Well, as of today, we now have DirecTV set-up for our television, and AT&T set-up for our telephone & internet (via DSL). Before the weekend we had Charter Communications, the local cable company, set-up for all of these. This means we have a new-new phone number to pass along to all of you...

Our new phone # is: (678) 482-8425

Why the change? Let's just say we had a less-than-stellar installation experience with Charter. Let me count the ways...

• It took an afternoon's work before we moved to find out all of the information I needed about Charter's package offerings via their website. The distinction between all their packages wasn't very clear, nor were their channel listings. Add to that the fact that they offer some form of resell opportunity for businesses (which you can see by searching for "charter cable" on Google), and it all adds up to a lot of effort to find what I was looking for.
• I decided to go the online sign-up route, both because of the special rates/deals they offered when you ordered online & because I'm just an online sort of guy. Took about 10 minutes to choose all the options & fill in all the blanks. When I was done it informed me to call a certain # to set-up an installation date/time. What transpired after that was being on hold for a good 30-45 minutes and having to go back through every sign-up step & had previously done online.
• Charter sub-contracts their installations to an installation service here. Our installer acted like he didn't want to be there and would hardly make eye contact with us.
• He drilled into & mounted the cable modem on the wainscoting in the room without asking us first (which I had to unmount & repair).
• He failed to install cable outlets in every room we asked him to & which he said he would do.
• Our telephone (via Charter) was inconsistent & hardly worked. Our existing wireless phones mysteriously wouldn't work which forced us to buy new ones (we chalked it up to moving loss, but after AT&T hooked us up we realized our phones were just fine).
• When I called the service # the installer gave me he tried to wiggle out of responsibility for our problems.

I called Charter after only 3 days and canceled - all for reasons that, besides the bad phone install, really didn't have anything to do with their service. Just proves the importance of putting your best foot forward.

A sidenote: AT&T had our new line hooked up within hours of my call; the DirecTV guy came out Saturday and got us hooked up - giving us more than we thought we were getting (he was able to install in more locations than they told me on the phone) and did a knock-out job on the professional installation. I have no reason to doubt that the DSL will work flawlessly as well (had DSL for three years & never had an issue).