Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Beware of Charter

Charter Communications has some pretty shady practices from my experience.  Yesterday I was able to chalk one more up.  When I checked my bank balance yesterday morning, I noticed that Charter had withdrawn an unexpected $29.89 from my account.  Unable to understand where this charge was coming from, I called them up to find out.  I was told that this was my transfer fee from when I switched service from our old house to the new house.  There’s just one problem with that…I already paid the cable guy $19.95 for this fee.  I told the customer service representative that was the only fee I was told about, and if they are adding another one on top now, that seems pretty sneaky.  She put me on hold for a few minutes while she “investigated” the situation.  When she came back, she apologized for the extra fee and said I should not have been charged twice for the transfer fee.  One thing that still doesn’t make sense to me is if the transfer fee was $19.95, then why did they withdraw $29.89 from my bank account?

This is the not the first time I have had fees on my cable bill that should not be there.  I think Charter intentionally does this, and if the customer doesn’t notice, then they just made some easy money.  A few years ago I switched to a cable modem and was supposed to get free installation.  Well guess what?  When I received my bill, there was a $50 installation charge on it!    Once again, I had to call Charter and get the erroneous charge removed.  I wonder if the BBB would be interested in this information?  If you’re a Charter customer, watch your bills carefully.

1 comment:

adickins00 said...

I suggest you report them anyways to the BBB. They are the only ones that can keep an eye on Charter and in Rochester, we are limited with our options. I report cases such as yours just to keep on record.