(lymang)
Morgan would have appreciated it if Time Warner Cable had told him that moving to a different address would give him a different account number. He really would have appreciated it if they had told him his before he moved. And he really, really would have appreciated learning this information before sending six months’ worth of payments into a black hole via auto bill pay. Now his service has been disconnected, and he has to pay a $100 disconnection fee along with paying all of his bills since June over again. Then he might get all of that money he sent to the wrong place back.
I have had an account with Time Warner for over 2 years now. When I moved to a new apartment last January I called them to transfer for my service. No problem, I brought the cable box and the modem from [my] old place and they sent a technician to install it in the new place,
everything worked fine. I kept paying my bills online through my bank on time, life was good.Then in mid-June I got a notice they were going to disconnect my service unless I paid them $253.73 in back payments. That’s funny, I had paid my bill every month in full. I call
and I find out that my payments had been applied to the account associated with my old apartment.It would have been nice to know I got a new account number from Time Warner when I moved, but no one thought that was something I might like to know. Not the customer service representative I spoke to on the phone to set up and schedule the move, not the technician who installed the service in the new place and no one I talked to when I decided to add HBO to my service
in April.Well, you think there would be a simple solution, take the payments that went to my old account and apply them to my current account. Boy was I wrong. Well I didn’t find out that wasn’t a possibility until after speaking to a third customer service representative. The first two told me they would transfer the payments and I didn’t have to worry about my service being shut off)
Well, it was shut off on Sunday and that’s when I learned from the third customer service rep they can’t transfer the money. Now they want $101.00 to turn the service back on, and they claim they sent me a check back in early June reimbursing me for the $253.73 I already paid them. I still have yet to get a check and now have had to call three days in a week to get my service re-connected. Why should I have to pay them twice for the same service? In addition I have to wait until the end of the month to make sure they don’t charge me the re-connection fee every time and reimburse me for the late fees which racked up because the payments were applied to my old account.
Sometimes, an executive e-mail carpet bomb jolts Time Warner Cable into action, and that might be worth a try here in order to determine the whereabouts of that check that never reached Morgan. In the end, though, we offer this story as a cautionary tale: don’t leave all of your payments on auto-pilot after a move. Make assumptions at your own peril.
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You didn’t get monthly bills showing the new account number and growing Past Due amount?
Yeah I thought the same thing. All of a sudden he gets 1 notice to his new address that they are about to shut off his cable when he wasn’t getting late notices before. Somehow I think there was some OP negligence involved.
I can certainly understand the ignorance in not knowing your account number changed when you moved especially after calling, setting up appointments and adding services, but at the first sight of a late notice I would have been investigating.
Most people to do auto bill pay also get paperless statesments via email so they probably just click “mark as read” when they receive them. Not saying the customer is without blame but I can see his argument.
I get those emails for my paperless billing accounts. They all tell me how much I owe.
People who ignore their billing statements are asking for problems. We see lots of stories here about what happens when people don’t read their credit card statements, cell phone bills, etc. This looks like another of those.
I get at least one that only says “your bill is now available” and it bugs me. I then have to log in and check to make sure it’s normal. They should all tell you the total in the email.
I get email statements for several of my accounts, and I read them each month before I send money. The ones I have on “autopilot” send a default amount from my bank’s payment system a few days before the normal due date in case I miss one, so at least some payment goes to the payee.
If I get a bill that indicates that my previous bill wasn’t paid, I investigate. Funny, I generally find it was my fault when that happens.
That really sucks. I’d wait till I got the check in the mail for the amount he already paid them. If they ding his credit or send him to collections he has a pretty good case for court.
I’ll keep this in mind. I have Time Warner and will be moving in a couple weeks. My girlfriend I were planning on canceling instead of moving it though (bundle ends right when we move) and starting a new account under her name at the new place to get any starting rates.
Sounds like a job for the Small Clams Court if there ever was one!
I had the same thing happen with my fuel oil company. I moved with-in town and transferred my service to the new address. Meanwhile, I kept happily sending money to the account I set up online with my bank. Eventually the oil company called looking for payment. Finally we realized that we had a new account number, but had been paying to the old. It was annoying, but they simply moved the money over and I updated my online banking. No muss, no fuss.
In the end, though, we offer this story as a cautionary tale: don’t leave all of your payments on auto-pilot after a move. Make assumptions at your own peril.
No. How in the hell is a customer supposed to even fathom that their account number will change with a move if the company doesn’t tell them, doesn’t send bills with the new account info and balance, doesn’t close the old account and continues to allow the old account to be paid? The assumption on the part of the consumer that a new account will be opened with a move and that they should stop autopayments on an existing account is not at all reasonable.
This has EECB written all over it, and they better fix this clusterfuck. The OP did nothing wrong.
He says he received a shut off notice but neglects to mention the 1 or 2 late notices that you usually see before your service is shut off.
They probably sent those to the old address. There’s no reason they would do that, but it’s the sort of thing that tends to happen in cases like these.
Or tends to get omitted by OP’s sometimes.
So what you are saying is that his shut off notice was sent to his current address and the late notices to his old address. I guess its possible but still unlikely.
Really? My husband had this shit happen with his gas bill, he paid them in full when we moved to settle the account, they “lost” the payment, sent notices to the old address (which mysteriously weren’t forwarded, makes me think they didn’t send shit) and then magically the collections agency that they sold the “debt” to found his current address.
Despite what you may think companies do indeed fuck up ALL THE TIME.
No he didn’t have the same thing happen. As you say, the gas company sent notices to the old address that they’d always done business with and the completely different collections agency found the new address.
That is quite different from ONE company sending some bills to one address (that the new account had never done business with) that were then lost/never forwarded by the USPS and some bills to another address (where the new service was installed).
I think the OP received all the bills, but he thought he had things covered with his auto billing so he never looked at them. Occam’s razor.
And why are you so certain that they actually sent late notices? He didn’t receive the refund check they claimed they sent, why would you assume they also were responsible enough to send late notices?
Your comments all revolve around your assumption that Time Warner has done everything correctly when they prove over and over again that they suck.
Never said they were correct, I’m just saying OP may have some negligence here too
Well if it takes six months to find out something is wrong with your account, YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION. It would take all of two seconds to look at your account online.
I would bet when he moved he got put into a new introductory deal, which was why he had a new account number. I would also bet that the tech order he has, has the current account number on it, but why should anybody bother to read what they sign.
How was he supposed to look at the new account number online if he didn’t have it? No seriously, you tell me how the hell he was supposed to check on this new account. I’ll wait.
Well, if he had logged into his OLD account he might’ve seen that it was closed, and/or had a large credit balance, and thought “Hmm, I should investigate further.”
Just because you are signed up for paperless billing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go online and check your statement/bill there to make sure it’s everything you expected. I would have logged in to make sure the bill was the right amount after moving, that they didn’t overcharge the installation fee, etc. And done a quick double-check of the account number and address to send payment to.
I had something similar happen with TWC about 5-6 years ago, with a different result.
Had Time Warner Cable & moved from one apartment building to another. Autopay kept up with what I thought were the bills. Then we got a disconnect notice, so I called in to find out what was up. The very helpful service rep discovered that our payments had gone towards the old account. She transferred the balance from that account to our current account & cancelled the disconnect notice. I then changed the Autopay to the new account number, and everyone was happy.
Oh, and all of that happened on New Year’s Eve.
I blame the OP.
I am a TW customer and I see that in the fine print on the bill AND online. It’s not hidden. I also was a customer of Cox as well – same thing. READ THE FINE PRINT
DERP.