wonder if Readmore books is still around. we had this cable in the late 90's. But whoever ran it in Wausau, ran the Readmore bookstore in that area.

Charter's financial difficulties were not hard to predict. For at least the past two years, Charter has been rated the WORST broadband company in the United States by PC World magazine. The best one, incidentally, is Verizon FIOS which stood alone at the top of the heap in 2008 and was tied for 1st with Time-Warner for 1st in 2007. I have subscribed to Charter's high-speed cable (which, not surprisingly, is rated at 5 MB/sec download speed vs Time-Warner's 6 MB/sec) and experience at least one service drop of at least an hour's duration at least once every couple of months. Charter's 'spam filtering' is entirely too aggressive, occasionally misidentifying articles from the Wall Street Journal Online that I'm forwarding to about 25 people as spam!

I am eagerly awaiting Verizon FIOS availability in my service area (alas, already a year behind their estimated schedule). I have friends and relatives who already have Verizon FIOS service and are fully satisfied with it. I look forward to joining them. I don't have experience with their TV service as I subscribe to DirecTV. When Verizon FIOS becomes available, I fully expect to subscribe to the entire bundle of services they offer.

Considering the lack of success of all of Paul Allen's ventures, his descriptive nickname "The Accidental Billionaire" really fits. If he wasn't fortunate enough to be Bill Gates' pal, I think that based on his demonstrated abilities and business judgement, he might be in business running a hot dog stand.

I have nothing good to say about the cable side of the Charter business at least as far as how billing and pricing works. Their HD cable service is great but beyond that they are money hungry pigs. They tried raising my rates during my "guaranteed" 12 month promotion. I had to fight tooth and nail to get credits for that. After the promotion was over, they continued to raise my cable rates monthly. In about 4 months, my rates were raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 per month. In the end I was paying around $150/mo for HD cable and VOIP telephone. I begged them to stop raising my rates. I begged for another promotion. They wouldn't give it to me. I spent countless hours fighting them on the phone over billing questions on raised pricing, hidden fees, taxes, all that crap. They don't budge unless you threaten to cancel. Finally I had enough and I fired them as my cable TV provider. I installed DirecTV. Unfortunately, Charter is one of the only providers in our area so I had to keep them for their terribly overpriced broadband (internet). I'm also still paying ~$45/mo. for their VOIP still. The promotion ran out on that too. I'm considering getting rid of their phone service. Charter now calls me back trying to get me on their cable program again. Never again. They can rot in hell. I don't feel a bit sorry for them. For what they gouge their customers for, they should be rolling in $. Sounds like they squandered it. Overpaid execs. I'm sure. Who knows what else. Who cares.

When you call what they ludicrously call their 'Customer Service', ask for your call to be transferred to the 'Retention Office'. The people there are authorized to do virtually anything to keep you as a customer. In my case, I have been receiving the 'introductory rate' of $29.99/mo for their 5 MB / 512 KB service for which they normally charge (the unwary) $61.99/mo.

Neil Smit you should be FIRED!!!! You have been running charter since 05 and look where you have taken them??? ANYONE can make money in an up market.. it's the down market that you show you are worth the money!!

Damn my DOG make money in the stock market until 07...

Bonus time

Shame it's not comcast.....

Hey, if they cannot responsibly run their business, why not?

Oh, right, because businesses aren't allowed to fail anymore... ;)

I agree with your sentiment. This silly idea that company A is to big to fail is going to end up bankrupting our country.

It's not like there aren't other companies out there that we could have spread the AIG customer base to. keeping them around appears to me to be nothing more than an way to funnel money form one sector to another and obviously, as a scapegoat.

Let's blame one company for the failure of the economy (so people don't think to ask or research what *really* happened)...yeah...that's brilliant.

What amazes me is that people are falling for it...in droves.

First time I've agreed with PC in months. But you hit that one straight.
AIG will launder the money then be parted out and will vanish leaving only a useful "It was their fault" behind.
Wall Street will have free access to the US Treasury, nothing will be done to regulate financial firms, and the US will drop ever closer to third world status.

"and the US will drop ever closer to third world status."

Right..... not.

I'm not really a fan of Charter. My wife's business uses them and I have several friends with Charter service in their homes. The speed and responsiveness of connection seems much slower than my Comcast connection at home. I am a firm believer in YMMV, but I've had too many experiences that make m think that because Charter has an exclusivity agreement with the local town that they have no incentive to provide equal or better service than the rural Comcast line that edges up to their territory. Service call response time and down time are also longer on the Charter side of the line.

Sorry to see Charter in bankruptcy, but I'm hoping they at least provide better service coming out of it.