Charter Communications Ripoff Sent bill to wrong address and now wants to put me in collection BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE Don't care about the consumer St Louis Missourri

I wanted to complain to you about the treatment I received as a customer of yours due to no fault of my own. In the month of March, I decided to install cable instead of DirecTV at one of my vacation homes in Big Bear City, CA. I have service at my principal residence. Customer service has been good in the past, so I decided to continue at this new property. When service was started, I had made it very clear that the billing address for this account was to go to: Glendale, CA 91206 because there is no U.S. Mail service in the whole city of Big Bear City. Unfortunately, the customer service rep or some other person didn't listen and started to attempt to send bills to the Big Bear address. Like I mentioned before, mail will not be sent there so it was probably sent back to you.

Today I called your customer service number and was treated like a "loser." I made a call to your company because it has been awhile and I had not received a bill. Believing something was wrong, I wanted to correct YOUR mistake. I was told that service was disconnected and that it would go into collection on June 22, 2004. When I requested that this not be done (because it is not my fault) I was put on hold for 10 minutes and the rep came back on the phone to tell me that it was "impossible" to put a stop to the collection. Because I own numerous rental property, I like to receive a bill and pay by check (for tax purposes and record keeping). When I inquired as to when I would be receiving duplicate bills I was told it would be 6-8 weeks. So to summarize; it takes 6-8 weeks to be rebilled, however, I'll be put into collection on June 22, 2004. I chose to go out of my comfort range and pay by electronic check over the phone. After taking care of this matter with your customer service rep I asked to be transfered to a supervisor (to complain about the bad service). I waited 22 minutes before a supervisor came on and in a non-chalant tone gave me your St. Louis, MI corporate address.

My account is now taken care of and paid. However, the treatment and service I received convinced me that Charter Communications does not appreciate my business. Currently, I will not be continuing service with your company and will call DirecTV instead (should of been my first choice). You do not have systems in in place to accomodate mistakes your company makes which hurt the consumer. I may only be one household now, but I will let everyone I know (personal and business circles) of the subpar service I received.

John
Big Bear City and Glendale, California
U.S.A.