Charter High-Speed Internet is a decent ISP, but has a few flaws. Their worst flaw is probably their customer service. I have searched the Internet to see if this is the case for everyone, and it apparently varies by area. I know that in the High Desert area in Southern California, Charter customer service is pretty bad. In a few areas of the country, however, people seem to be really happy with it. It seems that the number of people who have problems with it outweigh the number that do not.
My main problem with their customer service is that they put you on hold for an extremely long time, sometimes even hanging up on you. When you finally get someone on the phone, they usually rush through the conversation without fully answering questions, and are not very friendly. They do not seem to care at all about their customers.
Charter High-Speed offers a choice between three different speeds: 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, or 10 Mbps. Their highest speed is not quite as fast as the exceptional Cox High Speed Internet, but it is very fast, and definitely better than DSL or dial-up. The 10 Mbps speed is quite good when it’s working, and even the 3 Mbps speed is generally better than DSL. The speed may decrease quite a bit in busy areas, however, since Internet over cable is always shared with all the other cable users on the same line.
Another problem with the Charter High-Speed Internet service, however, is that the connection goes down quite often, and they do not seem to make a very good attempt at restoring the connection quickly. After researching other reviews online, I find that this again seems to be a local issue, but seems to correlate with customer service. If the customer service in your area is poor, then your down times may be greater.
I suppose when the Charter High-Speed service is bad, it’s really bad, but when the service is good, it’s really good. In the High Desert, California area, it’s really bad. Internet service can be down for many hours, and sometimes even days. This may be more likely in some areas such as the High Desert where high winds are common of course, but the real problem is that they do not seem to care enough to fix the problem quickly, even when the weather is pleasant outside. If you have bad weather in your area (especially with above-ground cable lines), have bad customer service in your area, and live in a busy city, your Internet connection may be of very little use.
Charter High-Speed Internet offers a couple of decent extras to go with your high speed Internet connection. Included is a security suite including anti-virus software, firewall, spam filtering, and parental controls. You also get ten email addresses with about 100 MB storage each, for a total of 1 GB of storage. These services are good, but many other companies are now offering the same services (or more) in order to compete.
If Charter High-Speed Internet is your only option besides dial-up or DSL, it may be worth it even if you have to suffer through poor customer service. Just make sure that you have a dial-up or other connection as backup if you have a lot of downtime but cannot be without your Internet connection.
If you cannot tolerate Charter’s service, but it is the only cable Internet provider available, you may wish to opt for DSL or dial-up. It all depends on how slow a speed you can tolerate for your Internet connection. DSL may be the way to go if it is available, you do not mind the slower speed, and you can’t tolerate Charter’s customer service or excessive downtimes.
