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Kansas City Intel: Time Warner Navigator Woes "Run Rampant"
December 8, 2007
Kansas City Star television critic Aaron Barnhart posted on his blog (
TV Barn) yesterday about Time Warner Navigator breakdowns.
We're not just in Kansas anymore, however.
Comcast customers have issues with their Motorola DVR's. We reported on some of the
customer unrest here. My Motorola DVR misbehaved; after months of problems and
some wrangling, Comcast swapped it out (Mine has worked flawlessly ever since.)
Tv critic Rob Owen published
a litany of Comcast woes and then recently lost his stored programming when his second Comcast DVR finally bit the dust. Rob
describes his frustration here.
Jody Doherty, vice president of public relations and community affairs for Comcast's Three Rivers Region systems, in an e-mail to Rob last December,
dismissed Rob's concerns as "isolated incidents."
But perhaps our Comcast experience pales.
Our own Linda Haugsted wrote last April (
Rough Seas for Time Warner's Navigator) about problems associated with Time Warner's set-top boxes:
Among the complaints: Set-tops spontaneously reboot after customers begin using the service and, after rebooting, subscribers lose access to most channels; some show up with oddly pixellated pictures; and digital video recorders in the set-tops stop working properly.
In Linda's piece, Time Warner Cable senior vice president of corporate communications Mark Harrad partly blamed the customer but did say codes had been revised, "fixing earlier problems."
Tell that to Aaron Barnhart who
wrote at length yesterday about on-going Time Warner troubles in the midwest. Aaron said he had to return his jinxed "Navigatored HD-DVR to Time Warner for a replacement."
Here are some snippets from Aaron's post, titled "This is an upgrade? Time Warner Navigator woes run rampant."
The trouble started in January, when Time Warner started “upgrading” people's set-top boxes with new software to control the on-screen guide, DVR recording and other features. And then there was the ongoing soap opera with the NFL Network, which wasn't Time Warner's fault (in my opinion) but still resulted in a lot of angry customers wondering why they couldn't get the Packers-Cowboys game Nov. 29....
In January I wrote that Time Warner was rolling out a new menuing system for its cable boxes. I quoted a local spokesperson who said Navigator had been developed “so we can be more responsive to our customers.” Famous last words. Since then, customers have flooded Time Warner's help lines, and my mailbox, with horror stories....
Its customers in Lincoln, Neb., also got “upgraded” this year, and the ensuing debacle led the city council there to pass a resolution calling for an investigation. The city's cable advisory board concluded that Time Warner had “beta-tested” Navigator on the unsuspecting people of Lincoln.
One Kansas City subscriber - gasp! - lost an entire season of unscreened
Battlestar Galactica episodes when Time Warner switched his HD-DVR to Navigator.
Time Warner tells Aaron that Navigator performs well with 97% of cable box models. But I really wonder about these percentages being tossed out to the press. Many of my closest friends and colleagues have encountered vexing set-top problems. Coincidence
?
C'mon cable industry - you can do better.
UPDATE: highly recommended. scroll down and
read the comments on Aaron's blog. Aaron dismantles a blog chestnut: the "get a life; it's only tv" remark.
Posted by Mary McNamara on December 8, 2007 | Comments (16)