I have been using Charter internet at home for over 10 years now partially because they are the only ISP offered in my rural area and partially because it has always been fast and reliable. We chose AT&T phone and DSL at our office because it is available in town and their business rates were better when we opened 8 years ago.
Recently charter has been sending us some pretty attractive offers for 30Mb internet vs. AT&T's 6Mb and a decent price for our 4 phone lines when we bundle. The 6Mb was usable but sometimes noticeably slow even for basic web browsing when 9 or 10 of us were working on the internet at once. Two weeks ago we decided to take one of their offers and port our numbers over. The internet is much better and we noticed no difference with our phone system so everyone was happy.
Today we aren't so happy. Only two weeks in and the phone system is already down. We rely heavily on phones for our business. It is 12:30 now and they have been down since we opened at 8:00. Not only are the phones down but you can't even reach our voicemail when you call in. All you get is a busy signal. We now have 8 employees working today who have to use their personal cell phones to get a hold of clients. This means that clients now know our personal cell phone numbers and many simply aren't answering because they don't recognize the caller ID. Also, anyone who tries to contact us simply can't get through.
I waited on hold for quite a while to talk to someone at charter. The told me the fiber was cut and their phone service is down for all of Michigan with no estimated time frame for recovery. Thankfully our internet is still up.
Does anyone here have any experience with Charter phone? How common are phone outages like this? I know that the internet in the area is very reliable but apparently the phone service uses separate lines. If this is a freak accident, one time thing we can deal with it for the better pricing. However, if this happens a few times a year we need to get our phones back over to AT&T ASAP.
Recently charter has been sending us some pretty attractive offers for 30Mb internet vs. AT&T's 6Mb and a decent price for our 4 phone lines when we bundle. The 6Mb was usable but sometimes noticeably slow even for basic web browsing when 9 or 10 of us were working on the internet at once. Two weeks ago we decided to take one of their offers and port our numbers over. The internet is much better and we noticed no difference with our phone system so everyone was happy.
Today we aren't so happy. Only two weeks in and the phone system is already down. We rely heavily on phones for our business. It is 12:30 now and they have been down since we opened at 8:00. Not only are the phones down but you can't even reach our voicemail when you call in. All you get is a busy signal. We now have 8 employees working today who have to use their personal cell phones to get a hold of clients. This means that clients now know our personal cell phone numbers and many simply aren't answering because they don't recognize the caller ID. Also, anyone who tries to contact us simply can't get through.
I waited on hold for quite a while to talk to someone at charter. The told me the fiber was cut and their phone service is down for all of Michigan with no estimated time frame for recovery. Thankfully our internet is still up.
Does anyone here have any experience with Charter phone? How common are phone outages like this? I know that the internet in the area is very reliable but apparently the phone service uses separate lines. If this is a freak accident, one time thing we can deal with it for the better pricing. However, if this happens a few times a year we need to get our phones back over to AT&T ASAP.
