law has ATT and I wish we had it out here.

[Marksman84]

[quote=OA 5599;10059015]Are your AT&T services bundled, or is DSL the only thing you get from AT&T? The reason I ask is that I just signed up for AT&T DSL in St. Louis but they are charging me $40 a month for a 3 Mbps connection. I don't have any other AT&T services, however, so no bundling discount.


Greetings Kowalski,

We have high speed AT&T Wireless Broadband Internet service for $19.95/month. We have no LAN line (cellular phones only) and we do not have cable because 99 percent of what is on TV is vapid, brainless doggerel. We're not paying for vapid television product.

Get on the horn with AT&T and tell them you heard about this package and you want your rate to be $19.95/month as well. Tell them you'll switch to another provider if they don't comply.

You are the consumer, and the consumer is always right!

[inahandbasket]

Thanks, everyone, for your info. I will take it all into consideration.


inahandbasket

[bmw740er]

[quote=Marksman84;10059825]

Originally Posted by OA 5599

Are your AT&T services bundled, or is DSL the only thing you get from AT&T? The reason I ask is that I just signed up for AT&T DSL in St. Louis but they are charging me $40 a month for a 3 Mbps connection. I don't have any other AT&T services, however, so no bundling discount.

Originally Posted by OA 5599

Greetings Kowalski,

We have high speed AT&T Wireless Broadband Internet service for $19.95/month. We have no LAN line (cellular phones only) and we do not have cable because 99 percent of what is on TV is vapid, brainless doggerel. We're not paying for vapid television product.

Get on the horn with AT&T and tell them you heard about this package and you want your rate to be $19.95/month as well. Tell them you'll switch to another provider if they don't comply.

You are the consumer, and the consumer is always right!

WE NEED ABOUT 500 people like you in Washington!

[Marksman84]

[quote=bmw740er;10072897]

Originally Posted by Marksman84

WE NEED ABOUT 500 people like you in Washington!

Thanks! I was stationed at Andrews AFB up the road, and heard the same from many of your brothers and sisters out there in that fine area of our country!

Of course, please don't let our moderators know of my insightful, provocative rhetoric...