Time Warner Update Nightmare
Posted by Sandy Berger on May 24th, 2008
When Time Warner Cable sent me a letter to let me know that they were offering an increase in speed for my Internet service, I rejoiced. You see, I had spent the last several months suffering with extremely slow download speeds, In fact, at the 2Mbps that I was getting, I couldn’t even watch a video on the Internet. I had called Time Warner several times to complain, but each time they had me go through trouble-shooting steps that took a ridiculous amount of time, and nothing was ever resolved. I suspected that my modem had gone bad, but Time Warner was not willing to concede that fact.
Just as I was considering another service, I received the letter that offered me an increase in download speed from 5 Mbps to 7 Mbps as a free upgrade. All I had to do was trade my modem in for a new one. Since I was not getting anywhere near the 5 Mbps and had tried to get them to replace my modem previously, I was thrilled. One of the TW reps told me that the rollout of new modems was routine. So my complaining didn’t get me the new modem offer, but I was happy anyway.
I went online and arranged for the new modem. It was delivered yesterday, so I decided to install it today. The installation was simple. It amounted to unplugging the old modem, plugging in the new one, and moving the cable from the old to the new. I was done in 5 minutes. All that was left to do was to call Time Warner to activate the new modem.
It should have been easy, but it turned into a two-hour nightmare. First I called the 800 number on the installation instructions that came with the modem. After a 25-minute wait I was informed that I needed to be transferred to my local TW representative….I could have saved 25 minutes of my time if they had listed that number on the form I received, but Time Warner obviously doesn’t think that my time is valuable. So I was transfered to a local representative. The 20-minute wait time was really aggravating. The girl who took my call was abrupt, but not rude. After about 15 minutes, she told me that everything was activated and working. I told the lady that the modem was not working. She had me eliminate the possibility that there was something wrong with my router by plugging the modem directly into my computer. Still no luck.
She told me that she could help no further and would transfer me to the Road Runner national tech support. After another 20 minutes on hold, I was told that she had connected me to the wrong department, so I was transferred again and was again in for a 20 minute wait. If I heard “You call is important to us” one more time, I was ready to scream!!
Fortunately, the tech support person was who finally took my call was sympathetic and knowledgeable. I was put on hold for about 5 minutes while he investigated the situation.Unfortunately, the modem had not been activated and was not properly attached to my account. In order to do that the tech support person needed to contact the local TW representative. I guess he had a hard time getting through because I was on hold for another 20 minutes. Then the local representative came on. Fortunately she was more knowledgeable than the first local representative and was able to straighten everything out.
Finally, I was able to get back on the Internet. The speed was at the 7 Mbps that was promised and I was able to successfully watch a streaming video on the Web.
Of course I was happy to receive the new modem, but the stress and aggravation of dealing with Time Warner’s bureaucracy was totally exhausting.
In the mail today I received a letter from Time Warner asking me if I wanted to add their digital telephone service to my account. Fat chance!!!
May 24th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Hi Sandy, I have had a similar experience with T/W. I like to use newsgroups (usenet) a lot and I was getting slow speeds on my T/W usenet account, so I decided to bit the bullet and pay for newsgroups at http://www.newsdemon.com. At first the service was spectacular but after a few weeks, my account slowed down a LOT. I contacted Newsdemon support and we ran a traceroute to find that the problem was somewhere with T/W. I asked T/W if they were slowing me down and of course they denied everything. After HOURS on the phone with their techs, I finally gave up. I switched providers to Verizon a few days later and everything has been fantastic. I think T/W just has no concept of how to treat their customers and losing one or two here or there makes no nevermind to them. Too bad.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Sandy, I too got a letter from Time Warner about the new modem availble for faster speeds. A couple of days after receiving the letter I went to the local Time Warner office and requested my new modem. It was given to me without any related instructions and I took it home and connected it.
Prior to connecting the modem I attempted to use the internet using the old modem and it was not available to me. I recalled when I was getting the modem the person helping me scanned something off of the the modem into her computer. I assume when she did that it basically disconnected my old modem.
