The story is here, but I found it via the all-seeing BooneWeb.
Today we learn — thanks to a well-known and long-established newspaper — that Charter’s woes go well beyond a public relations gaffe. How so? Consider these two sentences from the Saturday-Sunday issue of The Wall Street Journal: “Charter shares closed at 13 cents, a penny above its 52-week low. The stock price has fallen 89 percent this year.” In Monday stock market trading, Charter stock traded at a low of 12 cents a share and a high of 13 cents a share. In the weekend WSJ story, reporter Kathy Shwiff prefaced the revelation about 12-cent shares with equally revealing information. “Heavily indebted cable operator Charter Communications Inc. said it has hired Lazard LLC to explore options with its creditors to improve its balance sheet. … Moody’s Investors Service on Friday cut its rating for Charter … saying default is imminent. … “Charter said its cash on hand and cash equivalents as of Wednesday were more than $900 million, which are available to pay operating costs and expenses. “Last month, the company said its third-quarter net loss narrowed from a year ago on a year-ago charge as it paid down some of its debt and cash levels rose. Charter warned in March that it could be forced to seek bankruptcy protection if it failed to raise additional funds to finance its cash needs by 2010.”
5 Comments
Based on my experiences with Charter, I must disagree, Kmarine. Charter had a near monopoly in this area for decades. The only alternative was broadcast TV. The latter was much more dependable although fraught with the typical reception problems associated with it.
With only a rare exception, I found Charter’s techs to be barely competent. First, just getting Charter to send out a technician for anything other than a new installation was difficult at best. Then, arranging for a specific appointment time was impossible. Arrivals sometime between dawn and sunset was about the closest commitment they ever made. That usually resulting in a full day away from my job only to have them finally show up in the evening when I would normally have been back home any way. When a tech was sent out often much of their time was spent on the telephone calling back to the home office to try to get further instructions.
The CSRs were even less useful and often just downright rude. Charter’s history in my particular area has been one of ongoing deceptive promotions in my opinion, Their contract/billing terms are buried in ultra-fine small print, resulting in ever-increasing prices for continued service. Attempts to get full product contract term details from the CSRs by telephone proved to be an exercise in futility. Trying to get direct answers to direct questions was nearly impossible. Trying to determine the exact costs involved for a long term commitment for each level of service is extremely difficult. The CSRs are apparently pressured to avoid revealing such information beforehand. Instead, emphasis is placed on talking customers into buying without revealing the true expenses involved.
My experiences with Charter and their employees resulted in such frustration that they literally drove me into the arms of their competitors once there were some. If Charter had invested more in better training for its employees and had improved its public relations, perhaps its current fortunes would be better. I obviously have little sympathy for Charter’s financial woes. They brought it upon themselves and it is well deserved.
Well Charter does have some issues, but with that being said blaming it on the techs and csr’s is not fair they just work for the company they can only do what charter allows them to, but as far as the billing goes its strange we finally went to dish just to avoid our bill going up every month started at 84.00 a month and ended up at almost 160.00 per month.
I agree with monkey on your back, my internet from charter was down for only one night instead of 3 days (thank goodness), but other than that, my whole family has had trouble with them in the past. From no phone service when the power goes out, to disruptive internet service. When we first got digital cable, telephone and internet from them the plan was 99.97 a month for 12 months. Well… 6 months later our bill was charged 112.98, that right there outraged my mother. We threatened to switch our phone service back to verizon and cut our digital cable channels in half. We did cut the channels in half. 🙁 I just wish that the weather channel would include the Local forecast for the immediate area on satellite televiision. Then we would switch to direct-tv or dish network
No kidding, my internet was down for the last three days. After going through the reboot several times and telling them I am still getting no internet through the line I got a call back telling me there was an area outage. So where is my frickin three day refund, jerks
Any word on how reliable ATT is?
The best thing that could happen to media in this region is FOR Charter to go out of business. If anyone has lived in this city for an amount of time, or for that matter anyone lives in this city knows that be default any dealing with Charter are racked with bad customer service, constant service disruptions, abysmal service technicians, and out dated technology. The above article cites where they are trading at, take a look at their competition – $10-$20 a share – WOW! Now if that doesn’t tell you something…
Yes, I am biased…most of us are, I really can’t think of a person out there that has had a positive experiance with this company. On top of that, how do you have a monopoly and still go bankrupt? That is unreal…no competition and can’t even manage to stay aflot.
I say do us all a favor and go ahead and fold you hand…