Warner Cable Sucks!

[BayouCityGirl]

I have had my LAST NERVE WITH THOSE IDIOTS THERE!!!

Last Monday (when I got home) my cable was out (there is a surprise) and it wasn't because of weather. It wasn't on until Tuesday Evening. I was one of the many who complained that if I didn't have free cable I'd jump to the more loving DIRECTV Satalite!

SOOOO yesterday after watching Nick at Nite Reruns (Full House) to be exact before I wanted to watch "MAD TV" the cable blew again!

I live in an apartment with free cable but I feel REALLY bad for those who DO pay for the preminum services and this sh** happens to them!

I REALLY wish I had TV MAX!!!

You know when I didn't have cable (I only had basics) I felt oh good I am living in a new apartment with CABLE!!! and ITS FREE!!!! Now Warner Cable can't even keep its customers happy by keeping its cable on for longer then a week!

It also seems instead of FIXING The problem they probably go home to their wife and kids (or husband and kids) and watch "DirecTV" or "Dish Network" because if I worked for Warner Cable and had as many problems as THEY did I sure as hell would NOT use my own service.

Last Monday while everyone was at home watching TV, there were a majority of us who were stuck with nothing to watch because some of us can't even pick up any local channels (or hardly)!

NOW since I STILL have no cable, its 6:53 AM and I'm stuck watching CHURCH until maybe after 12 because Warner Cable Techs wont get off their lazy @$$ and do something! Maybe could have fixed it last night! I am sure they really worked hard!

This is NOT my first run in with Warner Cable! When I moved in my other apartment and asked for the service, the tech didn't know what he was doing so he finished installing, some channels came in and he took off. I realized later I was getting some blocked/blacked out channels and when I called him back to fix the problem he WOULDNT! I told Warner Cable RIGHT THEN AND THERE to cancel my services I would NOT pay for my troubles!!

NOW with DirecTV which I truely miss and loved and if I could afford I'd buy...

When I had my 1 year services going on with them, I had to leave out of Houston and couldn't take the Dish with me. DirecTV offered for me to put the services on hold without me paying a penalty AND on top of that when I did leave DirecTV they offered me 3 FREE months of a preminum network. The people there are friendlier, and when the satalite when out it didn't take more then 2 days (maybe a couple hours) to get it fixed!

The DirecTV people were also easier to talk with!!

When I told Warner Cable Monday my cable was out, the guy put me on hold and then hung up on me!

I called back the next day (due to busy signals) and another tech. made up all sorts of excuses why the cable wasn't on.

I see Warner Cable has NEVER Changed and its all about money and not services to the people for their business!! I can tell you where they can stick it!! I AM SO FED UP!

P.S. Not that it will do any good I will email this exact letter to Warner Cable! Not that they care about their customers! After all we are stuck without cable and they don't really give a damn!

[rps324]

Once upon a time when I used to manage apartments, (many moons ago), believe it or not, but Time Warner was the best of the worst. They all sucked (cable companies). Time Warner sucked slightly less than the rest of the little fly-by-night companies we would sometimes be stuck with. That is no endorsement of Time Warner, it is just there are actually companies out there that I think are even worse!!

[BayouCityGirl]

I talked to Time Warner on the phone. They said it was an invidisual problem and that there is no time frame I'd have to sit at my house and wait on the tech to come by. I told her, "bring the tech here but I am NOT waiting all day in my house for a no show. I got things to do!"

AND I told the Tech also that "why is it that for satalite it takes 20 mins to 2 hours and for you guys (Warner Cable) it takes 2 days?!" she got quiet and didn't know how to respond saying, "that's satalite". I told her also listen, my dad has satalite and his service didn't go out. It wasn't raining when my cable went out and you advertise that cable is beneifical in storms because we don't have to worry about programming loss"

I told her I got 2 days of cable last week, Mon/Tuesday no cable and Sat/Sun no cable. When was she going to have the cable on for longer then a week!?!

For a big company like Warner Cable you'd expect some Professionalism!

[dalparadise]

A couple of things here:

You are paying for cable -- even "free" cable. It's just part of your rent payment. As such, you are entitled to the same service any customer receives. Therein lies the problem. You are not really TWC's customer in this situation, your apartment complex is. Your apartment complex probably doesn't really care much about pressing TWC to install equipment capable of handling the demands of the entire complex. TWC has a satisfied customer in them, so little gets done to upgrade your system. Now, why does it need upgrading, you ask?

Cable has changed and improved over the past few years, while the infrastructure has remained the same. Now, that same old cable is carrying digital channels, Roadrunner Internet and more. The more people who use a single line, the more demand is placed on old repeaters and lines and you get outages.

When I lived in the West End, I lived in a new townhouse that was built in a neighborhood of old wood frame houses. My townhouse consisted of 3 units on a lot that used to have one small house on it. So, 3 new townhouses, each with 6 cable outlets (18 total) replaced a house with one outlet. That was happening all across the area.

In the evenings, when demand was high, my Roadrunner simply did not work and my analog channels were very fuzzy.

