This post was submitted to us by our reader, Heath Hughes. Heath lives in the Lincoln Square area, and frankly, he’s fed up with his crummy internet service. We’re posting his message below, with some light edits made for clarity. Those who wish to commiserate with him, give him some words of encouragement or advice, or connect with him to form an alliance and launch an uprising against Spectrum, can reach him on Instagram @heathmhughes or Facebook @heathhughes.
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Hey, fellow UWSers!
I am writing because I suspect that, like me, you have also experienced repeated, time-consuming, infuriating and unending problems with Spectrum. Following a brief overview of my personal encounters, I’ll get to the part that specifically pertains to other UWS residents.
For 1.5+ years, we have had approximately eight service appointments. At each visit, the technician explained what the previous tech did wrong:
- “Oh, no, your service was installed sharing your neighbor’s internet—no wonder you have had such a weak signal.”
- “This modem you were given is really old and we don’t use it anymore. You should have been contacted to receive a replacement.”
- “Your wifi (installed within the last year) unit has repeatedly stopped connecting since I arrived. You really should not use Spectrum equipment: we give you refurbished equipment—that you pay for—and often it is faulty and really should have been discarded. Even though I get a discount, I refuse to use it. I buy my equipment elsewhere.”
- “Your last service tech connected this cable to a splitter that should not be here, so half of your internet signal is going to this third output and is draining your signal. That should never have been installed.”
- “When I arrived, your wires were not torqued. I should absolutely not be able to twist this with my hand instead of this tool. This was not installed correctly.”
Over the past year, they have dropped new lines, the inside wiring has been replaced, and they’ve been on the roof who knows how many times.
Today, the tech guy called his supervisor and put him on speakerphone. The supervisor explained that my apartment is on “node bc06,” which controls signals to the whole area. To be exact, this specific node sends internet signal to at least 355 accounts here on the UWS (I assume all in Lincoln Square). The supervisor reviewed this shared node’s activities and signals for each day of the past week in the neighborhood, and his exact words about the quality of the service were:
- 5/8: “horrible”
- 5/9: “horrible”
- 5/10: “horrible”
- 5/11: “horrible”
- 5/12: “the worst”
- 5/13: “horrible”
- 5/14: “horrible”
- 5/15: “better than the other days”
Yes, he referred to the internet signal going to all of the apartments in the area as “horrible,” and without this admission, none of us would have known it’s happening on such a large scale. My tech didn’t even have access to that info because he could only see that my modem dropped twice yesterday (my signal dropped about four times, that I noticed).
I am writing this because we are all held hostage to Spectrum and their lousy service. Whether it be incompetence, indifference, or a combination of both, I have been paying for service that has been abysmal. Whether trying to work online, or simply relax at night and watch a movie, it’s been ongoing problems hundreds of times. And Spectrum has not taken it seriously, they have not fixed it, and they have not refunded any money to offset the significant service failures.
I do not know what can or will come of this, but I wanted to share my story. Do any of you have similar stories?
Heath Hughes, your neighbor
Obama shouldn’t have allowed Spectrum, or whatever it was called, to purchase TimeWarner cable.
Highspeed internet service should be regulated like a utility, and utilities (ConEd by way of example) should be more highly regulated.
Possible solutions, try RCN if you can get it your building, try Verizon’s FiOS.
If you have a line of sight view of Lincoln Center, see if you can pick up a WiFi signal. LinkNYC in the immediate area sucks.
Last, never trust that the internet provider is providing a decent, updated, WiFi router.
Firstly, it’s Charter Communications, one of whose largest shareholders is Liberty Media. Both are very bad, consumer groups fought against deal. FCC (regulatory) & DOJ (anti-trust) are only entities with federal oversight (NYS & NYC PSC has local authority). NYS threatened license revocation in 2018. Trump’s FCC chairman has given them big breaks. I only have them because there isn’t any other choice. Verizon reneged on it’s promise & FIoS still not available to me, would never use them again in any way. Had technical problems here with nodes, outages, etc. Advice: never allow a contract repair person for service, always insist on company worker. Ask how to access modem/cable status. Call with complaints to supervisors. File city complaints with 311 and/or local political reps, state level with Public Service Commission.
Email me at Lauren@Honest.net, We are residential gigabit internet provider based in NYC and perhaps our network can be made available in your building.
http://www.honest.net
I’ve had terrible service for years with Spectrum — intermittent use of online access because of some kind of failure – not sure what. Service online is typically slow. And the price keeps going up, unattached to any improvement in service. I depend on the internet for my work.
