Charter or Direct TV

Do any of you feel the same way I do? Charter keeps going up and up & I get ticked off everytime I pay my cable bill. With phone, internet and cable my bill is over $170. Do any of you have satelite? Can you tell me if you can get internet thru DirectTV and how much does it cost and who is the internet provider? I'm thinking of dropping charter, but want to check internet prices.

What you really need to do before switching is to look at the big picture. Find out what TV,Telephone and internet will all cost seperately and the quality of any possible alternatives.

Call Charter, tell them you are going to switch to direct or dish and they will start throwing introductory offers at you, probably get you down to $115 to $130. If they won't work "for" you, have them cut it off for a month then get the introductory price. The first way is tested "he he" but I've not tried the second one, and oh yea, don't tell nobody.
As for direct with 2 premiums and locals t.v. alone is around $65, by the time you add a phone and internet it climbs pretty good. At&t with DSL gonna run you around $50, and there are others out there, availability limited, windstream, vonage etc....Good luck.

Blue Man wrote:

Call Charter, tell them you are going to switch to direct or dish and they will start throwing introductory offers at you, probably get you down to $115 to $130. If they won't work "for" you, have them cut it off for a month then get the introductory price. The first way is tested "he he" but I've not tried the second one, and oh yea, don't tell nobody.
As for direct with 2 premiums and locals t.v. alone is around $65, by the time you add a phone and internet it climbs pretty good. At&t with DSL gonna run you around $50, and there are others out there, availability limited, windstream, vonage etc....Good luck.

Your plan to get the rate reduction sounds pretty good!
I am no defender of charter and heir prices but despite their sometimes high prices they do provide what I have experienced as above average service with them as far as TV and Internet go. Don't know about the phone service as I myself live in town and just went completely cellular on that front.
Like I said though before a person makes any type of big switch they should definetly look into customer satisfaction with the company they are considering going with.

I like my DirecTV, gone 1345 days without the service making a daily call for programming updates (no landline here). Good selection and we do not have any HBO, CineMax, TMC, or specialty premium sports channels. We do have Discovery,TLC, TCM, BBC, SciFi, all networks, etc... Approx $50. per month and with the built in TIVO on the DirecTV receiver we can record anything we want onto the hard drive whaile watching other channels and zip through commercials when we want or pause while we take a break.

directTV is way better than cable my opinion only

I think Direct is the best....maybe that is because I live 1/2 mile from the Charter Office (which I can see from my front porch) and every single person on my street has Charter YET I am not in the service area? This has been a non stop argument with Charter for the last 4+ years. I gave up! I will stick with Direct, they did not have a problem installing service at my house!!

steve helton wrote:

directTV is way better than cable my opinion only

well i say this but,,when i had charter it was not good for sports(i'm a sports freak)but was good for movies so i dunno,,i'll stick with my directTV,,when charter didn't have the NFL network and the NBA channel that was enough for me to get out

Ow3n wrote:

I like my DirecTV, gone 1345 days without the service making a daily call for programming updates (no landline here). Good selection and we do not have any HBO, CineMax, TMC, or specialty premium sports channels. We do have Discovery,TLC, TCM, BBC, SciFi, all networks, etc... Approx $50. per month and with the built in TIVO on the DirecTV receiver we can record anything we want onto the hard drive whaile watching other channels and zip through commercials when we want or pause while we take a break.

What kind of internet do they offer?

Blue Man wrote:

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What kind of internet do they offer?

They offer "Hughes Net" and they may be taking over "Wild Blue" satellite internet. I use StarBand and prefer their customer service, bandwidth and caps.

Satellite Internet is the last of broadband choices you want to consider. Download speeds are very good for me, but upload speeds are equivalent to a 56K DialUp. Terrible choice if you want to use something like Skype, Vonage and similar Voice Over Internet Protocol "phones". Satellite Internet isn't good choice for online gamers either. The latency time for signal to go to satellite in orbit and return is too great. But if you do not have the option of DSL or cable internet... it sure beats DialUp

Appreciate it, I just got rid of dial-up but it wasn't to bad since I was runnin windows 79 on a three party line, I am now charter from one end of my van down by the river to the other.LMAO

I have noticed that my relatively new Toshiba laptop seems to be slower the last 2 days than when I first got up and runnin w/charter about 2 weeks ago, I may have to stop by and visit. How wide is your doorway?

google "directv consumer fraud" and you will get a feel for what to expect from directv. I am really suprised they are allowed to still be in business. I have dealt with them for TV and internet and in BOTH cases they took money out of my bank account without authorization. In addition to the missing money the hassles and bounced check fees were in the thousands.

STC is what you want. You will get NO Knoxville stations because well, who knows.
WATE nope, WVLT nope, and just recently dropped WBIR. I use to love to watch
Live @ 5.

Been a DirecTV customer for almost 10 years. My original receiver and dish still work. Yeah, if a big nasty storm comes over, you may have your television interrupted for a few minutes. But usually there's a lot of wind or lightning with such a severe storm and you probably aren't going to be watching TV.

I've heard a lot of complaints about Charter and some other in the area, DirecTV (installed myself) is the best choice and they don't jack their prices up and down every few months.

I for 1 have no choice but to use Charters services. I have a tv in the family room, 1 in living room(b/c of kids bringing over g/f's and won't allow them in sons room), 1 tv in each of the 3 kids' rooms and finally my room. Believe me I hate paying Charters prices but kind of have to at this point. I can reduce it when the kids move out(hopefully..lol).

DirectTv nor Dish can hook up all the rooms. They want me to buy additional recievers and satellite. So for someone like me, Charter is the only option.

Oh yeah, we each have laptops and set up on wireless router with 1 modem.

Just purchased a HP puter for my daughter , was told she lives in a dead zone . what type of internet service would be best for her . we tried msn dial up , darn thing took 4 hours to download . I have charter and you can imagine how I felt , just about threw the thing out the door lmao. She has dish network for tv services , guy told her cost over 200 to get internet service that way. Helpppppppppppp Please!!!! Called at&t for dsl said same thing dead zone .

I prefer Dish network over Direct due to having one receiver for 2 tv's. With direct you have to have a receiver for every tv. I pay $85 a month for 250 channels plus local channels and I have the dvr that records with both TV's( like having two TIVOs). I have DSL and phone with A,T&T at the cost of $45. I do have the medium speed DSL. You get a discount by packaging. I use my cell for long distance so I don't pay for long distance on my house phone.

Charter. Yes, they're awful expensive, but usually rock-solid. 10mbps internet is the selling point for me.

You haven't truly seen all the net has to offer until you have some bandwidth happening.

Can't speak for the phone service. I insist on keeping Ma Bell for that and my company gives me cell anyways.

Nomansland wrote:

STC is what you want. You will get NO Knoxville stations because well, who knows.
WATE nope, WVLT nope, and just recently dropped WBIR. I use to love to watch
Live @ 5.

oh and you forgot internet service with the cable daily outages, channels that have sound in the morning but not at night, ummm poor service, and more sucky ass service...This is the worst cable company there is...Trust me charter is like icing on a cake than stc' its like a stick in the mud....I have had both cable companies and would rather have charter...but as for internet i like wireless if its available to you...

dtv ...much better picture