Now, as their direct customer, I demanded better service. I'll admit, it took a couple of trips by the tech, but eventually they installed a "station replicator" on the pole outside, which effectively put me at the head of the line, upstream from my neighbors. I ended up with incredible service that was really reliable.

The bottom line -- I think you should go to your apartment complex and convince them that your cable is not up to par. As TWC's customer, they will have more sway to get upgraded equipment installed. Once your system is up-to-date, you'll find little compares to the reliability and quality of signal you get in the digital ranges of TWC -- especially for HD, where satellite still lags behind. Though, in an apartment, you may not even have access to the digital lineup, much less the HD. That would be something else to bring up with the landlord...

[BayouCityGirl]

I went to the apartment today. She notified the tech she deals with on a personal basis to come out here. Not sure if it will be today (I have a feeling it won't be) but you know here is how I see it:

Sometimes when things happen to people when its NOT happening to them people care less and when it IS they bit**.

I mean I appologized to my apt b/c they do a good job here as far as getting things done. But she also got other complaints of residents not getting cable and she did get phone calls of the cable being out.

The reason my cable was out last Monday was because a new line was being put in (and other neighborhoods were affected by this)

last night could have been the storm. So why does it take 2 days to fix something when it takes Satalite people 2 hours?

[editor]

I used to have a lot of problems with my Time Warner cable when I lived downtown. I kept a detailed list of the dates and times it went out. Every couple of weeks I would call them and get credit for the days it was out and they would credit me for those days. It ended up being 5-10 days a month, so I'd get a credit for about 10 bucks on my bill. It shouldn't be necessary to do this, but these are the times we live in.

[ssullivan]

Hmm... five years in Houston at two addresses and my cable has been out only twice, and never for more than 36 hours. Never have had to wait more than 24 hours to have a Time Warner tech come out when needed, and they've always shown up exactly when they said they'd be here. And in the two instances when my cable was out, I nicely requested a credit on my account for the period it was out and was given a credit on my next statement. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never had bad service, bad reception, or many other problems with them. And in the few times when there has been an issue they've been very responsive. Granted I've only lived in fairly new apartments (both built around 1998-1999) so the equipment in the complex was new. But I've been a happy customer for over five years now.

[editor]

Interesting. I would have thought that being in a new place, you would have more trouble. I assumed that since I lived in a neighborhood where there was a lot of growth that the outages were caused by so many new customers and new equipment coming online. I figured that in older neighborhoods the equipment situation would be stable and they would have no problems.

Still, of all the cable companies I've had in Houston, Time Warner was the best in terms of price and channel lineup. One place I lived had something beginning with O. They sent out a memo shortly after I moved in saying that high-speed internet was on the way. Two years later -- nothing. And customer service knew nothing about it. "Optel" maybe. I'm not sure anymore, it's been a few years.

[Talbot]

Actually I have had the exact opposite experience. I have only had about 1 or 2 porblems with the cable through Time Warner going out.

But with satellite, it always goes out or blocks up with slight disturbances and thunderstorms.

So actually I prefer cable or digital cable more than satellite.

EDIT: And I like that deal that Time Warner has where you get digital phone, road runner dsl, and digital cable for only a 100 dollars a month.

[CincoRanch-HoustonResident]

I have never had a problem with Time Warner out here. Time Warner is better than some cable companies, like Cox, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

[BayouCityGirl]

I used to live at the apt on Hayes (the nice ones) LOL! off Westheimer...can't remember the name of them LOL! Anyway we had a basic cable TV lineup (TVMAX) but my fav was seeing what car drove up to the guard gate. Okay I only lived with my mom and I was a bit bored, but the first 5 mins were fun!!

[UrbaNerd]

Time Warner's cable internet is sucky, too (it was down for about 28 hours yesterday and today)..but..surprisingly..it is the best of all of the high speed services out there. Imagine how horrible those are.

[ssullivan]

Time Warner's cable internet is sucky, too (it was down for about 28 hours yesterday and today)..but..surprisingly..it is the best of all of the high speed services out there.  Imagine how horrible those are.

I don't know about it being sucky. Mine has been extremely reliable, with very few outages in three years. And it's faster than the partial T-1 my old employer had! It's also leaps and bounds above any DSL service I've ever tried.

I think there are some bad spots in the Time Warner network out there, but I've really had very few problems and don't personally know anyone who's experienced the kinds of issues some of you have. Maybe I've just been lucky (or maybe other posters have been unlucky to live in some of the bad areas) but I have no complaints against them.

Compare our local service to what exists elsewhere. My parents live in a small, rural community in Southeast Texas and have Cox as their local cable company. Over the years the local cable company has been sold several times, but no matter who the current owner is, it seems that they always pay more than I do in Houston for about 1/3 the channels. And, they get reception that's not much better than an antenna on about half the channels. They're just now getting Internet access as an option from the cable company, and it costs more than any of the Internet options from Time Warner here and runs at about 60% the speed. And talk about outages -- every time it rains the cable goes out for at least two or three minutes. I mean EVERY rainstorm. And even when it's on, if it's raining, they can't even think about getting an acceptable picture on the Houston broadcast stations they get on cable. So when I compare the service I've had the last five years in Houston to that, if my cable goes out for a few hours once every year or two, I can't complain at all.

