Charter has been advertising for a month or two that their base internet speed is now 100 Mbps. But so far, I’ve consistently been seeing the same 65 Mbps speed tests that I usually see with my “60 Mbps” service. So yesterday I decided to do something about it.
I called Charter, said I had been hearing ads about this new 100 Mbps service, and asked if I needed to do something like swap out my modem (provided free by Charter) for a new one to get the higher speed. They said that no, my modem supports the higher speed, they just need to re-provision the account for the higher speed, and that once they make the change I needed to wait 12 hours and reboot my modem. This person also checked my account to confirm it was in good standing (of course it is, it’s on autopay) before offering to re-provision it. Ok, fine.
This morning I went to go buy some movie tickets online because with all the theaters here in Madison now being on reserved seating, even going to see the most random-ass movie at the most random-ass time is now an exercise in pre-planning. At least when you sign up for a Marcus Theaters rewards account, you get to buy tickets on Fandango without paying the convenience fee.
When I went to complete my purchase through Fandango, the connection dropped. Dammit. So I figured it was time to reboot the modem. It took 2 tries to reboot and get a connection, so to make sure I got the movie tickets, I redid the Fandango purchase on my phone while waiting for the modem to reboot.
I now have “100 Mbps” service that’s consistently pulling 115 Mbps. Cool. But come on Charter, if you’re going out of your way to advertise that your new base speed is 100 Mbps, why the hell do people with compatible modems have to call you so you can re-provision their accounts? These ads have been running on Pandora for at least a couple months. Why not just bump everyone?