Charter Won't Provide Details on M-Card?

2992 Views 9 Replies 9 Participants Last post by GreenMonkey, May 3, 2011

hospadam

Discussion Starter · Apr 27, 2011

I've been a Tivo user in the past, but when we moved 2 years ago... cable wasn't available in my subdivision. I've been on DirecTV for those two years. Now that my contract is up, I'm able to move back Charter (our local cableco). My wife and I have both tried calling Charter and pricing out the relative options. We asked them for two prices. One was similar to our current setup (two HD DVRs). Then, we asked them for the price of two M-Cards. I was trying to weigh the overall cost of getting two Tivos.

Ultimately - the CSR wouldn't give us prices on the M-Cards! I called back a second time, and received similar customer service. Has anyone run into this before... and what should I do? I don't want to place the order, without knowing what it will cost...

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nrc

· #2 · Apr 27, 2011

They are required by the FCC to provide you with a cableCard if your request one. They're also required to have pricing publicly available. Check their web site, it should be there.

Also be sure to complain to the FCC.
https://esupport.fcc.gov/ccmsforms/form2000.action?form_type=2000E

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mearlus

· #3 · Apr 27, 2011

I don't have my Charter bill handy but I think my cablecards are $1.50/month. You also get a Tuning Adapter (at least in our area) for each cablecard you have.

I'd suggest querying the folks in their online support team. They've been extremely helpful to me through their Twitter accounts:
http://myaccount.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=2260

If you have a twitter account just send out a message and include #charter or @charter and they usually get back to you fairly quick.

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mattack

· #4 · Apr 28, 2011

The first cablecard will be 'free' in place of a cable box. The second cable card would be at most a few bucks but you might ALSO have to pay an extra digital outlet fee. It *still* may be cheaper than using their (likely inferior) boxes.. but can be more expensive than you'd expect.

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Dan203

· #5 · Apr 28, 2011

I have 5 CableCARDs*, and a SD cable box, through Charter. The box is counted toward my digital plan, but for some reason they charge me $5/mo for an "HD Equipment Upgrade" even though it's only SD. (I should ask about that) The 5 CableCARDs are listed at $2/ea with no additional outlet charge.

Dan

* I have 2 S-Cards each in 2 S3 units and one M-Card in a Premiere

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Stuxnet

· #6 · Apr 28, 2011

The $5 "HD Equipment Upgrade" is an error as you have your own HD equipment (TiVo). Hopefully you can get them to retro the charge, or discount your current service, or throw in a premium channel.

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SpiritualPoet

· #7 · Apr 29, 2011

In my town, cablecards are $1.99 each per month. There is no tuning adaptor offered here as apparently none is needed here. The price is for a dual card to enable my Series 3 HD TiVo machine to record two programs simultaneously. There is a "Truck Roll" Charge of around $30-$35 to set up the card. (I was charged this in August, 2010).

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Stuxnet

· #8 · Apr 29, 2011

SpiritualPoet said:
In my town, cablecards are $1.99 each per month. There is no tuning adaptor offered here as apparently none is needed here. The price is for a dual card to enable my Series 3 HD TiVo machine to record two programs simultaneously. There is a "Truck Roll" Charge of around $30-$35 to set up the card. (I was charged this in August, 2010).

If you sign a 2-yr contract, you can negotiate away the truck roll fee.

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brettatk

· #9 · May 2, 2011

When I had Charter I was charged $2 per cablecard. Definitely ask about having the truck roll fee waived. I was able to do that a couple of times. And good luck. Charter is the worst company I've ever dealt with. I'm 100% OTA now and wouldn't go back to Charter if they offered it to me for free.

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GreenMonkey

· #10 · May 3, 2011

Last I knew it was $1.50 or $2 per card. They promised to bring me 1 M-card and brought 2 s-cards instead. Luckily they were DOA...he had to go back...and brought back an M-card.

We actually only use one cablecard on two tivos (one of them is downstairs with Lifetime service - with a flaky HDMI port and is somewhat unreliable / reboot / HDD corruption prone).

The downstairs one now has the original 160GB drive in it. We use it to record analog cable. Since it's a little unreliable we keep non-critical recordings on it.

The upstairs one has a 500gb and has the cablecard. We use it for HD locals and such. And we transfer stuff back and forth if needed.

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