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Old 08-06-2012, 09:27 AM
 
261 posts, read 737,192 times
Reputation: 139

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For those of you whose area is served by Charter, do you prefer their internet service or AT&T/BellSouth dsl? Are there any other good options? I am leary of U-verse after reading a huge number of negative posts on other forums, plus we have to keep our plain old telephone service.

We're ready to give up on Charter cable for TV and go with DirecTV, especially since they're offering a whole house dvr system, but we haven't decided what to do about internet. On the TV side, we've been waiting for Charter to learn to properly program its cable cards to interact well with TiVO while experiencing several frustrating years of poor service and missing channels. For a brief time, we went with an antenna in the attic which was fine for local channels, but when I was recuperating from surgery I missed having more options.

We had dsl at a previous house, but there were problems even with filters installed on every phone jack. A tech recently told me we could have an external filter installed that would take care of the whole house, so that's a possibility.

In the last week, Charter internet has been out more often than not - at least when I've tried to go online. For a while, they had a recorded message about severe weather, but once that was deleted the techs I spoke with said they had no record of any area wide outages in our neighborhood and insisted the trouble must be with our modem. Once we finally got a service appointment, that tech confirmed that problems continue in our neighborhood and we'd probably have intermittent service for a few more days.

Your advice would be appreciated!
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Old 08-06-2012, 10:00 AM
 
28,896 posts, read 54,045,943 times
Reputation: 46669
Hate Charter. We're waiting for ATT to string up their whoopity-scoopity internet service. However, when we lived within the Birmingham city limits, I really liked Bright House. I found that they were reliable, incredibly responsive, and had really, really good telephone support.
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Old 08-06-2012, 10:22 AM
 
284 posts, read 609,818 times
Reputation: 336
I had Charter internet and it was HORRIBLE! Off more than it was on. 3pm-6pm every day you could count on it not working. I'm sure that was because people were getting off work and out of school. I've had AT&T DSL for about 4 years and it has been awesome. Only minor issues every now and then. I recommend it but I've been told they want to get away from DSL and go strictly to Uverse and my neighbors hated their Uverse.
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Old 08-06-2012, 11:41 AM
 
Location: Albuquerque, NM
1,566 posts, read 3,277,447 times
Reputation: 3160
I can't speak about U-verse, as it's not in my area. But I feel you pain with the Charter issues with Tivo. Once we were blessed with the "tuning adapter" we started regularly having channels drop, usually unknown to us until we boot up Tivo to watch something recorded a few days before . . . and its not there. I haven't had a problem with charter internet other than when we first moved in 5 years ago. At that time there was a problem on the line that it took MONTHS for them to diagnose properly. But we're in the country, sort of at the end of a line. So they just replaced our line 3x, changed modem, etc. until we pushed and they figured it out. Personally, I've never had a dish-based service. And I think I just have a mental block about jumping to it.

At my office I have AT&T DSL/internet and it has been fine.
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Old 08-06-2012, 03:22 PM
 
Location: Birmingham, AL
178 posts, read 369,404 times
Reputation: 68
I use Charter internet (only) and I love it. It has never been down. The speed is fantastic. I think the secret is, as one of my other friends advised when I was searching for an internet provider when I moved to Bham, is that you NEED to rent their modems. 10 additional bucks a month on a 30 Meg line and you can peacefully surf ever after.
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Old 08-06-2012, 05:30 PM
 
284 posts, read 609,818 times
Reputation: 336
Quote:
Originally Posted by happybuddha View Post
I use Charter internet (only) and I love it. It has never been down. The speed is fantastic. I think the secret is, as one of my other friends advised when I was searching for an internet provider when I moved to Bham, is that you NEED to rent their modems. 10 additional bucks a month on a 30 Meg line and you can peacefully surf ever after.
I had their modem and it still was horrible. I could never get any assistance online and after a year or so of complete frustration I canceled it. When it worked it was fast but to be honest, I can't tell any difference in the speed of Charter and this $47.95 per month DSL line. When I've had issues I've been able to get a human on the phone fairly quickly and issues resolved quickly.
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Old 08-07-2012, 06:47 AM
 
Location: Birmingham, AL
178 posts, read 369,404 times
Reputation: 68
Quote:
Originally Posted by VeeBee66 View Post
I had their modem and it still was horrible. I could never get any assistance online and after a year or so of complete frustration I canceled it. When it worked it was fast but to be honest, I can't tell any difference in the speed of Charter and this $47.95 per month DSL line. When I've had issues I've been able to get a human on the phone fairly quickly and issues resolved quickly.
Hmm.. understandable. Thankfully, I haven't had those experiences. To me, they seem reliable, fantastic and have great customer support, if your call lands on American shores, i.e. Do you live out in the sticks/boonies ? May be that could be one reason.
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Old 08-07-2012, 04:31 PM
 
897 posts, read 2,451,150 times
Reputation: 309
I have Uverse-had Charter for years- thought about Direct Tv but a friend said it was always out-she has Dish now and it is a pain when you record something you can't change the channel when a show is recording- Uverse is GREAT! and i just talked them down on price again....
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Old 08-07-2012, 07:02 PM
 
261 posts, read 737,192 times
Reputation: 139
Thanks, y'all. I couldn't get back sooner because Charter was out again...and again. Another tech visit is scheduled for tomorrow. I so much want to pull the plug, but need to wait until we check out a few more things.

DirecTV's new whole house dvr/controller that works with sub-units to allow users to record multiple (I think it's up to 5) programs at once and/or to watch different programs on various TVs throughout the house. That's appealing to us.

ATT tried hard to push u-verse, but I really don't want it. The salesperson didn't know anything about using phone line filters with dsl, so I need to research using a whole house filter at the point of entry before we decide.
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Old 08-08-2012, 07:53 AM
 
Location: Birmingham
11,787 posts, read 17,704,519 times
Reputation: 10120
I have had all three and have U-Verse now.

Charter: The worst. Bad customer service, bad service (goes out frequently). The internet service just flat out wasn't available certain times of the day. You can forget about it on weekends. Also, if you like online gaming don't even try, you'll get disconnected waaaay too much to enjoy any sort of game.

Bellsouth/AT&T DSL - The most stable, the most reliable. The few times it would flake out would be bad, but only because it spoiled me with rock solid connectivity. Still, if you have people getting on your landline while you are online it can drop you even when you use the little filter things they give you. The ultimate setup would be to have a second DSL only line, but YMMV.

U-Verse. - I love the TV portion so much I don't have much to say bad about the internet serivce. Faster speeds are available then DSL but it doesn't really "feel" like it, and they charge you a bunch for each increase in speed and I don't seem to see the benefit. I don't play video games nearly as much as I used too, but once I get my new system and run my PS3 wired instead of wireless I'll "update" But for now, I don't rank it any higher then DSL. But then, I haven't upgraded to their highest speed yet either.
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