Charter Communications, Melanie Committed Credit Card Fraud Asheville, Or The 1-866-407-6264 Nationwide

I have had been a loyal Charter Communications patron for 9 years now so it came as a shock to me when I looked at my bank statement on May 4, 2009 only to see that Charter had auto-debited $196.00 from my checking account without my authorization. When I called to ask what had happened I was told that it was negligence on someone on the staff's part, and debited the money back into my account 4 days later. This did me no good seeing as I did not have sufficient funds in my account and was charged a $34.00 overdraft fee from my bank. That money that was in MY bank account was meant to go towards a late power bill payment which because of Charter's negligence was not able to be paid in full, and my power was cut off for 8 days. I ended up having to py $640.00 to have my power turned back on beause after 7 days of not paying a late bill, I was required to start an entirely new account with my power company and was charged an additional $372.00 for a deposit and reconnection fee. When I called Charter to explain what had happened and told them that they should be responsible for this extra fee I had to pay because of THEM, Melanie told me " We don't do that. If you had a check bounce then we could debit your account for that, but we don't do that." She then tried to say that it was my bank's fault for allowing a transaction that was not authorized to go through...too bad I have alredy spoken to my representative at my bank and he told me that it was negligence on CHARTERS behalf and that I should go into a Charter office to speak with a manager. I did that and was THEN told that they could not help me; that I needed to call the same 1-866 number. After that conversation ended with Melanie, she phoned me back not 4 minutes later and I told her that I would speak with my attorney to talk about my options as far as a company stealing money from my account and not taking responsibility for it. She then hung up on me. Yes, she HUNG UP on me. I tried to call her number back for 4 hours and it was busy. They now have cut off my cable and today alone I have received 6 harrassing phone calls to pay my bill. Is this how paying customers are supposed to be treated???? I think not.
I will NEVER use Charter ever again-I am bringing in my cable box tomorrow and switching to Direct TV. I am more than appauled with the service I have received with this company; they are rude and no one seems to know what they are talking about.

Sarah Gee
Ridgecrest, North Carolina
U.S.A.