My Year in Charter Hell

Well what can I say?     I have had a great dislike for Charter for the last year.     We had their cable service along with their internet up until 9 months ago.    My dislike started when our local cable channels on were unwatchable.   We called a handful of times they would send someone out and say oh it is your set up or oh it is the one splitter.  Not once did they ever look at the cable on the outside of the house.  Then we started having problems with the internet dropping for a few minutes and then coming back.   Sometimes it would happen multiple times a week or day.   It never was predictable.   The only thing that would happen is the connection would drop.     We could go for a week or two with no problems.   Well by now it was October or November of 2008 and we called customer service and they said oh we can send a tech out to look.  Again same thing did not look at the connection outside the house only kept saying can you connect directly to the computer without the router and it work.   While on hold with customer service utilizing my cell phone because we had no phone service because our internet was out I started to speak with a rep who wanted to go through the same tired routine that we had been doing for 2 months every time we called.  This particular call the rep hung up on me.    I called back and told the customer service rep that I wanted to get this problem resolved and that I would not be unplugging the modem or router anymore as I had done that on 3 prior occassions that same day.   We had tried everything trying to rule out that it was on my end.   So here we are in December of 2008 and the cable was unwatchable and the internet was dropping once a day every week for no reason.     We made the decision to drop their cable tv and keep the internet as where we live there is no other alternative for high speed not even DSL  We returned the cable boxes to Charter at the end of December stating why we were dropping their cable service.   We were told that they would have to send a truck out to trap the line at the pole   and charge us for rolling the truck so we could not steal cable.   Hubby and I were not happy but said okay,   I asked specifically if it would affect our internet and I was told no it would not.    Well about 6 months ago we were still having the issue of the internet dropping.   Again it was an intermittent problem.   So we changed out the cable modem thinking that our modem was going bad.    Nope the modem was fine.     Well yesterday was the last straw the internet was not even usable and this was the second time in a week and the outages were lasting about 30 minutes at a time.     I contacted the corporate headquarters I did not even go through customer service because I knew that they would be useless to me.   So the tech at the corporate level looked at my modem logs and dispatched a tech to my house today.    He tested the signal at the modem it was fine.   He went outside and looked at my connection outside not only was the connection loose but it was not even up to code meaning that my cable was not being protected from the elements.   So he installed a guard.    He also detected that not only did they not trap the pole 9 months  ago that I was charged $35 for.  Instead they trapped my connection coming into my house which  was causing my signal to fluctuate and timeout my modem.   Once he removed the trap and put up the guard he tested the signal again and it had improved.   So essentially for 3 years my connection has not been hooked up properly until today.   So far it is working fine but I will be keeping an eye on it.    The tech that came out does not even work for charter they outsource that.   He was the first tech that had come to the house and not tried to blame it on my setup or the fact that we use one splitter.   He was nice enough to leave his name and number and stated that if I had anymore problems to call him directly.