Ranger

And my provider Brighthouse cable.

So is this good or not? Better than Comcast getting Time Wanrer?

I'd be pissed if I have to get new cable boxes and activate them all over again.

wmansir

As a TWC customer I'm more optimistic about this compared to Comcast for a couple of reasons.

First, Charter doesn't appear to have data caps, or at least none that they have enforced. Also I believe the CEO recently said something about not believing in data caps. Also I've heard at least mixed results about their service, unlike the near universal disdain for Comcast.

Plus, as a rural area served by TWC I was concerned that we would be among the areas that Comcast was planning to sell off in order to satisfy antitrust issues. Verizon did this to our phone/DSL service several years ago and the small company that took over had issues. They ended up filing for bankruptcy and getting a judgement against Verizon because the deal was so shitty.

PS. I'm also getting sick of TWC's nickel and diming price increases every year, and the fact that they screw you if you don't call at get a new promo rate when your current one expires. I hear charter is much better in this regard.

DJariya

This deal also gives Sportsnet LA, the Dodgers local RSN, more exposure. I know those of you outside of LA probably don't give a crap about the Dodgers. But Sportsnet LA has been blacked out for most of the LA market for all of this season and last because no other provider other than Time Warner Cable would carry it. It's an expensive channel for 1 sports team. Supposedly it would cost customers close to $5 per month and that's why most providers refuse to carry it.

Quack

Working for Bright House, and also was a Time Warner Cable employee for 12 years...I'm more optimistic about the deal with both companies being acquired as opposed to just Bright House or TWC. We'll see what happens, although I don't think Charter has a pension.

Nth Power

A couple friends of mine are over the moon about the deal just for the ability to watch the Dodgers. I'm pretty neutral about it personally, as long as my service stays the same.

Tom Banjo

My Charter cable tv goes out nearly every time it rains, which is strange since it's not satellite based. Charter has been better overall lately, but I've dealt with a LOT of outages over the years, channels frequently added or removed from my package. I never know from week to week if I'll be able to access stuff like Smithsonian channel. Lost Palladia about a year ago, which pissed me off. Sundance and IFC seem to come and go a lot, too.

StealthStratos

This is my number one complaint about Brighthouse. You can't just pay a standard rate for an extended period of time. Everything is considered a 12 month "promotion." So every year they try to raise my rate by at least $5. This year they tried to raise it by $17. It took three phone calls totaling two hours over a two month period to get put on a new promotion and to get it applied correctly to my account.

How does Charter typically do their pricing?

barelypure

As to pricing many say going where the channels are a la cart would cost more, and it may. But then I'd like to see more tiers, not less. And have the tiers have closely related channels. Let me choose the tiers I want to watch. And let the tiers be priced according to what channels are in them. Shopping, religious, news, sports, music, learning, cartoon, etc.

rocket1312

As someone who was a Charter customer for years, all I can say is that Charter sucks. I don't know if things are different outside of New England, but their service is total bush league when compared to just about any major cable provider that I've seen. I haven't been a customer in about 4 years, but I don't think much has changed. Their onscreen guide and on-demand features look like something that hasn't been updated since about 2003. While I never had much trouble with outages, my parents' internet connection is constantly going out. And like Tom Banjo mentioned, it always seems to happens when it rains. They've had the techs out multiple times over the years and as you can probably guess, they have no explanation.

One funny story about Charter is that when I moved to a new apartment and set up service, they started billing me for a modem rental. Of course I wasn't renting a modem because only a crazy person would do that instead of buying their own. When I tried to explain to the guy on the phone that I used my own modem, he wanted to know if I had a receipt as if it was somehow my responsibility to prove to him that I owned a modem. Without even getting into the multiple levels of stupid that that question represents, I turned it around on him by asking if he had the serial number of the modem that I was renting. Of course he had nothing and told me he needed to check with his supervisor. After being on hold for about 20 minutes, the supervisor finally came on the line and told me they would refund the charges. I know people probably have similar stories for every company out there, but this one really just epitomized the Charter experience for me.

