Aten Labs

Let me begin by touching on the geographic disposition of internet service providers. I’m in 4s ranch, a community inside of San Diego. The cable provider is Time Warner, the phone service is PacBell and its etched into granite. I tried getting DSL from speakeasy when I first moved here but PacBell said they couldn’t do it because “The cost of running the copper where it needs to go exceeds the money we’ll make by selling this line”. I was stuck with Time Warner.

From the beginning I got their “Business class” cable. It was 150/month for what I needed. The cablemodem would randomly drop its signal leaving me with no connection and customers that were down. It still does it. With no explanation from Time Warner.

The contract I signed with them was for 1 year. Within that year, they were contractually obligated to an SLA and some other things, and during that year it was pretty easy to get them on the phone, and get them to respond to issues I’ve had with their (terrible) service. Once that contract ran out, however – suddenly it was like pulling teeth to get my ‘accounts manager’ on the phone. When I did track down the guy he told me that it was someone elses job now and to go deal with them – but they were nowhere to be found either.

It’s now been just a tick over four years I’ve had this line with Time Warner. I should also explain that running a business out of my home, I had two accounts on the same physical line – a home television account (which I’ve cancelled) and the business internet account. The sad part is that apparently they have no system to keep track of these things and the installers really could care less because they’re practically anonymous.

A few months ago I cancelled my cable and took the leap to watching what I’d normally watch on TV, on sites like hulu. This saved me over 100/mo. I’ll describe what I did

• Paid my final bill (which was in excess of $200), bringing my balance to 0.
• Called Time Warner, Cancelled my cable. They told me that as long as I had the cable box, the billing would continue.
• I returned the cable box 3 days later.
• A month goes by
• I get another bill from time warner for 90 dollars.
• I call asking about the bill, wondering what it was, and the following conversation transpired:

I’m sorry sir, you still had basic cable, thats what the bill was for.

I don’t understand. Why did I still have basic cable?

I don’t know, sir. Its just what the system shows.

Does your system show that I called and cancelled my cable?

Yes, it does

So why didn’t you guys cancel my cable?

Sir, you could have plugged your tv into the wall and gotten basic cable, that’s why you were charged.

Why would I do that if I EXPLICITLY called to cancel my cable?

I don’t know sir, thats just what my system shows.

Isn’t basic cable something like 12 dollars a month?

Something like that, yes.

So how on earth could I amount a 90 dollar bill in a month with only basic cable, AFTER I’ve asked you to cancel my cable?

I don’t know sir, you’ll have to talk to someone else about it.

• Now I’m getting BOTH bills from Time Warner *AND* the collection company they’ve hocked me out to. The last time I sent someone to collections (yes, I’m a business owner too, and I’ve had to deal with people who don’t pay) the procedure was to take the money the collections people give you and let them keep what they collect from the victim. Time Warner wants me to pay them *AND* the collection agency? This is completely absurd and completely not acceptable.

The best part is that when I cancelled my television account with Time Warner they sent a truck out to disconnect the line – the same line I use for my business internet. This brought me down for a day and I was furious – I called them and again, they had pretty much nothing to say. I’ll be running this one up the flagpole, recording all my conversations with them and posting everything. I’m looking forward to posting audio of their representatives basically telling me “We’re bending you over the sink for 90 dollars, and we dont know why”.

EDIT: Also, I’ve been noticing that to their consumer market they’re offering ’24 megabit gaming service’. They have failed to explain why consumers that pay 20/mo can get nearly twice the bandwidth a business account can get, and adamantly refuse that its possible to do what their own ads are saying. I get these in the mail, you see. Against my will. I get ads from a company I already have products from, advertising to me WHAT I ALREADY OWN.

Tags: bad, business, cable, ignorance, internet, poor, practice, service, staff, terrible, time, uneducated, warner

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm and is filed under rants, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.