Time Warner Sends 12 Techs To Home, But "High Speed" Cable Remains A Fantasy

By cwalters April 2, 2008

Thomas writes in to ask why Time Warner needs to send 12 different technicians to his home to get his Roadrunner speed up to the 10 mbits/sec that they promise in their advertising, as opposed to the 2.5 mbits/sec that he averages. He tallied up some of the more interesting facts from his recent experiences.

Hi,
 
I’ve been using TimeWarner’s road runner service for a few months. The bill is for a speed of 10 mbits/sec, but their tech people confessed that their server is unable to deliver more that 8 mbits/sec in the area; marketing is stretching their capabilities by 20% !
 
They sent 12 people to my house, all but one totally incompetent.
 
Here’s the story in numbers:

  Advertised speed
Real speed in dry weather
Real speed during rain
Average speed
Computers tried
Modems tried
Cables laid out
Technicians dispatched
Time on the phone		 10mbps
1 to 7 mbps
<1 mbps
2.5 mbps
4
4
1 original + 3 new sets
12
>15 hours

Here are some of the gems coming from their tech people:
 

  • Can you sign up my work sheet? My friend is waiting for me to go to lunch
  • to have high speed, you need a fixed IP
  • 3mbps is fast enough!
  • why don’t you sign up for a slower service? That way you will pay for what you have right now
  • I removed the old cable, but I don’t have the right drill to put the new one so I cannot finish today
  • this is a free world, there are other internet providers. If we haven’t managed to fix it so far, it will continue
  • I see the problem, it is the splitter! (a new splitter later) I have no idea why it doesn’t work
  • Do you know a website to check the speed?
  • it’s the router causing the problem! (I show the router is not plugged in) I have to call my supervisor to see if he knows
  • It doesn’t rain anymore, so your internet will be fine!
  • Why do you have a router if you don’t use wireless?
  • the wireless signal is slower, that’s why it’s slow (no it’s not slower and I don’t even use it)

“Time Warner is sorry” [Sibylle and Thomas]
(Photo: Getty)

Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
«
»

Comments

  1. war59312 says:
    April 3, 2008 at 4:57 am

    Took TWC 3+ years to fix my connection and cable! Was getting 128Kbps and down 95% of the time. No competition here in Columbia, SC, so they had NO reason to fix it. 3+ years later the FCC + BBB forced them to fix it. :) Bastards, I hate TWC!

  2. vox67 says:
    April 3, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    @linoth: “Also, remember bits and bytes. 7 megaBYTES is almost 10 megaBITS.”

    1 BYTE = 8 BITS
    7MB/sec = 56Mb/sec

    You fail at math.

  3. vox67 says:
    April 3, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    @linoth: “Also, remember bits and bytes. 7 megaBYTES is almost 10 megaBITS.”

    1 Byte = 8 bits
    7MB/sec = 56Mb/sec

    Unless you meant something like “mega-BITS-O-FUN!!11!1″ you officially fail at math.

    Please tell me what VoIP company you worked for so I can never do business with them.

  4. Kendra says:
    April 5, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Call their tech line, pretend to be one of the guys that wired your house.

    State that they need a uniformed guy, install new cable from the switch, check the switch, and install a signal repeater inside to boost signal.

    Problem solved (and that’s how I solved mine with Time Warner).

« Older Comments