Time Warner Sucks
Ξ December 12th, 2007 | → | ∇ 90041, 90042, 90065 |
(Things tend to move pretty slowly at Time Warner…)
One of the biggest crimes in Southern California is the Cable Monopoly. Despite the reigning free market, a single cable company has a tight stranglehold over each neighborhood in L.A. We here in the North East have the great misfortune of dealing with Time Warner. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to think the grass would be any greener if we had Comcast—I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about them too. The problem is that we don’t have the choice between Time Warner and Comcast. As such, like in the days of Ma Bell, service is crap, prices are high and nobody cares. As Lily Tomlin so aptly put it years ago, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”
Over the last 3 weeks I have been struggling, begging, and pleading to get Time Warner’s “easy” digital phone service. If you’re not familiar, it allows you to get phone service through your internet connection, providing unlimited long distance and a much cheaper price. Sounds nice.
Unfortunately, after three weeks, Time Warner has been unable to deliver the equipment (despite two tries, eventually forcing me to go to our local office on Eagle Rock Blvd. to pick it up) and then failed even more miserably at setting it up. I have spent countless hours on the phone talking to person after person, none of whom can figure out what to do, but each promising the next can.
Finally I gave up. A broken, defeated man, I called one more time to cancel my service altogether.
At the very moment I am on hold. In fact, I have been sitting here for well over an hour and a half (currently 110 minutes and 46 seconds, to be exact), I have talked to 6 different people in at least 2 countries and been on hold for approximately 90% of that time. All the while watching my cellular minutes dwindle. Every attempt to cancel the service results in the operator making more false promises of being able to fix the problem if I’ll hold just a few more minutes. I’m convinced people haven’t been waiting this long for the second coming of Christ, and I assure you, getting a working cable connection would be more miraculous.
So what’s my point? Is this just an angry rant? Well, mostly. But I would also strongly advise anyone considering Time Warner to just skip it. It has been nothing but headache after headache and I’m sure I’m not alone. During my not-so-brief visit to the home office (yes, that too sucked away an hour of my life) I heard nearly a dozen people come in and complain about very similar problems. And judging by the constant long hold times, it sure seems as if there are a lot of angry callers.
But of course, if you really want cable, you have no choice. And again, there in lies the trouble.
2 hours and counting, no help yet.
on December 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I tried pricing out HD service from Time Warner, and they are so unorganized that they didn’t even know that they offered service on my block in Highland Park. Meanwhile, I get junk mail from them every other week.
My recommendation: go satellite
on December 12th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Don’t bitch. It used to be Adelphia. They made TW look like the Second Coming.
on December 12th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Easy solution is Direct Tv with HD DVR for Tivo type of action or what I use and think is better AT&T Dishnetwork with the same. I live in Garvanza.
on December 12th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Thanks for the info. I am definitely NOT getting TW for ANYTHING. There website is atrocious for getting their Road Runner service. Terrible Marketing and follow through.
on January 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
Nothing like waking up New Years day and watching the Rose Parade. And don’t forget all the football games today! But sadly we have Time Warner…no service since 6:15 this morning! (zip code 90063). I called at 7:00 and they told me 2 hours. I’ve called every 1/2 since then and they have no update and no estimated time as to when they will be up and running. The best call was about 10 min ago when they told me they “declared and outage at 8:15″ WTF?! I’ve told them every single time I called that we’ve been out since 6:15; and TWO HOURS LATER they “declare and outage”??!! Oh, and did I mention, Time Warner is a sponsor of the Rose Parade? Yeah, that’s right, a sponsor of the Rose Parade and they can’t even show it!! What a joke! Thanks a lot Time Warner. Once again you’ve proven to be a big disappointment!
on January 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Ditto: Having read all of the above comments, I must agree. Untill recently, I worked at one of the Time Warner call centers and I used to hear similer situations all day long. I will say that 99 percent of the employees at the call centers ( at least those in the U.S.) actually do care. It,s just that this is an incredible burracracy that almost makes the old Soviet Union appear to be a modle of efficency. The techs are overbooked. The contracters don’t know what there doing. They are poorly trained and not well paid. Upper management was obsesed with maximising profits and minimizing costs, hence, the merger did not work and the system still does not work. Well, I could go on with this rant but I won’t. Suffice it to say that the situation won’t improve any time soon. If you have the oppertunity to use an alternative provider you should consider doing so ( though I understand there is no alternative in some parts of LA). If this is the case, I am truly sorry. You will be hearing that prase a lot from customer service, as that is the most customer service can do.