Comcast may be the evil corporate giant, and this prevents them from becoming even more of a monopoly, but at least Comcast seems like a real company offering real services and not some backwoods gang of idiots.

dvd-4-life

I've had Charter since 2004. Then I changed to Direct TV back in 2008. Kept Direct TV and went back to Charter in late 2013(because the bundle price was too good).

Charter's cable tv has been almost flawless,same with the voice but the internet does go out every once in awhile.

I did have problems with Charter's HD DVR(over-heating) but it has worked perfectly over the last 60 days.

One reason I went back to Charter was that they were a provider for ESPN 3(while Century Link wasn't a provider).

fumanstan

Doesn't affect me, although I hope it indirectly helps the Dodgers station land on other providers too.

Adam Tyner

Charter grandfathered in people who already owned their own modems and had them provisioned, but they will no longer support or provision user-owned modems. They made this change a few years ago. They dropped rental fees at the same time, I believe.

I had a rough time with Charter for a few years, but they've turned around recently, and their Internet service in particular has been much, much more reliable. My biggest gripes are hypercompressed TV channels and their nails-on-chalkboard advertisements.

rocket1312

Well, this was back in 2009 when you'd have been crazy to rent a modem. I knew that they had made changes to their modem policies in recent years, but I thought I had read last year that they were going to start allowing user-owned modems again.

It's good to here that their internet service has shown improvement. I'll have to check with my parents and see if they've noticed the same thing. I do agree that the compression seems particularly bad with Charter. I still think that their service options and user interface are out of the broadband stone-age.

Adam Tyner

It looks like you're right:

kefrank

My overall experience with Charter over the years has been awful. I've never dealt with worse customer service from any company in my entire life and it was a pattern - not just an isolated incident.

That said, I've had internet service (no TV) through Charter Business the last several years and it has been very solid with good support. They've either upped their game as a company or their Business division has inherently better service. I will never get TV from them again on principle though. I'm happy with Dish.

fujishig

I have the same question. Every single service provider does this: Charter, TWC, even DirecTV. It's ridiculous that the loyal are the suckers who pay close to full price, while if you switch every year or so (or threaten to do so) you get treated like royalty.

PhantomStranger

Verizon doesn't really play that game. They nickel-and-dime you to death and calling in usually doesn't help. With Verizon you have to go through this charade of canceling the service and signing up under your spouse's name as a "new" customer.

Ranger

Yeah, BH keeps increasing the price for me too. They are expensive.

I was already considering giving dish/directv a try or cutting the cord. I think Centurylink offers 36 to 60 month price lock, though there's the upfront equipment and installation fees and CL claims to offer 1Gbps internet in my area.

wmansir

I realize others are doing it as well, but TWC as to be among the worst because they are losing TV customers at rates several times greater than others and jacking up prices on existing customers to keep profits looking healthy. In 2013 they lost over 800k TV subs, nearly three times what Comcast did even though they have a total subscriber base about half the size of Comcast.

In the last 4 years the cable modem fee from TWC went from $0 to $4 to $6 to $8. HD set top boxes went from $6 to $11+, plus they added a "Guide" fee for each box of $4. They stopped broadcasting analog signals and almost all digital signals are encrypted so you need a box for every TV. When this happened a couple of years ago they gave out free cheap converter boxes, but this year they started charging $3 a month for each box.

They added a $6 "Broadcast TV and Sports Programming" fee to every cable bill. The real shitty thing about this fee is that not only is there no way to avoid it, as even the most basic cable package includes it, but the "fee" is added after any special promo rate. I fail to see how this is not false advertising.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-...b_6919760.html

EDIT: The Promo rate thing is a scam as well. I have several older relatives that have been flat out ripped off due to TWC's billing practices. One was still paying $35/m for "basic" (1mbps) internet 2 years after TWC announced that tier would be $15 nationwide.

This year when my promo rate expired the bill went up over $30, from $150 to $180. For the last two years I've had their VOIP service and never used it for a single call just because it's cheaper than TV and internet only.