Upon installing the modem, a screen came up telling about the new modem but I could not connect to the internet. In the letter I had received about the new modem there was an 800 number I could call for assistance. I called this number and was transferred four times, with extended waits on each transfer, until I finally found someone that would assist me. He said, for lack of a better term, he had to “wake up” my modem. Once he did that the modem worked fine.
My wife has an e-mail account as a sub account to mine and when she tried to get her e-mail the next day her e-mail would not work. Once again it was back to an 800 number for assistance. The technician was not rude but made me feel that I should have been able to figure this out for my self. We finally went through the steps necessary to get the account updated and working.
I got a survey to complete after this second round and gave them some feedback as to how poorly their people were trained to assist their customers in this upgrade. I told them with some reasonable instruction it would have saved me a lot of time as well as saving their people a lot of time too.
Hopefully if they roll out anything new in the future there will be some instructions for both their people and their customers.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
SAME PROBLEM WITH CHARTER CABLE
Hi Sandy… Interesting read, especially after just undergoing a 5 day identical ordeal of no cable Internet service with Charter cable. I did all the standard resets of their modem, my router, and the computer all to no avail. Contacting them on 3 of 5 successive days I was told a power pole was down, then a tower was down, then it will be up in 2 hours… Finally, I reached a very knowledgeable tech who had a beautiful Alabama accent and a wonderful personality who ran thru an assortment of testings (same as I had done in previous times with good previous techs)and behold , “The modem is bad, and I’m sorry no one else had previously bothered to do some checking for you”. If it weren’t for her I would already be done with Charter TV and cable Internet.
Not wanting to wait 5 days for a tech to deliver a modem, I obtained one at their local office (driving there since they no longer use local direct phone contact, but make you go thru those agonizing overseas 1-800 number, push all these different buttons and listen to our music and bragging of our wonderful service ads… another story! To make up for the week of lost Internet, and for only a few more cents a month they would supply a digital decoder for the TV and provide a years worth of TV extras….Not! A week later arrived their tech, set up the digtal reception and changed a 20 minute install into a 2 hour install by testing out all the different lines of cable and poor reception causing connectors… He was very nice, pleasant, and apologetic and we made sure he was well hydrated during and after his install time…
Now going to go on vacation and will change to AT&T phone company fiber optic TV and Internet when I get back… already have scheduled the installation. It will be worth a couple bucks more a month for non-interrupted Internet.
One’s patience can only be stretched out so far, before it breaks like a rubber band….. LOL
Just needed to commiserate I guess, and a wish for future success for all of us held captive by Internet suppliers who seem to have lost customer considerations……… Al
June 16th, 2008 at 4:01 am
I searched for \’At&t Phone And Internet Services\’ at google and found this your post (\’Time Warner Update Nightmare\’) in search results. Not very relevant result, but still interesting to read.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I searched for \’Get Internet Service No Home Phone Needed\’ at google and found this your post (\’Time Warner Update Nightmare\’) in search results. Not very relevant result, but still interesting to read.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I read similar article also named Time Warner Update Nightmare, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
July 8th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Hi Sandy,
I too, have had nightmares from dealing with Time Warner Cable’s customer service. I went to their website last week to make a payment on my account. After I submitted my payment it said that it would take from 5 to 7 days to post. I waited about 4 days, then I called customer service to see if or when it would post. They said that they did not have access to pending payments and that I should call back in a couple of days to see. I waited a couple of days and called back. The payment still had not posted, nor was it showing as pending on the website. At that point, I decided to make my payment by phone. So I called the 800 number they give for customer service. I went through the voice prompts which told me that it was FREE to make a payment by phone. After I got a live person and was ready to process my payment, I was informed that there would be a $5 charge to process the payment. I informed him that the message that played before he answered the call said that it was FREE, but that didn’t matter to him. I did not want to pay $5 extra to pay my bill. So I decided to call my local Time Warner office directly to make the payment. They were glad to accept my payment and it didn’t cost me a dime extra!!! My beef is that they do not have a way to track payment processing on their website nor do they have customer friendly customer service. It took me a week to make a single payment on my account.