In addition, their TV commercials are relentless. Oh, and they sell my name to other vendors, who then harass me by mail on by phone.
I have problems all the time. Freezing picture no picture at times. Have had boxes replaced lots of time. I have had the same router for as long as I can remember never been looked at. Bill keeps going up and I’m on SS can’t keep doing. I’ve been with them over 20 yrs. No loyalty to older customers. Disheartening.
I forced my building to install Verizon. I refused to be held hostage to Spectrum. Everything is 100x much better now.
I also hate spectrum. To fix the cable they destroyed my phone lines. Building getting food the month.
Meant to type building getting fios next month.
Spectrum should pay less on advertisement–claiming 99.9% reliability–and more on improving their unreliable service. Poor government oversight, as usual these days.
I am very sorry for your frustration and crummy service. We moved into a new apartment two years ago only find out after the fact Verizon had never upgraded the wifi service. Left with only Spectrum, we were panicked. Much too our surprise the speed and reliability of our service has been great, even better than our FIOS service at our last apartment.
Does it just depend on which building your reside?
Try to be patient; fixed wireless is coming. You’ll either get your broadband from your cellular provider or Spectrum will have upgraded their service to prevent mass defections.
It seems like nobody has ever heard of RCN.
My experience too. We have had 4 Spectrum internet outages this year. 2/25, 02/27, 03/25 and 05/10. We call every time. On two of these, they said “yes, this is a scheduled outage to replace some equipemtn”. Scheduled? They never told us we were going to have an outage.
Since I work out of my home, as an IT consultant, I need internet all the time. So I signed up for FIOS from Verizon. Now I have both, and the Verizon is blazingly fast. Probably not something most people need, and I wouldn’t need it either if Spectrum were reliable.
The people in my building want me sign up for a 4-year plan with Spectrum. No way.
Spectrum is the worst. I have had problems too numerous to list through the 20+ years I have been held captive. Recently, my HBO disappeared. I called and spoke with 4 different people to get to the root. My building “lost” the bulk contract when Verizon was allowed to come in. So HBO was no longer part of the package. My rate stayed the same but I lost channels. spectrum did not contact me to let me know. They offered to “give me” HBO as part of another package for an additional $20. It took many hours over several days to finally get someone who was able to switch from another package, full of channels I did not ask for, to get back the HBO.
Today I disconnected the second cable box in my apartment and connected a fire stick to that TV. I am on a mission to give them the least amount of $$ possible.
And I should also menti9n that 8n the last six months the service goes out weekly for hours and even days. They do not automatically calculate a discount for outages and give you a credit. You must ask for it. Seriously the worst.
Heath,
Very sorry to read about your beyond terrible experience with Charter. I recently quit Charter and wanted to offer some context on what it is like working there, which may help explain some of your, and others’ problems. Keep in mind my experiences are limited to my previous job role and do not necessarily reflect the entire organization.
Just about every non-leader is overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Management prefers an old school autocratic approach where you do what you are told or face reprimand for impeding the “business”. Management will tell you “we work hard to support our customers”, but we all know that is a front for greed and other personal gain. Personally, I would rather buy a product or service from a happy workforce and would be willing to pay extra to know the employees are well cared for.
Charter promotes horrible work-life balance by forcing you to constantly work late nights and weekends, handle multiple job functions outside what you were hired for, and deal with unreasonable and overly aggressive timelines from unprofessional leaders who lack mastery in the subject area.
HR is about as abysmal as your service, unfortunately. There is no dress casual workday at all and no remote work policy. Even with COVID, I heard multiple stories of people being told they had to be in the office or take vacation, when they asked to be home to protect their children. After I received multiple emails of people being diagnosed in my building, I requested a remote work accommodation. Upon asking this, my HR rep asked me “what is your BMI?”. Worse than that, in a prior encounter with HR I was asked to name the specific medication I was taking when requesting a 1-time remote work assignment for a week. Clearly there was no need to know either of those details and HIPAA was not being followed.
Long story short, if I could describe Charter in three ways it would be: unethical, immoral and profit chasing. They do not care about their employees, only their profits (Rutledge was 3rd wealthiest CEO back in 2019). And if that is how they treat their own, I am saddened to say that it is not surprising that is how they have treated you and the many other good people in this thread.