on January 31st, 2008 at 9:35 am
All we can do is stop buying the junk they sell.
on March 31st, 2008 at 10:46 am
We have subscribed to the Extreme feature, yielding 10 mbps… at least on paper. In reality, we have had an extremely unreliable connection paired with Time Warner’s abysmal support. Dealing with them is such a mind numbing experience words can’t describe the incompetence of their staff.
read the whole story here: http://www.sibylleandthomas.info/drupal-5.2/node/25
on June 1st, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I was actually told by the guy who installed my TWC bundle (phone, internet, and cable) that you should not pay extra for their advertised “standard” or “extreme” internet speeds because your connection speed just depends on how strong the cable signal is to your home, and that’s not something you can change. So, it’s all a scam. Luckily, I guess, I’ve had good service (no outages) for over year, but after a year my bill increased over $40 a month. Not worth it for me, so I’m canceling. I’ll live with my cell phone and just keep their internet.
on July 2nd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I switched to TW from AT&T and have to switch back because “CALL WAITING IS A REQUIRED FEATURE.” I don’t want call waiting!
#*%&
on July 16th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Time Warner has crammed more channels into the digital downstream by reducing the framerate on everything including the HD channels. I feel like I am watching an old B movie. This information comes from a mid management person at TW. I guess its no real secret, its just hard to watch, everything looks like realtime video parsed out at about 20 frames per second.
on August 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 pm
We’ve totally had it with TWC! We had an outage of phone and internet for one whole day last Monday and that was the last straw! We had worse outages before, the more recent was early this month when the cable, phone and internet just went blank..two days before the Olympics opening. We called customer service and set an appointment for Tuesday, between 9 AM to 12 Noon. Came 12noon and no tech on the door. I called customer service and was told that he was just running late and should be here within the hour. Tech arrives exactly 1:10 PM and just to tell me that we have an area intermittent outages for about 2 weeks and that he cannot do anything to fix our unit. I asked him why was the appointment set if they knew about the 2 week old problem and he said the customer service is probably new! After he left, I called customer service again and to my surprise, I was told that the tech was lying and that there wasn’t any reported outage in our area! She said that she will contact dispatch and will sent the tech back to our house. After another hour of waiting, I got a call from the dispatcher telling me that there really was an are outage and that the customer service is not fully aware of the email communications that they were circulating internally. I had to drive to the billing office about a mile away to get the real info and the clerk was apologetic and told me that she will try to resend the signal from their end and hopefully we can get a partial restoration of one of the 3 services. When I got home, I rebooted the cable and modem as instructed and finally got the phone and internet working, but the cable signals were very weak and did not stabilized until the next day. I missed work and wasted a whole day waiting and getting nothing until finally I get a simple assistance from the billing clerk. Yesterday, I called Verizon and AT&T to finally get some information on switching.
on August 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Our service was shut off and was told we hadn’t paid. I was looking at the recipt and couldn’t figure out why. Called TWC and was told they applied it to an old account. We said fine move it to the right account. We were told 2 hours tops. Call the next morning why we have no serivce and was told the “those people” at night can do what they told us. We said fine, can you they said yes.
3 days later no service still, between numerous calls we are finally in contact with an accounting supervisor. We asked her can she fix this and she stated “we don’t know how to get your money off the old account onto the correct one”. We couldn’t believe it. We said fine you see the money has been paid just turn the serivce on and figure out your screw up on you own time not ours.
Next day serivce. 4 days out and wife works from home. So can you guess what I am dedcuting from the next bill?
Unfreakn believable…
on September 23rd, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Time Warner does it again… I called earthlink.com to set up dial up internet, and at the time i was told that i’d be able to get a separate bill for my internet and my cable (as my son was paying the internet separately). one month later, Time Warner refuses to honor the original arragement, and instead took it upon themselves to combine the two bills onto one. Now, we’re having issues into the billing. how the hell is time warner staying in business?
on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
They cancelled channel 4 WIVB and I called to complain,the b!tch that answered the phone would NOT put me through a higher authority and said there was nothing I could do,except go to Radio Shack and buy a set of rabbit ears to get that channel.If thats the best they can offer,bet they lose LOTS of customers real soon.Count me among their MIA.btw - they suck !
on November 4th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
time warner sucks
on November 10th, 2008 at 11:04 am
TIME WARNER SUCKS BALLS. Period. They suck at every level in every state in the union.
I would rather have an antenna than use them.