Reader Jeffrey used to be a customer of Bright House cable. Not anymore. The company disconnected his cable today for “unsubstantiated complaints.” For 15 months, Jeffrey had been trying to get Bright House to fix whatever was wrong with his internet connection. At first they were apologetic, but when tech after tech couldn’t figure out what was wrong, things got tense.
Finally, after about 50 attempts, they just gave up. First they sent him a legal letter, alleging that his complaints are unsubstantiated and that he was hosting a commercial website, to which he responded with his own letter. Then, magically, for the past month or so, his internet has worked fine. He doesn’t want to cancel. Finally, today, the cable company arrived at Jeff’s house with a police escort and disconnected his cable:
Update 02-01-08 – Well, holy crap. They just came and disconnected my cable. They sent a uniformed officer from the Altamonte Springs PD with them. It’s unbelievable. I never threatened them. Not once. I was never violent, what did they think I’d do? I hope they paid for the protection, because it was unwarranted by all imagination.
Jeffrey says:
I’m a BrightHouse cable customer in the Orlando, FL area. After 15 months of trying to solve random Internet drop outs, they have given up and told me go away. However, until a few weeks ago, they never denied my supposedly “unsubstantiated” claims. They even credited us $500 and I have a chain of e-mails from their local division supervisor readily admitting the problem. Though in November they started getting very confrontational and frustrated. 45 days later, the letter from their lawyers came..
I’m going to roll over and die. It’s simply not worth it — if a cable monopoly wants to strong arm a little guy with a legitimate problem, so be it.. I figured I have nothing else to lose, so I posted the letter and my final rebuttal.
The ironic thing is, December 23rd, the connection has been stable. Did they fix it just after deciding I wasn’t worth it anymore?
Here’s the letter Jeffrey’s roommate got from BrightHouse’s lawyer:
And his rebuttal:
On New Years Eve 2007, my roommate Rodney received an official letter from Frank Kruppenbacher, PA – an attorney for BrightHouse networks. Attached is the letter we received and below is our rebuttal. “Unsubstantiated claims” — BrightHouse has acknowledged in many e-mails and phone calls that there was indeed a problem with my connection. It was so bad that when a technician looked up my statistics, his first and only comment was a gasp and then “wow” — and this was only a few weeks ago. They even went so far as to issue a credit for many hundreds of dollars, acknowledging the service was poor. When is the last time you’ve seen a company grant a credit or refund when a clients claims were so baseless? If we had ever thought in the last 15 months that BrightHouse would suddenly start denying a problem they spent the better part of a year fixing, we would have kept much better records. It’s a lesson learned on our part, but a chain of e-mails and a daily visit from a friendly technician who sat out in his truck on the coldest and warmest mornings verifying the problem was upstream is hardly an unsubstantiated claim. Mr. Kruppenbacher suggests there were ten visits to our home, there were no less than fifty! And they did so why? To appease techno-hypochondriac? No. They did so because they saw an alarming random drop out on their network that they knew to be abnormal and substandard. Mr. Kruppenbacher is twisting my roommate’s words. Though we don’t deny Rodney stated to the BrightHouse attorney that he was ‘satisfied’ with the service, Mr. Kruppenbacher’s letter does not acknowledge that Rodney uses the service for a few minutes a day and only in the evening hours. The evening time has always provided a more stable connection than during regular business hours. My other roommate who works for a local phone company has seen and verified the problem we’re experiencing. As someone who pays one third of the cable bill, he is not satisfied nor does he believe BrightHouse handling this situation fairly. Regarding the claim that we were running a “commercial website” from my account. This may get a little technical, but it is the only way it can be explained. The hostname of ‘jeff.iddings.us’ was setup as a dynamic DNS entry (meaning it would update every time my RoadRunner IP address changed). Though I did have port 80 (http://) open on that connection, it was NEVER hosting a site, nor was it commercial. It simply redirected anyone who tried to visit jeff.iddings.us to heliosj.iddings.us — my personal site, hosted with LayeredTech.com. At no time have I hosted content from our RR/BrightHouse cable connection, not personally or commercial. When the BrightHouse attorney mentioned the web hosting activity on December 13th, I immediately ceased forwarding that address and I have no idea why this is even a relevant matter.
And finally —the accusation that we denied access to our router and other equipment. This charge is halftrue. After the first year of plugging my laptop directly into the modem at the technician’s request and verifying the problem was not inside my home, I began denying access to my equipment. It seemed like a wild goose chase and until they started grasping at straws in mid November, I was assured by the field technician who had been informally assigned to my problem that the problem was categorically not in my home and he would never have to come back in my home to bother me again. If they again want to peruse this route, they can do so, but it’s a heck of a reversal from just a month or so ago. We want to keep BrightHouse’s service, we feel as if in most cases they provide a quality product. This neighborhood/street must be an exception. We’d like a chance to calmly and rationally document the problem so it can be presented to upper management at BrightHouse so they can see my claims and the claims of others are not ‘unsubstantiated’ just because a divisional supervisor cannot find/fix a problem. Again, thanks for listening to our problem.
Wow.
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What kind of incompetent contractors are they hiring? I had an issue such as that, it was found that it was the issue of the cable line coming in, they dropped a new cable and it was working fine.
Come on Brighthouse, you need to make this right and compensate him for your trouble. Don’t put yourself in with the category of Comcast and Time Warner.
This reminds me of my experiences with Earthlink DSL. While the techs later admitted that my line should never have even been created for distance reasons, they had no problem initially taking my money. After my support calls kept rolling in for the line that dropped at least five times every day, they decided to call the line “technically not feasible”. The supervisor explained that this meant they would refuse any future service calls.
Needless to say that same day I played the local cable company and DirecTV against each other for a far better deal. It hasn’t been perfect since switching to Adelphia/TW, but, it was certainly better.
