Believe it or not, this is not a horror story. My address book lists TimeWarner as: "TimeWarner Sucks!" -- an expression of my opinion of their service. I've made about ten times as many repair calls to TimeWarner as I did to Adelphia before it was acquired by TimeWarner. They tell me it's the same infrastructure as Adelphia -- but the service is worse. Today, a repair rep was scheduled to arrive between noon and 2pm to repair a combination of two different broadcast glitches I'd reported on Saturday. I won't go into the details of the repair -- suffice it to say the person to whom I reported the problem had never heard of anything like it -- neither had her supervisor. The point of this jabber is, I have a very low opinion of TimeWarner cable service -- and I only have their overpriced TV broadcast service -- but I have always been impressed with their employees. I don't know any of them personally -- I've never met a TimerWarner employee at a party, in a grocery line or while waiting to cross the street (perhaps I don't get out enough) -- but my experiences with them have all been very good. REALLY! The only exception was the snippy New York customer service rep with whom I spoke shortly after TimeWarner's acquisition of Adelphia and 5 days of no service. But those were "dark" days for everyone with TimeWarner service. I must tell you, Gentle Reader, I hate those scripts TimeWarner (and Verizon) makes their operators read. You know -- the ones that are delivered with an unearthly cheerfulness and sound something like this: "Hello! My name is (fill in the blank)! How may I provide you with the world's most excellent acts of perkiness that will burn a hole in your brain so you won't remember how angry you are with our company?" I always wonder if the person who delivers that script makes "Gag-me-with-my-own-finger" motions to their fellow operators once they've deliver the disingenuous babble. Other than the phony script thing, the folks they hire, in my opinion and experience, have always been outstanding. Today, the repair rep called 15 minutes before he arrived, then arrived on time, was friendly yet professional, did the repair quickly and with no fuss or muss. Plus, he didn't ask to use my bathroom before he left (always a gold star i my book)!
Now, if only TimeWarner's service could equal the excellence of their employees.
Oh -- and one more thing: if only TimeWarner would offer their packages based on how many channels are actually viewed. I only watch about 10 channels almost all of which are cable channels like Comedy Central, Discovery, PBS, History, USA, TNT, Sleuth and a couple more. Yet I pay for over 200 channels. Basic cable -- and its 3 dozen or so channels -- doesn't include any of the cable channels I watch so I have the next package up from basic. Their packages go from 30 to 200 (or something like that). Bundled services are like an all-you-can-eat buffet: you pay for food you don't like, would never eat and there's way more food on the table than justifies the cost in comparison to how much can be eaten in one meal.
Whew! Glad I got that off my mind.
I second your opinion of their employees, they are excellent. And their phone reps are bizarrely incompetent, which makes me think that they must be bound and gagged somehow. I have had very little trouble w/ my TW service, both cable and internet. Occasionally the internet goes out. The first couple of times I called, waited 20 minutes on hold, only to be told there was no problem with the service and that I needed a new modem. I wised up. Now I call and report a service outage. It always comes back.
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