Monday, August 20, 2007

Charter Ranks Lowest in Customer Satisfaction

In the recently released J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Residential Cable/Satellite Satisfaction Study, Charter Communications ranked lowest in customer satisfaction in the North Central region that includes Wisconsin.

For any of you that has ever to deal with Charter, this comes as no surprise. Their prices are ridiculously high, their technical support is a joke and their service is spotty at best (both Internet and cable). To be fair, most cable companies have similar flaws, but Charter is always the worst.

This may be the No. 1 reason why the legislation should allow the cable bill to pass: So that consumers get more choice, instead of being stuck in a monopolistic setting.

WOW!, which operates in areas of Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, led the North Central region for the second straight year, scoring 729 on the 1,000-point scale, 21 points above last year. DirecTV was second with 661, followed by DISH Network at 640, Insight at 616, Time Warner Cable at 606, Bright House at 580, Comcast at 572 and Charter at a paltry 562.

The study is based on six factors -- performance and reliability; customer service; cost of service; image; billing; and offerings and promotions -- and on responses from 17,033 U.S. households.

No wonder Charter isn't financially sound.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Mayor's Shortsightedness

Many Madison residents know Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's ideal city doesn't work with reality. Examples:

1. Building Madison's Central Park. It's nice to fix up that desolate area, but the cost of having the train tracks moved, plus the fact that every other park in the city needs dire maintenance, makes this a bad use of money.
2. Before the section of East Washington Avenue closest to the Capitol went under construction, Mayor Dave wanted the streets narrowed (i.e. fewer lanes). Are you fucking kidding? Has he ever seen all the traffic on that street?
3. The management of the Overture Center and Goodman Pool has been a joke.
4. His stubborness for the trolley almost made us lose our chance for federal funding for light rail.

The new item-du-jour is the mayor's comments on ATC's proposed power line route in Dane County. ATC's top choice is along the Beltline, to which the mayor responded, "If we build (the transmission line) along the Beltline and we need to expand the Beltline but we can't ... that's going to create more pressure for a new southerly Beltline. Then the question becomes: would you rather have a power line along that route or a new six-lane highway?"

Once again, he juxtaposes an issue to mask another. Mayor Dave would NEVER allow the Beltline to expand to six lanes because he's against cars and urban sprawl. Plus, how the hell could the Beltline be expanded anyways? The mayor's shortsightedeness is atrocious. Look at the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the levees in New Orleans. Will it take a brown out of Dane County for him to realize we need these lines, and that the Beltline poses the least disturbance to homeowners' properties?