Gross negligence & disinterest - TV & Internet service

Gross negligence & disinterest - TV & Internet service

Posted By: hb on 7/15/2007

Location: Dallas, TX

For about 10 months now and after several service calls, Time Warner has still refused to repair their distribution line in my alley. Every call for maintenance requires an appointment for a technician to meet with someone at my house. Every time, and there have been several such inconveniences, they determine there is nothing wrong on my premises, that there are distribution signal problems in the alley such as lines eaten by squirrels and water in distribution boxes.
They even strung a patch cable between two poles that are 3-4 poles west of my lot. That temp fix restored TV, but it was a poor quality temporary fix because it would not support reliable Internet connections and the cable laid on top of the paved alley and was routinely driven over by cars and trucks.

After over a month of intermittent Internet service due to poor distribution lines, I canceled that service because they refused to fix the lines. That exercise cost me over $50 for a cable modem I couldn't return. 10 months later, the temporary patch cable is STILL laying on the ground. Finally, it recently got snagged by a vehicle, the cable got pulled apart, and I lost TV services. I called for a repair, they wanted another appointment that was over a week distant, so I canceled service and will order satellite.

Apparently, complete morons designed their customer service computer system to never remember the findings of prior technician visits which were obviously a waste of my time and theirs. The customer service computer system actually completes work orders after a technician shows whether the technician solves the issue or not. The customer service computer system apparently doesn't manage or retain any information when the technician passes the problem to other areas of the company, that design flaw prevents any follow-up by the customer or management, and this problem is probably responsible for why problems don't get fixed.

On every call, they assume the prior problems have been fixed when, at least in my case, they never have been. 10+ months of gross negligence maintaining their lines, that is pretty strong evidence more than mismanagement, it demonstrates nothing less than gross negligence and incompetence don't you think? Oh yeah, by the way, I've sent written complaints in through their web page, got automated responses that someone would be in contact with me. Never happened. I called the state public utility commission who said they couldn't help, but they gave me a number for the cable association. Complaining there eventually got my high speed internet fees reimbursed, but I'm still out the expense of the modem, and nobody has actually fixed the line problem that the first and follow-on technicians discovered or rediscovered over and over again.

Frankly, there is no customer service as far as I can tell. In fact, it appears the system is intentionally designed to assure that customer service will usually fail because complaints are routinely and repeatedly closed out without the problems being fixed, and nobody seems to give a crap about it. What a disgusting company to do business with.