I put an antenna and rotor on my roof 2 years ago for about $150. Get everything out of Madison and Rockford. About 20-25 channels. Weather, movies and all local news. I've always wondered why I used to pay to watch commecials. I laugh every week when I get a flyer from Charter.

I have a new low profile antenna...about the size of a shark fin, and looks like one. I get local channels free and very good picture quality. Free.........Did I say Free? I spend more times doing stuff and so do my kids. try it.

This service is not a requirement for survival - it's a luxury. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Pay your house payment, electric bill, buy your groceries, and all the other stuff you need to survive. Then decide is this service worth the money you have left over. Charter charges more - because you pay it.

The price hikes are just the frosting on the cake. I'm tired of bundled channels and package-only providers. I'm tired of all-your-services-in-one-basket providers where you lose Internet, TV AND Phone whenever their satellite is out, or their cable is cut, or their router crashes. I'm tired of poor support. I'm tired of advertising with asterisks followed by fine print so tiny you need a microscope to read it. I'm tired of voice ads with blatant lies followed by legalese cop-outs read too fast by auctioneers on methamphetamines. I'm tired of the negative advertising on tv. I'm tired of deceptive low starting/trial fees that balloon to huge rates after a few months. I'm just plain tired of hauling their excessive snail mail and newspaper advertising from the mailbox and front porch to the trash bin.

Who's watching these people? I guess another government agency has 'fallen asleep at the wheel".

Dish Network HD Silver package, DVR service, 2 tvs with HD, 2 tvs with SD, Madison locals, with 1 receiver not hooked up to DSL phone line = $66.23. AT&T dry loop wireless DSL = $21.05.

Charter, AT&T U-verse, and Direct TV can't touch that pricing for those products/services... hence why we dumped Charter after numerous basic cable package and broadband rate increases.

Do people not realize that there rate that they are paying is negotiable? I have had Charter for years and even though I would like to switch over to AT&T because of the added features Charter works very hard to retain me as a customer consequently AT&T cant come near the price I am now paying.I have to negotiate a new contract every 12 months but it is saving my family about $40.00 a month.

We dumped Charter a couple years ago, mainly because of the TERRIBLE service, outages, waiting time, etc. The rate hikes didn't help. Now we are happy DIRECTV customers. We have very few complaints with them.

Charter is my only option for anything but dial-up internet, so I am stuck. I do notice that they generally use very deceptive practices and have caught them "making mistakes" (read: adding services I didn't order) several times in the past couple years. Cable competition does not exist in any but the very largest markets. The rest of us pay through the nose. One tip - go directly to a customer service rep a the Charter office instead of calling on the phone - way better service!

We dumped Charter a looonnng time a ago. Seriously overpriced, horrendous customer service and constant rate hikes. Um, no thanks. We just use an antenna and get DSL through ATT. My AT&T bill has actually gone down.

One has to decided how important cable tv is to them, for us, it wasn't very important.

wanna save dough?? my tv hasnt been on since march. its all right here on the internets and streamed at no charge on to my laptop. thank you al gore!!

Took a auditer to figure that out ? How do I get that Job ?

Those of us in Milton aren't able to access AT&T, however, Centurytel does have internet access but there again, you need to have a land line.

Att U-Verse is soooo much better than Charter. Hands down. Those that are sick of Charter should give U-Verse a look. Unfortunately, it's not all that much cheaper, but you do get more for your money. Charter is ridiculous.

The US lacks open access, which has led to slowed adoption of broadband technology versus other countries. The US used to rank 4th, now it's 15th.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Study-Ca...
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Open access is similar to the way your utility providers work (in Wisconsin and a fair number of other states now). You lease the connection, and buy your power from a provider who may not be the same. Or long distance phone service. But the Bush administration chose not to implement this policy at the behest of major operators.

Maybe it's time for national cable care legislation... with a public option.

charter sucks. Direct is the best. We had charter, and they thought we would pay 160 a month for expanded basic and internet. We dropped them after two months of calling asking why our bill was so much more than what they promised us it would be.

I had the charter bundle but got rid of my phone when the bill was close to $200 and that wasn't even for HBO or the other movie channels! Bill was still too high so I dropped the digital cable and now have expanded basic as well as the internet and I'm still not satisfied.

I rent and can't put up a dish per landlord's request. I don't have Charterscams anymore. I'd like to know who the "competition" is.

Mine was $49.95/month plus the damn box. I think it was an additional 6 or 7 per month! That didn't include cable and all I had was basic at about the same as the internet. Highway thievery!

When you do a search for "Charter Sucks", Google gives you "Results 1 - 10 of about 828,000 for charter sucks. (0.16 seconds)". 828,000 results. What does that tell you? We gave up on Charter many years ago. They lied and denied repeatedly to us. A typical phone call to tech support took an average of 17-24 minutes to reach a human- I once stubbornly waited 1 hour and 42 minutes when the do-do hit the fan. I got a copy of the contract between Charter and the City of Janesville and quoted contractual details to them that they were violating and they promised to give us credit on our bill. They still owe us money- we gave up on them and enjoy Dish Network now. Charter always advertises high speed internet for only $19.95/month. But they won't tell you that the price goes up to over $50/month after only 12 months. Crooks.

I have one word for that......DIRECTV............

I SMELL A RAT.........They lowered my rate and then raised it more than they lowered it