I was finally put in contact with Charter's corporate office.
Soon after,
another Charter representative from my local office called me and
he wanted
to send out their chief tech to inspect the audio problem. Keep
in mind that
this would have been the third time a tech would have I told them
to save
their time and just figure out what was wrong with the audio
coming out of
their offices. He finally relented and alerted the engineers to
what I was
saying. And what do you know, the problem got fixed. It only took
eight days
after I first reported the problem to have even someone consider
the fact
that the problem might be a Charter malfunction. So much time
wasted.

--

David Farber
Los Osos, CA
***
I had a similar experience except this time with the power
company. I check my voltage regularly and several months ago, it
started varying widely over a day. It could go as high as 134
volts at times and then drop back to 122 or so. I called the
power company and they said they would check it out. They came
over and measured 124 volts, said it was in tolerance, and left.
I let it go for a few days and called again when the voltage was
132 volts. I mentioned that the voltage can change hour to hour
by 10 volts and that I knew that I did not have a high impedance
neutral since it was within a volt on each side. They came out
again and by then the voltage was back to 124. They tested the
neutral and it was fine and again 124 was in tolerance. Over the
next several days I created plots of the voltage over time. One
day the voltage seemed to waver between 128 and 132 volts for
several hours. I called again and said I have plots of the
voltage, but they insisted that THEY have to measure the voltage.
I checked the voltage while still on the phone and I said come
out now since I was reading 130. An hour later, they came and
measured 128 and said I had a problem. It was traced to a faulty
capacitor bank on the distribution feeder An actual engineer
called later to explain the situation and asked me to immediately
report future problems. For the last week the voltage has been
stable between 118 and 121. The company could have saved several
truck rolls if they just believed me or at least put a recording
voltmeter on the line. I think there is a built in assumption
that the entire public is technically illiterate and they treat
everyone accordingly.

David