Time Warner Cable in Southern California is completely broken. There is no hope. They’ve fired the head guy, but we think the ship may have already sank. They may as well have let the captain go down with the boat.

Reader Ben recently had Time Warner Cable and internet installed in his new apartment. Naturally, things didn’t go well. After only a few weeks the cable and internet just randomly stopped working. From Ben’s email:

I call customer service, and am put through the extensive rigmarole of testing every device. The service rep (of course) has no clue why nothing is working, but she can schedule a service call for Saturday. That’s a WEEK of no cable and internet. No sooner. I must wait a week.

But the very next morning, an install tech shows up, and I politely inquire if he’s there to fix the service. Silly me!
“Nope, sorry,” he says. “I’m a different department. I’m here to remove the previous tenant’s equipment and disconnect his cable.”
“But I’m not the previous tenant,” I reply, reasonably enough. “You can’t disconnect my cable. Besides, my cable and internet aren’t working!”
“Sorry. Different department.”
“So,” I ask, “You can disconnect our cable, but not reconnect it?”
“Yep.”
And he leaves. I scream with rage.

Ben, we do not blame you. Read the rest of Ben’s email inside.

Ben writes:

Hi Ben and Meghann,

Long time reader, first time bitcher.

I’d just like to air a few grievances about TWC, especially since they apparently have a new head of customer service in SoCal, and he might be interested to read this.

My cable and internet were hooked up when I moved in early March. I had signed up for a DVR, but the install technician showed up to my house without it. Luckily he had an extra one in his truck, but he told me it’d be an extra $60 to install it. I told him repeatedly that I’d ordered the plan with a DVR, and signed up for it to be included on my first bill, so he told me to call customer service. He said this mistake was fairly common, and they could usually just shift my account from a regular cable box to a DVR for a refundable $50 deposit. I was annoyed enough at this point to agree. I then spent half an hour on the customer service line being shuffled from rep to rep, being told three times that what the install technician had described was impossible. Several hold periods and one supervisor later, I finally got them to do what the technician had told them.

“Oh, and by the way,” he told me, “TW internet has been out all today, and we don’t have any idea why.” Sure enough, my newly installed cable internet didn’t come back on until that night. I never found out why.

Flash forward to last weekend. My cable and internet suddenly stop working. I call customer service, and am put through the extensive rigamarole of testing every device. The service rep (of course) has no clue why nothing is working, but she can schedule a service call for Saturday. That’s a WEEK of no cable and internet. No sooner. I must wait a week.

But the very next morning, an install tech shows up, and I politely inquire if he’s there to fix the service. Silly me!
“Nope, sorry,” he says. “I’m a different department. I’m here to remove the previous tenant’s equipment and disconnect his cable.”
“But I’m not the previous tenant,” I reply, reasonably enough. “You can’t disconnect my cable. Besides, my cable and internet aren’t working!”
“Sorry. Different department.”
“So,” I ask, “You can disconnect our cable, but not reconnect it?”
“Yep.”
And he leaves. I scream with rage.

But then a light bulb turns on in my mind. I head down to our building’s primary cable hookup. Lo and behold, someone has physically unplugged our cable! My landlord and I have the same simultaneous reaction: “What the hell?!” Another call (and hour-long hold) with customer service confirms that the person who previously lived in the apartment had defaulted on his bill. So of course, OUR cable and internet were disconnected. They were supposed to send out a service tech to reconnect it this morning, but I’ve heard nothing from them.

And to top it all off, after all that, they’ll only credit me for the time the cable was down. Not the whole earlier weekend the internet was down. Not the hours of cell phone bills I’ve racked up, because I have Vonage, and without an internet connection I was forced to use my cell minutes. And the customer service rep claimed a supervisor would call me back immediately, but of course, no one has. Liars.

Sorry about such a long rant, but I wanted to expose all the ignorance and foolishness that TWC dumps on their customers. It’s now been three weeks I’ve had the service, and they’ve done absolutely nothing right. They’ve handled every problem like a troop of retarded, dyslexic baboons. If they really value us, they wouldn’t treat us like this. I hope the newly-appointed head of customer service reads this, and takes a good hard look at his departments. Because the left hand clearly has no clue what the right hand is doing.

–Ben

Did you hear that Time Warner Cable Southern California? You are all dyslexic baboons. No, really. You are. Ben told us..—MEGHANN MARCO

(Photo of Good Cable Guy Who Has Nothing To Do With This: dykstranet)

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