My advice, switch and move on. You got some credit, an interesting anecdote to tell, and their business has been thoroughly smashed on Consumerist. What more could you ask for?
….something is missing.
ive had many dealings with the Orlando PD. Be it having a road closed to move a crane or whatnot. This doesnt sound like something that they would do for nothing.
I’d bet ANYTHING this guy is a scammer who calls and asks for a credit every time he has a dropped packet. No service provider drops a profitable customer.
@headon: I knew somebody would chime in pretty quickly to blame the victim. It only took eight posts this time.
After about 50 tries?? WTF?! can we get this guy a # for the BBB???
@swalve: I had been a TimeWarner then BrightHouse customer for 7 years prior to this. Not once did I ask for a refund or ‘scam’ anyone. If you read, the problem was far more serious than dropping a packet. But there’s no reason to let facts get in the way of your posts.
@Jeff: I knew the public service commission here would be useless (they seem to be a puppet of the utilities), but I’d be very surprised for them not to have some sort of franchise agreement with the city. After all, there’s probably a line item on your bill called “Local Communications Tax” — that goes to whatever agency was responsible for allowing BH to operate in your area.
On the 2nd page of my BH bill (in the smallest print on the page), it reads with very poor capitalization and grammar: “(If You Have Questions About Your Statement OR Service. Call Bright House Networks At (813) 684-6400.) City Of Tampa Office Of Cable Communications (813) 274-8217 Community ID # xxxxxxx)”
Maybe there’s something on your bill that’s similar? Even if there isn’t, it might be worth it to call up the City of Tampa office and see what they know. They might have some useful info. If that fails, I can probably dig up the right people to talk to from Lee County (Ft. Myers, FL) in the similar gov’t office.
@FLConsumer: Yes, my bill has a similar statement. And I spoke with them. They were very nice, but completely useless.
I was bluntly told that the franchise licenses issued by then were a license to conduct business. And in 2009, the local franchises in Florida are going away completely in favor of a state-wide rubber stamp. Supposedly in an effort to “foster robust competition”. Yeah, right…
Thanks for your advice though! I do feel like I exhausted my options at this point. We’re probably stuck with DSL and a satellite dish. The only other recourse we have is to sue, and that’s just something I’m not going to invest my time in. Nor am I sure I have a case. By all accounts, they have every legal right to do this — even if it is really poor customer service.
@rbb: And what the fuck do you think that is going to do? Comcast holds an extreme monopoly out here in Baltimore County. The local government, BBB, Public Works Commission, etc. have received as many complaints about Comcast as the Florida Bar receives about John Bruce Thompson, Atty. (That’s alot, for those who don’t read Kotaku or GamePolitics). How much do you think it has changed their practices? I’ll give you a hint, it’s somewhere between none and none.
Hmm–if you have to call 50 times in 15 months because of service problems–I think they did this guy a favor by dumping him. Jeff should’ve left this cable service already.
I don’t understand why Jeff wants to keep the service (just read entire post). The service sounds abnormally bad. When I made the switch to DSL, about once a month, I’d get disconnected–each time the fix was done over the phone. After a couple months I learned to fix the problem on my own (unplug, then replug router). It’s a simple fix but I have already looked at switching dsl providers.
If I had my dsl go out on average 3 times a month and each time have to wait for a service tech to come out and fix the problem, I would’ve left months ago.
Jeff, be thankful they are ending this relationship. They do not deserve your money and you deserve better.
Most problems with cable are due to poorly installed connectors, connectors without weather bushings that allow water to get inside, old splitters, or old/damaged cable – in that order. If those conditions pass inspecton, as a cable tech, I would have then tried a computer I am sure functions properly. If that didn’t work, I would have swapped the modem for a new one. If that didn’t work, I would have replaced the cable and splitters in the house leading up to the modem and the drop cable leading into the house just for the sake of argument. Then, if the problem still existed, I would have determined it to be a network problem and referred it to them. – I don’t know why that would take 50 visits. It could realistically be done within a few hours…
@antisocial:
That is pretty much what I was saying when I questioned the competence of these contractors Brighthouse seems to be getting. Though issues like that can be easily localized.
They replaced every wire, splitter, and connector in my house. They would disconnect my house from the tap (where all the neighbors are served from) and STILL see the drop outs. The technical supervisor confided in to a sales rep I had been working with that it was a ‘system problem on their network’.
And again, the stupidest thing about this is, THEY FIXED THE PROBLEM! Prior to my disconnect, I had not a single problem since December 23rd.
I had a similar problem which took my ISP 8 months to fix even after I told them the exact problem and where it was located (*I used to work for a phone company) I got it fixed by contacting consumer affairs, turns out i was right when they activated my service they didnt plug the line in properly so every time it rained it shorted.
End result $50 call out fee for them to fix (*I didnt pay) but you can add on the 8 months of CS reps they ahd to pay to deal with me and the techs thatwere continually running line checks from their office.
If you have a smart-phone with an unlimited data plan, you can use your phone as your modem.
If you’d rather not deal with the cable companies, this is actually pretty good way to go. When I travel, rather than use third-party wireless, I just turn on my windows-mobile phone and use it as my modem…it’s actually a fairly fast connection. There are also several ways to hook it up to a router, if you wanted to get a phone specifically for this, using the line as a dedicated connection.
Cut out the annoying middle-men once and for all, and all that jazz.
Help.
I am at the beginning of the same type of problem jeff started with. My connection dies every day around 11 and comes back around 3.
CS hell to call into brighthouse and talk to the indians in order to get to a level 2 tech who confirms that yes my connection is dead.
info for e-mail bomb?
direct phone #’s at home office?
name of a good lawyer?
I too live in the orlando area.