I'm sick of being lied to by the evil Charter corporation
Written: Nov 08 '01 (Updated Nov 28 '01)
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Pros: No need to dial up.
Cons: Inconsistency in connection speed. Down times. Expensive.
The Bottom Line: Did you see that ad on TV? It's lies! All lies! I'd rather trust Don Lapre.
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| Shampoo-Girl's Full Review: Charter Communications Charter Pipeline |
Alright, I know what you're thinking. The question is obvious. Why is Shampoo Girl returning to Epinions when she's supposed to be on a far away tropical beach or at the mall somewhere? Yes, I'm still officially retired from writing on Epinions but I had to do this review out of sheer frustration & anger at my local cable ISP for being the low-life cheats that they are. I want everyone to know that what you see on TV isn't exactly so, especially when it comes to a certain Charter Pipeline commercial involving a teenage Pez dispenser collector being outbid on an online auction by some bigshot with a cable connection. Remember that one? After being on a lousy 56K connection for years, I figured it was finally time for me to try out what everyone calls broadband. Broadband? Yeah right! I find my new connection, which was supposed to be 256K no better ( & sometimes worse ) than those other useless dial-up ISPs. What's going on here? It takes about forever just to download a tiny 12K image from a Yahoo photo album and even longer for an upload of equal size. I don't think it's a problem with Yahoo since I tend to get half baked page loads from other sites too like ebay & epinions.
After reading several other reviews on the service, I understand that this may be caused by other users hogging bandwidth. If that's the case, then I'd have to say that the Charter commercial you see on TV is a highly misleading piece of crap, aimed at deceiving people like me into forking out $45 a month on a service that would otherwise be worth less than $2. I would gladly pay the extra $11 for basic cable TV but I find paying an additional $30 ( plus $4 modem rental ) a total rip-off given the miserable amount of bandwidth I'm getting. The name 'Charter Pipeline' itself gives the unsuspecting user a false impression of bandwidth when in fact, all you really get is less than 10% of what you pay for.
While running Naviscope on my computer, the program indicated the 'true' speed of data transfer to be no more 5-15Ks per second, with peaks of 120Ks lasting for a mere fraction of a second. What happened to the other 245Ks? Isn't this supposed to be 256K? By paying $34 a month ( after subtracting $11 for basic cable ), I was fooled into believing that I was actually getting a 256K connection, but after careful calculation using a 15K average 'true' connection speed, I arrive at the conclusion that the service is worth no more than $1.99. Why am I still paying $34 then? Simple, it's because my phone's dead and it will cost me $50 just to get reconnected plus a ton of other related charges.
Now, on to more down points. Charter Pipeline charges a $50 fee for installation, however, those of you with thin wallets may be tempted to do it yourself after hearing of their so called self-installation kit. Truth is, it isn't as easy as it sounds. Self installation can be a real pain, even for the computer savvy. You'd probably have to call the technician 90% of the time and end up paying the $50 anyway. Don't get me wrong here, I actually heard this from the technician himself. He mentioned of 'computer savvy' people trying their hands at self installation only to give up in frustration after hours of fruitless attempts. If you do not currently have a cable subscription, then there's no escaping the dreaded $50 installation fee. The good news is, that Charter may occasionally offer free installation as a marketing ploy to reel in more customers so if you're one of the lucky ones who got their cable installed for free, then good for you. You may also have 2 or more computers connected at the same time for additional $10 a month, which brings us back to another problem called bandwidth hogging, mentioned earlier.
Not having to dial up each time you turn on your computer is another plus, however the cons associated with slow connection speed & down times far outweighs whatever pros I could think of. Connection speeds may be better in other parts of the country, but here in Michigan, it just plain sucks. If I were to go into a bidding war for Pez dispensers like that guy on TV, I'd probably even lose out to someone with a 28K connection. Bottom line is, don't believe what you see on that commercial. It's about as true as that other infomercial about getting rich quick using classified ads. Not recommended!
P/S: It took 183 seconds for this edit page to load on my second attempt. S-L-O-W!!! One final note - I find the connection speed slightly faster between the hours of 3 to 9 am. The worst ( slowest ) times are between 6 pm to 2 am. There's evidence of bandwidth hogging for you!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 45
Version Number or Year: 2001
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Epinions.com ID:
Shampoo-Girl
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Member: The Big Shampoo
Location: Shampoo Land
Reviews written: 100
Trusted by: 318 members
About Me:
Tomoko Kawase rocks my world
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