DirectTV isn't any better. I had the worst customer experience ever with them yesterday. They really went down hill. DO NOT use DirectTV if you can avoid them, or @ least if you DO use them hope you never have to call customer service.

...Or did she?

I feel like if she did, she wouldn't be on such a rampage. but yeah, snoopblog, that was my first thought.

sixty year old english teacher or not.

have the charges stopped coming?

So I don't get it. English teachers don't watch porn, or 60 year olds don't watch porn? Because I'm trying to figure out what her being a 60 year old english teacher has to do with the price of tea in china. As someone who watches a lot of porn, I can assure you, 60 year olds, and most likely english teachers watch porn. But I can totally see why because she is an 60 year old AND an english teacher I can totally see how that right there is evidence enough that she doesn't watch porn.

Not that I think she really did order it because I don't.

She should check her closets. There may be someone living on the top shelf.

I think maybe the point in saying she was a teacher was to emphasize that she was probably not even home between like 7AM-4PM. Maybe they can check the times of when these movies were ordered? If she was at work and no one else was home, it obviously wasn't her.

Windows without blinds, and neighbor kids with identical remotes come to mind. I hear "while at work" and have to wonder.

Is there any correlation with orders at a time she and her husband were not at home?

The fact that her husband is outside of the state doesn't help her case much...

That being said, she's a teacher. Anyone with the same remote and line of site from a window can turn on your cable box, and assuming they could see your TV, program the remote to turn it on. You turn the TV on, mute it, then turn on the cable. From there, it's a simple matter of ordering movies. I'm guessing as a 60 year old teacher, she's teaching kids in jr high to high school, who are nasty little bastards, and if they ever saw "Dirty Old Men", could come up with the same idea. My recommendation is to point the TV away from a window, and put the PIN code on ordering movies.

Either that, or she has a Japanese chick living in her closet who digs porn. [gizmodo.com]

@pitawg: My thoughts too, how many neighbors over the years have gotten keys "just in case?" How many of those neighbors have college aged kids that came home 3-4 weeks before local school dismissed for the summer?

@Git Em SteveDave has a crush on the Swedes: don't they have security codes that you would have to know and enter on those things? And one would have to think if she could somehow be responsible for the porn if it was happening through the window by neighbor kids. If it was your own kid doing it behind your back, I'd think you would be responsible for the charges. I could go either way...

@snoop-blog: @snoop-blog: @Git Em SteveDave has a crush on the Swedes: Does TW even offer porn that would appeal to women? I bet a quick look at the titles of these movies she allegedly ordered would quickly put to rest the idea that she would want to order this crap.

Well this story may explain the sudden findings of crumpled tissues around the house...

I think she got a taste for the "forbidden fruit" and liked it.

i read somewhere that " a cheetah can't change its spots but, if you join the spots together you get a very convincing Tiger."

GRRRRRR baby, GRRRRRR!!

@Dobernala: Yes, there is a lot of Normal Porn (girl on guy) but there is also tons of Gay porn for both sides!

@Dobernala: I don't think anyone really believes she ordered the porn...

...I think we just want to believe that when we're 60, we will.

Time Warner should have to use security codes or a credit card number each time porn is ordered. If they don't, the burden is on them to eat the costs, as far as I'm concerned. Her next step should be an EECB with a threat to contact the media. The media would love the angle of "old spinster having porno trouble", especially since morality is kind of a hot button for a lot of local news outlets.

And I bet those movies sucked... about ten years ago I ordered cable porn movies at a hotel in Reno.. never again.

Maybe someone is using her cable connection or has a remote that works with her cable box too. Imagine your ordering cable extras for yourself and inadvertantly ordering them for your neighber too.

@B1663R: There's a difference between lesbian porn and girl/girl porn. BIIIIG difference, trust me. =p

yeah I'm not buying this at all. At age 60, you should have such a massive collection of porn already, that you don't need to order movies.

A kid in my neighbourhood was caught breaking into houses and ordering porn and calling 976 numbers. Maybe that is what happened here. He found a house that nobody was every home and started ordering.

She should look to see if all the movies ordered were while she was out of the house.

Next step should NOT be an EECB.

I'll just keep saying this on every time warner post:

Time Warner cares about their BBB rating. They will work with you very well once the BBB steps in.

I know this from experience.

Do not further dilute the strength of the EECB by using it when unnecessary.

One thing that needs to be said: Cable companies get a LOT of people trying to avoid paying for pay-per-view (especially porn) that they really viewed themselves. I imagine that the front line at TW Cable is assuming that this case is just one of the many.

I used to work for one of the back-end providers of pay per view equipment (we made the software and equipment that handled pay per view - billing, talking to the box, transmitting the video, etc). We used to get regular calls from a cable company to look at one system or another because a customer complained that they never ordered that porn. We never found an instance where it was our equipment. Frankly, I think they very seldom found cases where it was anything except a teenager in the house (who would swear up and down that they'd never order such a thing, oh no, not me).

