Charter is more dead than "live"

I get the notification through email that I have "earned" Charter "Live it" points, or some such nonsense. I can "redeem" these points for discounts and "unbelievable" rewards.

When I click on the link it takes me to the redemption center where everything is "sold out". My email is dated may 11, 2009 and here it is the 12th and all of the prizes are "sold out". Riiiiight. I sure do believe those items were all available in the first place.

In the second place, the "unbelievable" rewards? They are BOGUS! I have accumulated 4,666 points by spending $113 a month for cable and internet. We do NOT have any movie channels as part of this deal! We do not "bundle" our phone in because we get TWO lines from Vonnage for the same price that Charter is charging for one. Yeah, we need two for a variety of reasons. But if we were only getting one line it would be 17.99 from Vonnage and it is $35 from Charter ($25 for the first six months, but even then when I talked to Charter about that supposed special it was only for new Charter customers NOT pre-existing ones).

With my 4,666 accumulated points I look through the redemption pages of "sold out" items and they are asking for 24,800 points for a Wilson BASKETBALL!! They want 11,000 points for a barbeque set (a pair of tongs and a spatula)! Riiiight, sold out! How many did they have at the beginning, four? I actually find it hard to believe that someone has saved up a year's worth of points to spend them on a barbeque set that you can buy at Deals Only (or any dollar store or Walmart) for $9.99, maximum.

I shunned the ridiculous and went for the ludicrous. I spent my points on the supposed entries into the sweepstakes. I should have seen how many points each was first. As it was I saw three sweepstakes and when the first one said that it would cost 1,000 points assumed the others were the same and redeemed for one, a chance to win "32GB iPod® Touch, Bose® SoundDock® portable music system, and $200 iTunes gift card."

For 2,000 points I could go for either the " Panasonic Plasma HDTV, one (1) Phillips Home Theater System, and one (1) Sony Playstation 3 with Motorstorm and Wireless Controllers" or One day of surfing lessons for two at Billabong Surf Camp in Manhattan Beach, CA; Round-trip coach air transportation for two to Los Angeles from a major metropolitan airport in the continental U.S. (travel June 12-14, 2009); two nights hotel accommodations; $250 American Express® gift card. I went for the home entertainment center.

I really don't like Charter. I wish we had more choices for internet and cable. We have either Charter or Satellite. Having tried both, Charter is only slightly better and that is only because we live in a bit of a dip of land which makes finding a good line of sight for the sattelite difficult on rainy days when there is cloud cover. Our friends on Green Mountain have had NO difficulties getting their internet off the satellite, although they have had problems with bandwidth.

Bah, humbug on Charter.