Consumers Take Cable Complaints Public
Gone forever are the days when consumers fume and suffer in silence in the face of unreliable service. Now, instead of just telling the person next to them squeezing the tomatoes in the produce department, they vent about their cable customer service complaints in the press and on the Internet.
Take Joe Salerno of Mooresville, N.C. He thinks that if he pays $139.82 a month for telecommunications services, he should get $139.82 a month worth of services, available whenever he chooses to use them.
But that’s not the case in his suburban neighborhood in the Charlotte, N.C. area, he told me in an interview. The retiree said his telecommunications services, provided now by Time Warner Cable, have gone out repeatedly in the last year, sometimes for days at a time. He got some improvement from the company but only after he repeated his complaints to the Charlotte Observer.
“Then, a small army of trucks showed up and they changed out modules and amplifiers,” he said. “But the problems won’t go away” for good, he noted, because local cable officials have said that the plant serving his home, which Time Warner acquired from Adelphia Communications during its bankruptcy liquidation, is in dire need of an upgrade.
Salerno’s in a tough spot: his city is part of a regional consortium that exercised its right of first refusal to buy the local system instead of letting it become part of Time Warner. The consortium is in the process of that purchase and city officials vow a complete upgrade of the plant. That’s contributed to Time Warner’s upgrade delay, for until one month ago the company did not know if it would be the ultimate owner of the local system. But now, no one can tell Salerno if he will ultimately be served by the new municipal provider, or Time Warner.
His neighbors are reacting to the poor service by dropping cable in favor of slower, but reliable, digital-subscriber line services or direct-broadcast satellite, he related.
“But it shouldn’t be like that. The solution is to make the company responsible for what it’s supposed to do – fix it!” he said.
Time Warner officials intend to upgrade the plant but can’t give Salerno any information on when that might happen.
“At this point, I’d be happy with a start date,” he said. He’s frustrated with the fact that consumers a few miles away in Charlotte, paying the same amount, get reliable service and cutting-edge products like on-demand programming.
He’s so irked he’s trying to get other residents to form a committee on the cable outages, a group which will take its complaints to state utility regulators.
“I’m hoping they will put a little pressure on (Time Warner),” he said.
Got brickbats or praise for a telecommunications provider? Tell me about it.
JOSHUA commented:
I LIVE IN WACO TEXAS----I have had Time Warner Cable since the end of January and have had the most horrible service I think I could ever have. I have had to take my cable boxes back to the local office multiple times and have had 2 service calls to my residence. Everytime I take my boxes back, my cable works fine for about 2 weeks, but shortly later I start missing channels. After each service call I have been told that my cable lines are fine and that it is the box. I can not understand why it has to come to me writing this letter to get some help on this matter. Not only do I feel like I'm already paying too much for service, I'm not happy at all with the service I'm paying for. The only reason I stay with Time Warner is because they are the only service provider that services my town home. I feel that I have been treated unfairly and I don't plan on stopping my complaints until something has been done to repair my service COMPLETELY! I will post this message on every blog, website, customer review site that I can find.
Larvin commented:
I called to terminate TW internet cable effective Oct 2008, my lease expired that month. They are still billing me for service. I call every month since November and am told everything will be corrected. Now they want to bill me for their modem. I don't have it, it is theirs and I am not payming $50 for it. Rip off for sure. Every 100,000 disconnects x $50 is $5,000,000 to TW and this is criminal.
trina commented:
Time Warner in Sta Mnica, Ca is THE WORSE. Ever since they took over we have constant black outs, lack of service completely, loss of picture ,sounds,and my favorite: a radio station program coming on on the sound portion of a tv show,we have called 4 or 5 times and asked them to fix the problem with the sound as it goes on ,off ,loud ,or not on at all, and they cant do a thing , we are cancelling , hopefully we can find a better service for our area where we get what we pay for..they suck
Pee Oed!!! commented:
Can somebody please tell me who we complain to when we have no other choice of cable service in our area, and when they decide they are changing to digital, we won't be able to get any channels without a cable box? None, absolutely none. I can't stand that we have to pay extra, on top of an already ridiculous monthly bill, just because our provider feels like not allowing anyone to view anything without finding a way to charge us even more. I can't tell you how much this angers me. This can't be legal. And they'll probably tell us that if we don't like it, we can get satellite tv. We don't want satellite tv. Please, can anyone tell me who to speak to, to investigate the practices my cable provider is doing?
Penny commented:
I live in Ohio & they just changed the format for the "information highway" on digital cable.......it SUCKS!!! I liked it much better the way it was. It takes too long to change channels, the info about the program is a joke. The old way I knew what the movie was, who was in it, repeat show or not, etc. New format...one line about the movie. What are they thinking....."let's lose some more customers to the dish".....I am looking into it. Thanks :@)
Chris commented:
Dear Mr. : Thank you for your email. We always appreciate the opportunity to respond to our customers. You would need an HD converter to be able to get an HD signal from our service. I hope that this information is helpful to you. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you. The cornerstone of our philosophy has always been to provide "excellence in customer service" and we will continue to provide the high quality of service you expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable. Sincerely, Aaron Your On-Line Time Warner Cable Representative Original Message Follows: ------------------------ City: Cuyahoga Falls State: OH ZIP: 44221 Category 1: Cable Category 2: HDTV Comments: Dear Steven Fry, Please confirm - recently the HD stations stopped working - since I have the lowest tier for cable - (I don't want any box ever) Is there any other option to receiving HD stations without the annoying box and extra charge for more stations(digital cable)? If I'm forced to buy an antenna to receive HD stations you will lose my business? Thank you Chris
Lloyd Pritchett commented:
I am probably in the vast minority,but I am very pleased with my cable/phone company.I live in a small town (Ellijay) in north Ga.about 80 miles north of Atlanta.Our local cable co. is ETC Cable (they also own the phone company). They have about 20,000 customers in north Ga./se Tn.It is a family owned company with all local employees.When we have a problem we don't have to talk to someone in Taiwan or India.Usually a problem call has someone at your house within 2 hours or less.If you are not home they call back to verify that the problem is fixed even on weekends.So not all teecommunication companies are not a pain! thanks,Lloyd Pritchett