If you can get high enough in the heirarchy, I would hope they would be able to fix it - especially if you can prove you were not home while some of the movies were being 'watched'.

Nancy also needs to try to get them to cut off at least the porn from her account. If she doesn't use pay per view at all, get them to turn that off altogether. If you don't have access to the service, then it's a little hard for them to claim you used the service.

Nancy might also want to get them to confirm that the cable box they have associated with her account is in fact the one that's in her house. It's far from impossible for them to have gotten a box on the wrong account.

As someone who watches a lot of porn, I can assure you, 60 year olds, and most likely english teachers watch porn.

Sure they do, if they're men. Some younger women will watch porn, but they mostly do it with guys, and occasionally -- nowhere near the levels men do. That's because male sexuality is far more visually-driven than female sexuality (and I say that as somebody who's written -- don't laugh -- scholarly articles for Hustler on the topic).

P.S. Incidentally, if you want to be exploited as a writer, write for a women's magazine. Hustler, which I write for occasionally, and Penthouse, which my late friend Cathy Seipp used to write for, pay well and pay fast.

@Amy Alkon: Could you please explain that to my girlfriend? She has a very hard time understanding it when I explain it to her.

Also, I know at least a few women who watch porn for their own enjoyment. They're the minority, but don't treat it like it's unheard of.

May 8 was a school day. If the movie charges occurred during school hours perhaps she could get a statement from the principal that he was at work and could not have ordered the movies. The 10th was a Saturday though.
17 movies would take a big chunk out of a day - were they all ordered at once or one after another?
Good luck with this mess.

How has nobody commented on the awesome picture that accompanies this story? It's pretty great.

Here's the breakdown: There are only 4 possibilities...

1. Someone stood outside her window and ordered the movies.
2. If she lives in an apartment building, the maintenance crew or someone else illegally gained access to her apartment.
3. The serial number of the equipment listed on her account isn't actually the box she has in her home
4. A guest or family member actually did order the movies and won't admit it to her

I cannot stress this enough: PUT A PIN ON EVERY SINGLE BOX IN YOUR HOME.

You need to escalate. Get legal if you have to. I don't know about Time Warner, but we had an internal group specifically tasked with handling PPV disputes.

I worked for several months on a project for a cable company that handled THOUSANDS of customers disputing $100s of dollars of porn charges on their bill... and most of the time, the charges absolutely 100% were ordered from their house and the customers later admitted that their son/husband/relative/guest did order them. The problem is that so many people blatantly lie to customer service to try to get PPV charges dropped, that it's impossible for ANY cable company to say "Oh, you didn't order it? Okie-doke. No problem, I'll just credit you $1000.00. Thanks for calling!" No one is going to credit that much money just on your word and your age. And chances are that the charges are legit. You would be AMAZED at how often people, especially teenagers, order adult movies back-to-back.

Any cable company worth its salt will be able to research the issue with some depth and

And despite what you may want to believe, there is NO age limit to being interested in sex. I've had 60-70 year old women admit watching adult movies to me... so the age thing has NOTHING to do with it.

2:00 "Afro Whores", 3:30 "Afro Whores", 5:00 "Afro Whores"... It says in the morning you watched "The Grinch" for ten minutes, then switched back over to "Afro Whores".

Hello, Mrs Robinson!

Is it possible some ne'er do good cable tech could have hacked into her connection, redirected it elsewhere and ordered the movies themselves?

I don't know how secure digital cable is.

@snoop-blog: Men are more hunter/gatherer, visual oriented. We trend towards watching things that catch our attention that moment. Women, not so much, and in general don't watch much porn. Especially sixty-ish ones. And English teachers, I'd bet trend smaller too (but those Art History teachers: whores!)
A Venn diagram of People Who Watch 17 Porns/day, and women and sixty-year-olds and English teachers and Consumerist tip contributors* would be a lonely, lonely diagram.

If it was a sixteen-year-old water polo team kid making the same claim, on the other hand: hang him, hang him high.

* I made that last part up. Hi Mom!

I wonder if it was a former student of hers that she failed or caused to be held back that did it.

She should put a block on ordering premium services on her account. Then when another charge shows up she's got them.

@dragonfire1481: It's not really possible with digital equipment. At least for the cable company I worked with, PPV is a two-way ordering system which requires a serialized cable box to initiate an order. Even if someone had an extra box connected to your cable lines, it wouldn't be charged to your account unless the serial number of that box were also registered to your account.

Does Time Warner Cable even have Dog-on-Dog porn?
Because if they do, I'm feeling pretty queasy.
Unless it's that soft-focus, running-in-the-fields, tentatively sniffing each other's butts soft-core D-on-D porn.

PS: the default for all PPV titles should be password protected. Period. Of course, they're too greedy to have a common-sense practice like that.