Brothers and sisters unite,
-Mike
I totally understand everyone’s frustration with Spectrum. They are the worst, plus insanely overpriced to boot. The most frustrating to me is why we are here in the first place. What ever happened to monopoly laws? The monopoly that Time Warner, then Spectrum has had for all these years should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. There are other guilty companies out there that are monopolies but, this note focus is on Spectrum.
We all know their advertised internet speed and reliability has not been correct for years. Since there has been alternative except outdated DSL, and no other providers in our areas, we have had to be victimized by not only Spectrum, but the city and government agencies that are supposed to protect consumers.
The only solution I can think of is every person who is being ripped off contact the FCC https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us and the NY Attorney General office https://ag.ny.gov/complaint-forms about all the false claims from Spectrum and other companies who have been allowed to have a monopoly. If there are enough complaints, they will be forced to do something about New Yorkers being ripped off.
Thank you for your advice and for the links. I have filled out forms to complain at both of the agencies. I doubt it will do any good, but if more people complain maybe something will eventually be done.
Very sorry to hear about your internet problems. Have you tried turning it off and on?
Do yourself a huge favor and drop them like a hot potato! Everything you said is absolutely true! I had them years ago with all the same problems. Their pricing is outrageous too! Switch to Verizon FiOS. You will be much happier. They are truly reliable, fast, and fairly priced.
Spectrum stole/destroyed the email account I had with Roadrunner. They never advised me they would be destroying by nyc.rr.com account when they took over Time-Warner. I called to find a way to retrieve the emails I had in that account – some were archived. I was told they could do nothing. That account and all its email is evaporated — just gone. Is that theft? I would switch my Internet service to Verizon, but they are horrible, too. And they do not offer some of the stations that I went/like.
Every single post in here is an absolute, overwhelming exaggeration of the facts filled with uneducated assumptions and false statements. This is what’s wrong with this society of ingrates and people so far removed from reality that it’s sickening. You can stop reading from here if you want because you probably don’t want the truth. You just want to complain. If you decided to continue then please allow me to clarify. Facts first.
1. This has nothing to do with Obama or Trump
2. Charter hasn’t been in the area for 20 years plus
3. Individual service related outages doesn’t constitute a company wide problem.
My Opinion:
All of these posts and responses are probably from
Chronic complainers, disgruntled employees or people just ignorant to how the technology works and it’s limitations. People who have nothing better to do than just bitch and moan about any and everything. People who just like riding bandwagons.
Yes, you may have had service issues. Yes, you may have had billing issues, yes, you may have particular conditions that stem from beyond Spectrum’s control. Yes , you may have come across Technitian with conflicting diagnoses of your service problem. But these are the exact same stories and complaints from every other communication service provider. There is nothing different. When I get asked which is better I give the same answer. They are all the same. There is no difference. The only difference is what you decide to pay. There are too many variables or factors that determine the root causes. Some are easy to find and fix and some are more complicated. Your building, the age of the building, buried wires., access issues. The list goes on and on. We as consumers don’t really care about what goes on behind the scenes. we just want what we want with no excuses. Well it doesn’t always work that way. Wether you are filthy rich and think there is no such answer as no or it can’t be done. Or you are poor and think the companies don’t care about minorities. Your all wrong.
Do some homework. I’m sure you will find the exact same stories filed with consumer complaint agencies from every service provider. All complaining of the exact same issues. Read between the lines of these posts. I can pretty much picture every single individual who wrote something. You are all the same. Hasn’t changed.
Yes I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years. I’ve worked for several of them. The only thing that is different is the technology. The customers, the problems, the employees are all the same.
I’m sorry. There is a world wide pandemic that has changed our lives forever. People are dying by the thousands. But your upset cause your bill went up. Your upset cause you can’t get online. Your upset because a company makes you work extra hours. Give me a break. Get a life and out things in perspective.
Fed Up,
I won’t waste time refuting most of your rant as you are clearly a perfect example of the problem. Morons who don’t know the business even after 3 decades.
See @spectrumoutage on twitter
I commiserate, being also stuck on Spectrum due to landlord refusal to allow others. I have also had the same repeated stories from the many repairpersons eventually coming, all blaming previous repairs.
When it was still Time Warner Cable and having the strike a few years ago, the pickets handed out small leaflets detailing lies that TWC forced them to tell. I wish I had kept it.
My conclusion long ago was that this company is willfully immoral liars, from the top down.
If you think being a customer for them is bad, you should try being an employee. It is a culture of constant micromanagement and employee morale is very low. No one likes working there anymore.