[tw2ntyse7en]

...

[Trophy Property]

Bayoucitygirl - no offense, because I'm sure your time warner cable problems were a hassle, but they have nothing on SBC DSL when it comes to shitty service. I can't even begin to type (due to time & length) the story of the hell I went through when I first moved to Houston.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It has been over 5 years, but when SBC tried to implement DSL in Houston it was a total dissaster. I was in grad school at the time (night classes) and I seriously spent countless days and hours on the phone with these people. It was a total mess. I refused to give up because I really wanted DSL in a bad way. There is no way I could have had a day job and gotten DSL hooked up.

Their implementation problems lasted for a few years. When I moved the following year it took weeks to get the service transfered. The worst part was never knowing what was going on. It was seriously the worst customer support experience I have ever had. I will give SBC credit for finally fixing most of the DSL problems. I have not had an outage in over a year and I love my service. It is fast and very reliable.

[YakuzaIce]

I have cable and internet with Time Warner and I have had only one major problem and that was my internet being down for a couple of days. They were also out there working on it the day I called them.

[ssullivan]

tw2ntyse7en - sounds like you and I had the exact same disasterous experience with SBC DSL. Not only was the connection bad but it took forever to get my account closed after I switched to cable and to get them to credit my account back to the date when I first cancelled the account (I was billed for five months after I requested to cancel).

[tw2ntyse7en]

...

[BayouCityGirl]

Bayoucitygirl - no offense, because I'm sure your time warner cable problems were a hassle, but they have nothing on SBC DSL when it comes to shitty service. I can't even begin to type (due to time & length) the story of the hell I went through when I first moved to Houston.

All I can say is, be thankful that you're not being double & triple billed every month for over a year, while spending countless hours on the phone every night for the first week after you get your monthly bill arguing with different customer support people over what seems to be a futile point they'll never understand. All this to find out 14 months later that the whole thing could have disappeared with the wave of a finger over the "delete" key. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[BayouCityGirl]

Bayoucitygirl - no offense, because I'm sure your time warner cable problems were a hassle, but they have nothing on SBC DSL when it comes to shitty service. I can't even begin to type (due to time & length) the story of the hell I went through when I first moved to Houston.

All I can say is, be thankful that you're not being double & triple billed every month for over a year, while spending countless hours on the phone every night for the first week after you get your monthly bill arguing with different customer support people over what seems to be a futile point they'll never understand. All this to find out 14 months later that the whole thing could have disappeared with the wave of a finger over the "delete" key.

[Subdude]

27 and ssulivan - same problem with SBC DSL. The connection could be spotty, and for some reason I couldn't keep the router in sync with it. When I finally cancelled, it took them like 3 1/2 months to actually disconnect it and stop billing me, despite all my calls, and another couple months to get a refund for the months they billed me after I cancelled. Must be SOP to refuse to disconnect customers until they beg. Man, I won't deal with SBC again after that.

[kathysue]

I much prefer cable service over satellite, but the customer service at Time Warner does suck! They are usually very rude on the phone and do not care about their customers (unless you don't pay your bill!)

My cable and internet service went out at the same time one afternoon. I called Time Warner to report an outtage. Because no one else had called in, they refused to send someone out to "look" at my service until the following week. No one else had called in because it was 11:00am on a weekday, and most people were at work (I was on vacation that week). At 9:00 that evening, the cable was finally restored, and they finally admitted that there was an outtage - despite the multiple calls from me. They would not even investigate the possibility of an outtage until at least 3 people in the same area called in to complain!!

27 and ssulivan - same problem with SBC DSL. The connection could be spotty, and for some reason I couldn't keep the router in sync with it. When I finally cancelled, it took them like 3 1/2 months to actually disconnect it and stop billing me, despite all my calls, and another couple months to get a refund for the months they billed me after I cancelled. Must be SOP to refuse to disconnect customers until they beg. Man, I won't deal with SBC again after that.

I do not trust SBC!! When I first moved back to Houston, I automatically called SBC for home phone and internet service. They promised me that there would be no installation charge for the internet service. When I received my first bill there was a $200 installation charge. I could never get a real person on the phone to discuss it. When I couldn't afford to pay the bill, they not only turned off my service, they charged me a $200 "early termination fee" for a 2-year contract I do not remember agreeing to. Now I have a $400 "mark" on my credit report. Like I'm really going to pay those liars!!

[FilioScotia]

I have had my LAST NERVE WITH THOSE IDIOTS THERE!!!

Last Monday (when I got home) my cable was out (there is a surprise) and it wasn't because of weather. It wasn't on until Tuesday Evening. I was one of the many who complained that if I didn't have free cable I'd jump to the more loving DIRECTV Satalite! The DirecTV people were also easier to talk with!!

Frankly I don't understand why people put up with bad cable service when they have a choice. They can either stop using cable and use rabbit ears, or pony up the money for one of the satellite services. Satellite is vastly superior to any cable service I've ever seen. Vote against bad cable service by giving your dollars to someone who can do it better.