If you're sure you'd win this lawsuit, and I'm relatively sure Time Warner will default or settle by knocking these items off your bill, you are FAR FAR FAR better off proactively suing Time Warner in your local courts for breach of contract and a declaration that you don't owe the charges alleged. If you get a judgment in your favor, you avoid ALL of the potential hassle of Time Warner assigning this to a debt collector, or worse yet selling the account to a debt buyer who WILL sue you for $1400 at some point down the line. This is so because debt collectors are not in the business of dealing with customer disputes. They collect debts, and they do it by irritating you, harming your credit, bothering your friends, and overstating their claims when they know you have a legitimate dispute. Protect yourself early by just filing suit and getting a declaration that you're right.

I work for a cable co that will remain nameless, (no not Comcast). I have see this happen before, it is usually cause when the customers Digital Terminal has a DVD recorder hooked up to it. The DVD recorder will try to order programs from on-demand services, and record them. so not entirely the cable co's fault, but we would at least re credit the first time and roll a truck as well to verify the diagnosis. For the reason that it's smarter to roll a truck for 75-100 per SC than keep re crediting porn at $10 per shot

@snoop-blog:
"As someone who watches a lot of porn, I can assure you, 60 year olds, and most likely english teachers watch porn. But I can totally see why because she is an 60 year old AND an english teacher I can totally see how that right there is evidence enough that she doesn't watch porn."

Well She says it her self in the article:
"I have never seen a porn movie in my life."

That's because male sexuality is far more visually-driven than female sexuality

Which is to say, researchers have shown porn aimed at heterosexual men to groups of males and females. Males as a group liked the porn much better than women, so men are "far more visually-driven," QED. (I mean, c'mon. Even if it were true, you've SEEN porn. It isn't exactly designed to appeal to even the most visually-driven female.)

The large number of titles in ONE DAY is kind of the tipoff that something's weird about this.

English Teacher ?

60 year old ?

What do those terms have to do with this post?

Rewrite the title: "Customer did not order $1400 of Porn".

The descriptive terms were added to inflame the sensitivities of the casual reader.

She says it her self in the article: "I have never seen a porn movie in my life."

Holy cow, 60 years old and never seen one? Outside of fundamentalist spheres, are there people who are really that sheltered?

@timmus:
Holy cow, 60 years old and never seen one? Outside of fundamentalist spheres, are there people who are really that sheltered?

Yes its sad since either
A) Shes actually seen one and would never admit to it
b) She views all porn as dirty and wrong

Either way sad and shouldn't be that way but to each their own. I blame it on generational gap. My parents would fall into A or B. Younger generations far more accepting and far less ashamed of porn. Heck we make porn stores role models now, for better or for worse.

There have been cases of boxes still having the orders of the last people who had the box being put on the bill of the new person to get the box as the cable co did not fully reset them. Also the account maybe messed up and other peoples boxes are on it.

cable is shared so a bad box in a neighborhood is pushing out others and some of them fall on to other boxes in the neighborhood.

Why is there no cut off for PPV / on demand where they call when you hit something like $50 $100 and so on to see if you are ordering it?

Also are the movies being ordered with out the time to see the full movie? 14 in one day be from a bad box / system error.

Don't you think Time Warner would find it unreasonable to believe someone ordered 17 porn movies in one day? All they would have to do is look at her PPV history. If she never watched PPV and all of a sudden there are 17 porn PPV in one day, it strains belief that these are legitimate charges, or that she ordered them.
I'm also not discounting the 'neighborhood kid' theory either. I know of a case where teen boys were helping an elderly lady on a regular basis until it was found out they were calling phone sex lines using her phone...

Never seen a porno? I'll bet she expects us to believe she doesn't fart either.

I say call the Digital Communications Director referenced before the comments, explain the situation to him and then say that there will be several other calls immediately following that one. First a call to the BBB. Then a call to an attorney to proactively sue them, and then a call to some media outlets to get some coverage of this. Methinks thesmokinggun, abovethelaw and some legit news outlet like cnn or a local news team would do the trick. No way in hell that a jury would rule against her in a case like this. Talk about a sympathetic plaintiff...

@nuttish: Court is not necessarily such a slam dunk. The company will ALMOST NEVER lose in court once it has proved that the box was in the home and that it provided a parental control option, which the customer did not use. I think the entire time I worked on the project (out of hundred of lawsuits) we lost one case because our evidence was lacking, not because the person was convincing.

Think about it, it's impossible to prove that NO ONE was in her home during the time of the orders. Even if she was at work, a family member could have been there... and unfortunately, you're responsible for anyone who orders from the equipment.

Secondly, I call BS on the supposed $1400 in charges. How much of that is the regular service charges? 52 movies at $11.99 each is only $623.48.

$623.48 + $50 cable internet + $100 for tv + hd + box fees + $50 phone + $100 for HBO and others is still $923.48.
Is her account messed up?

@Joedragon: That does sometimes happen in a perfect storm of events, if someone orders a couple movies and then immediately returns their cable box, and if the order processing was delayed, and if the box then wasn't reset properly, that the next person to have the box would get charged in error. But since she said the charges have been continuous since 4/21, that's unlikely. Not to mention that's an easy error to spot if the order date was before the box was installed. She doesn't say how long she's had this box.