So. I had charter here in the sunny Lake Norman area and ended up cancelling since from 5pm-10pm I pretty much didnt have internet. The nodes that handled my internet traffic were so oversaturated that I was lucky to get 385kb (yes, little b) of downstream during that 4 hour period. And this wasnt now and then, this was every single day.
So, after many service calls (this was before a certain tech told me the issue was the node congestion) they finally decided to start charging me for service calls to fix the issue, which, of course, wasn't actually getting fixed.
I ended up cancelling my service and going with the only alternative in my area. 1.5meg DSL. So I went from fast most of the time but unusable for 5 hours in the afternoon to slow as heck all the time. I had to cancel my Netflix account because with the 1.5 meg service, I could no longer stream movied at anything higher than Commodore 64 graphics levels.
Fast forward a year or so. Somebody tells me that from what they can tell the node congestion has gotten better (I dont know if they upgraded or if enough people cancelled it isnt as much of an issue anymore) so I decide to give it a whirl. I called Charter and ordered their 20 meg down/2 meg up service which runs $80 a month in this area. I dont really care if I get that kind of downstream or now, but I would love to have 2 meg up.
The appointment is set up and confirmed for 9-12 or something on the only day I can be away from work. I sit here and wait. And wait. And wait. And at 2pm i call Charter. I pressed 2 to choose 'If you are calling about a scheduled appointment' and the nice lady tells me she doesn't see an appointment for me and sends me to new sales. New sales informs me there is no appointment and they won't be able to send anyone out to my house. On they day they chose. That I made sure to be available for.
I asked them to go ahead and cancel my account. I cancelled my account before I even had my service installed. That has to be some kind of record, but from what I have seen, Charter deserves it.
Charter, AT&T wanted me to send you a big thanks! from them. On the bright side, I hear uverse should be available here soon.