The horror of Time Warner Cable NYC is legion, a textbook example of monopolies abusing consumers customers.

The latest chapter in the TWC grimoire comes courtesy of Sedef. His connection is sub-par and always crashes. A rotating crew of TWC give him different answers each time they show up. Sometimes, a neighbor is siphoning his signal. Sometimes, his connection is “too high” and needs “an amplifier.”

Sedef says he’s tried contacting supervisors to see about getting a half price discount on his service, seeing as he’s only getting half service. He’s “never heard back” from them after they said they would look into it.

While we sympathise with Sedef’s plight, you can’t stop there. If they don’t call you back, call them back. Or, check out this handy list of Every Phone Number For TWC Level 3 Tech Support. And/or call the office of James D. Fellhauer, chief of customer care, at 1-202-328-4017, after reading our guidelines on obtaining executive customer service.

Sedef’s letter, inside.

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Sedef writes:

“I own a duplex one-bedroom co-op in midtown Manhattan. For the past several years, I’ve struggled to get a dedicated line for my broadband cable programming and Internet connection – a service for which I paid more than $100/month. Repeatedly, my cable programming would go down for no apparent reason, or alternatively (and more frequently), my Internet connection would inexplicably crash. In each instance, I would have to schedule a cable appointment and go through the requisite 1-2 appointments where cable guys literally ducked my appointment and claimed I wasn’t home, and finally showed up to fix the problem.

Early on, cable technicians would tell me my problem was that my line had a splitter located down the hall from my ground floor apartment, and I was getting half the signal broadcast to my unit, with the other half going to a unit around the corner (not sure what that owner was paying for his/her service). One admirably brave technician actually told me it was inadequate service and that my signal was unacceptably low; he said the cable company should fix this for me (I’ve since learned that Time-Warner contracts out cable technicians and this honest technician has likely been rotated off their list of technicians).

Not surprisingly, I was able to diagnose my own problem with all the future technicians who visited my apartment to “repair” my continually crashing broadband connection. Besides being either typically condescending in attitude, or unhelpful in ideas for long-term resolution for my problem, little changed. One technician actually told me that my signal was too “high”, laughably enough, and that it would need an “amplifier” as a solution. Sounded like a solution to an old-school audio (or even analog) problem, but of course, I never heard back from him afterwards.

At one point, I suggested to one of the many “supervisors” I was put in contact with at Time-Warner that perhaps they should credit my account for half the amount I was paying since I was receiving only half the quality/quantity of their advertised service. This suggestion was actually met with real consideration, and I was informed that they would look into this. Never heard back. Since then, I’m beginning to think that they actually pull this stunt/scam with a lot of tenants in buildings which are older and which haven’t had the same rapid installation of high-speed services as the newer buildings. Regardless, I felt powerless as a consumer to fix the problem, as my co-op board has a special relationship with Time-Warner so they served as the exclusive provider of cable in our building (not to mention, they may have been the only game in town based on my particular neighborhood).

Somehow I don’t think I’m the only consumer in NYC having this problem. I would love to give it more visibility in the hopes that we shame Time-Warner into doing the right thing.”

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