Charter Communications
Charter Communications is a cable telecommunications company, which offers its services to consumers and businesses under the branding of Charter Spectrum. Providing services to over 25 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, just behind Comcast. It is the tenth largest telephone provider based upon residential subscriber line count. In late 2012, with the naming of longtime Cablevision executive Thomas Rutledge as their CEO, the company relocated its corporate headquarters from St. Louis, Missouri to Stamford, Connecticut, although many operations still remain based out of St. Louis. On May 18, 2016, Charter acquired Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for a combined $65.5 billion, making it the third-largest pay television company in the United States.
- Cable Television
- Broadband Internet
- VoIP Telephone
Review
Charter has poor customer service. The Charter Spectrum business technical support division is just as poorly managed as the residential customer support. Criticisms include lack of knowledgeable support staff, no means to communicate directly to a higher level engineer, rude customer service representatives, and no means to report abuse by support staff to management.
In a three part regional study between competing providers Charter was unable to demonstrate the same level of uptime as COX Communications and Time Warner Cable. Since the study Charter has acquired Time Warner Cable. Support staff in the various Midwestern markets is shared by the national call-centers and field technician staff have been reduced so that customers in rural areas are forced to wait sometimes days before a service technician can be dispatched to their home.
The Charter business model completely isolates customers from any escalated level of management or technical engineer. A complete disconnect between the lower tier of the company and the upper echelon prevents customer concerns or quality feedback from reaching the desk of anyone capable of causing positive change. Automated customer feedback surveys fail to provide the means for the customer to articulate the overall problems with a Charter customer support experience.
As of January 2017 it should be noted that Charter has failed to meet any improvement benchmarks in support related criteria.
