Taylor’s parents can get service from Time Warner Cable. Or maybe they can’t. Or maybe they can. Just calling up TWC the old-fashioned way eventually got her a response that it would cost $3,000 to extend the lines 500 feet to her parents’ house. Unfortunate, so she looked into other options…until typing in her parents’ address on a Time Warner ad, installing Time Warner Cable would be possible for $2,960.00 less than quoted. But a web form is one thing, and dealing with actual techs is another. No one at TWC seems to have any idea what Taylor should do now.

I contacted TWC to get my (elderly) parents hooked up with a decent internet connection. Since the property had never had cable service before, they told me that they would need to send someone out to figure out where their lines were in relation to the house. They say it’ll take a few days, so I wait. They call me back and tell me that since [they’re] ~500 feet away from the existing cable plant, I’ll have to pay about $3000 to have them run the lines the rest of the way. I think that’s a pretty raw deal, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I figure I’ll try AT&T and see what my other options are.

Here’s where things get weird. As I’m looking for other companies to give my money to, I see an ad for Time Warner internet. It prompts me to type in my address and lo and behold, it says I can order service! I make an order through the site and they send me an email with a confirmation order. The best part? The installation fee is $40. What savings over $3000! The email asked me to call TWC and schedule my installation.

When I did that, they gave me the same story about how the address isn’t in their system and they’ll need to send someone out to take a look at things! I asked if my $40 install fee would be honored and the sales people assured me that it would be. The problem is that that was 2 weeks ago — no amount of calling will reach anyone who knows anything about the situation and recently the sales people I’ve called haven’t even been able to pull up any information with my order confirmation number!

Other customers have had experience with using an executive e-mail carpet bomb against Time Warner, especially if they’re able to find the names of their regional executives.

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