Talk:Charter Communications

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Charter Communications article.

Article policies
This is not a forum for general discussion of Charter Communications.
Any such messages will be deleted. Please limit discussion to improvement of the article.
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:

Contents

[edit] Slogans

  • "Bring Your Home To Life" (2004)

The slogans section is used on the Wendy's article. that was my template for this article. If we should put it back on the article, please do so. If i can find it, i will put up some of the older, funnier slogans. --Zeroasterisk 18:28, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The out and out bashing of this cable company, yet remaining NPOV is awesome! Nick Dillinger 09:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

leaving the actual history in the article is fine, placing opinions in the article as fact is not the spirit of Wikipedia Jwestbrook 14:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Tough shit.

<< Wikipedia is a great resource. I'd hate to see it discredited because of statements such as the above. Jwestbrook is right: opinions stated as fact will dilute the reputation and usefullness of Wikipedia. Zero and Nick, please save that kind of juvenile spew for the blogs. >>

[edit] Indictments

  • "1998 the SEC investigates a buying binge by the company which leads to the indictment of four former executives for improper financial reporting"
    • is this not the same thing as the 2000/01 fraud? Is it misdated? Or did the fraud investigation begin that long ago on other matters than what led to the convictions? Rd232 talk 01:01, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

charter has a lot of hidden charges —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.71.48.3 (talk) 05:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

See I knew it all along: Charter = Satan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.233.69.107 (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

what hidden charges are you talking about. the only charges not in the "bundle" are modem lease fees. $4.25 if you have hsi and phone. and do you seriously expect to get free equipment?????

[edit] link to date for indictments(sp)

Media Tracker

Here's the info I found that put it at 1998, the way courts work it may have been that long (1998-2000/1) to actually get it done

btw t/y for helping out

J\/\/estbrook       05:32, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Telephone service

As a charter Support tech I just need to clarify; charter phone is NOT VOiP. It is Broadband Telephony. Charter phone service is not based on the internet rather the RF signals and fiberlins that the other services use.

Yes, it is VOIP: it uses the Voice Over Internet Protocol. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.191.141.46 (talk) 00:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC).
a Charter tech doesn't know the service he supposedly supports uses VOIP. Yep, that's CHarter, all right.
Side note, Charter utilizes VOIP technology but differs then use of other companies such as vonage that relies on 3rd party internet service, Charter uses its own private network to transfer VOIP packets, though congestion and outages {power loss at headend, fiber cuts, and overall node failure} will interrupt service. The charter support tech is trying to clarify that difference imo, no need to bash him/her for incorrect information.

[edit] Ranking

From Cox's wiki page:

"Cox Communications is a wholly-privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television and telecommunciations services in the United States. It is the third-largest cable television provider in the United States, serving more than 6.7 million customers, including 2.7 million digital cable subscribers, 3.1 million Internet subscribers, and 1.7 digital telephone subscribers[2]. Its animated spokesman is named Digital Max."

Charter also makes note that it is the third largest cable television provider. Jaymzyates 23:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Charter technically is the third largest publicly traded cable operator but fourth overall. Cox Communications is a private company but third overall. ♪♫Alucard 16♫♪ 05:23, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mistakes in outsourcing section

I am a Charter employee. The Bay City, MI call center closed. The Walker, MI call center remains open. I have corrected this.

I have added the inclusion of TeleTech's center in WV to the list. FFrX 08.01.07

fyi- The outsourcing section says all US call centers have been closed and outsourced out of country, yet one of the outsource centers listed is Laredo Texas. We all know charter is too cheap to keep even 1 US call center...

oooh and someone should add that Charter will take your money and say you are receiving 5mb/sec service when in reality you only get .5-1mbps unless it's 3-5AM. also might want to mention that after 3-5 hours of phone support with some jackass who doesn't understand what your saying (ex English), and another 2hr period in which a tech is supposed to come out, and then the next hour when they get there late after that 2hr period ended and admit that they simply are not providing enough bandwidth to the building and everyone has the same problem yet they still will not upgrade to provide the speed they charge you for or refund your cable bill aside from the last 5-7 days even tho it has been occuring for months. wtf i thought there are rules against monopolies —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.90.25.252 (talk) 00:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Corporate Contact

The following line was deleted as it is not accurate the number listed (last 4 removed) is NOT a customer service number. It is neither a corporate contact number either.

  • HSD/Telephony Emergency Support: (502) 420-

M-BMor 07:51, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added the customer service number for ALL services. Press 1 for Cable & HSI, 2 for Telephone. If you are experiencing a telephone related problem, such as No Dial Tone or trouble with a feature, you can reach the repair department by following the prompts. Select 2 for Telephone, 3 for Support, and 2 for No Dial Tone to quickly speak with a representative. FFrX 08.01.07

[edit] incorporated / was founded

Question, should it be "Charter Communications was incorporated" or "Charter Communications incorporated"? For clarity, it seems the former is clearer as it seems someone identified the statement as Charter Communications Incorporated (like Charter Communications, Inc.) --AllyUnion (talk) 08:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent additions to this page

Several (presently unsourced) paragraphs about the recent activities of Charter Communications were recently added to the article's intro. In their original form, they read like advertising copy, so I removed them. The author Mbaker99 reintroduced them, still failing to cite sources but with the tone cleaned up a bit. I then split this off into a separate section, as there was way too much detail for a brief introduction to the topic. This section has since been moved to the top of the page.

My present thoughts on this are: 1) It's still unsourced. This should be fixed, by someone who can verify this information and link to it; my cursory attempt at looking on google didn't turn up these statistics. 2) It's too long; I don't think excruciating statistical detail on the growth of this company needs to comprise such a large portion of the article; something brief indicating how many customers they currently have/have gained recently would be sufficient. Similarly, the multifarious paragraphs on customer service improvement could be cut down to a couple sentences saying that they've hired more agents and are answering calls faster, IF this information can be sourced. 3) This information should be AFTER the info providing a general overview of the company; putting it before sections like "History" that describe what the company's actual business is makes the article clumsy. 4) I'm 99.999999% certain Mbaker99 is a Charter employee, as information like "average speed of answer" is NOT generally made public by call centers, and is unlikely to be available from any source other than Charter's internal documents.

Since I have no desire to get into a revert war, I'm going to wait (a bit) before making any more changes to this article to see if anybody else has any thoughts on this. evildeathmath 16:52, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


I reorganized the new material somewhat; I added a reference for the revenue growth info and consolidated the paragraphs about awards the company has received and moved them into a separate section (I haven't added references for them yet, but both publications are pretty well-known, shouldn't be hard to find. . .)

I also removed a couple of things that I couldn't find sources for; everything citing call-center statistics is now gone; it needs a source if it's to be added back.

The list of services provided by Charter (telephone, broadband internet, cable TV) is in the intro, so I deleted it from the "Recent Growth" section; I also removed the "175 HD channels" bit; it's an oversimplification anyway, as the channel lineup is dependent on where you live and what package you sign up for, and I don't think an encyclopedia is the place to maintain a running log of what/how many HD channels a specific cable provider is offering.

Finally, I removed the section about call center agents being trained in specialties like billing, etc. This isn't new information (Charter has done this for at least four years), so it doesn't belong in a section on recent growth, and it's not notable either (at least not as specifically relates to Charter), as any large company's telephone customer service department is organized this way; if this information needs to be anywhere, my feeling is it should be in the general call center article. evildeathmath 14:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)