Time Warner Cable: no followups with customers
An internet connection is to an online experience what a heart is to a body. Without it, you can’t browse anything unless you like saving pages offline. The overall browsing experience has been good since I switched to Time Warner Cable last month. Even though I had an issue earlier this month regarding bad communication from Time Warner, the overall service so far has been nice. Last night, however, the connection dropped without any warning around 9 pm. I tried a few things like restarting the modem, disconnecting the cable wires and changing the settings on the modem and my computer. Nothing worked, so I decided to call Time Warner.
After about an hour and a half of being put on hold, I was told that the support staff could not figure out what the problem was, and that the only way to identify and fix the problem would be to leave my computer and modem turned off and wait for the technicians to come over on Tuesday.
That sounded strange and a bit illogical to me, so I decided to leave the computer on and see if I could fix the issue. I also decided to call again this morning and see if I could get someone to come today instead of Tuesday. After being put on hold again for about 37 minutes, I was finally told that the technicians would call me within 30 minutes to let me know whether or not they could come today. I waited for about an hour for a call that never came through. While I was waiting and changing a few settings on the computer, the connection came back on. Right now, everything is working fine again, and I haven’t heard anything from the technicians who were supposed to call me hours ago.
Had I left the modem and the computer off and waited for the technicians to call me, I would not have known that the connection was back on again. Time Warner has a lot to fix about their communication methods and priorities. First, I didn’t get any notification from them about the updates they were performing earlier this month, and that resulted in an unexpected service interruption. Second, even when I was told that someone would definitely call me, no one did. As a customer, I’m paying not only for the connection but also for being notified about anything that may affect the services I have. When it comes to communication, support, and my experience so far, it seems that Time Warner Cable is not good at notifications, nor is it good at followups about support issues that are critical to a customer.
Customers get multiple notifications from different departments when it comes to billing. How about notifying and keeping in touch with the customers about other things also? How about having a central help system that allows support staff in any department to find out any pending issues that need resolution? A notice could be left in that system marking any issues as either “pending resolution” or “resolved.” That will facilitate the efficient resolution of customer issues and unconventional actions takes by the support staff, such as calling a customer back. Only when someone calls a customer back would such a system allow a support issue of this nature to be marked as resolved. That way, things won’t get lost into thin air that leave the customer wondering “Do they even remember that they were supposed to call me?“
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( December 19th, 2006 at 9:43 am )
LOL about you complaining about their service… It’s just because you’ve just switched to them. You’ll see in about a year or so that it’s perfectly normal. LOL! I’ve had Comcast for 4 years now, and believe me, their service isn’t all that great either. LOL. But I’m glad that your connection went back up! Usually, I’d wait about 24 hours or so to see if my connection would come back up before calling them. I hate calling them because they’d make me restart my computer and do all of these crap, and it still wouldn’t work. LOL.
( December 20th, 2006 at 7:16 am )
Hahaha…. I thought I’m the only one who has problem with this.
If the next time it happen again, and you have some really important things to do, consider whether you wanna sue them for your losses. If you wish so, can call me up anytime. LOL! (sorry, i’m not paying you for my ad here)
( December 20th, 2006 at 11:08 pm )
They are so dumb.
You know what I think my problem was? Apparently the SBC DSL software is so old (this time 2004 was when I got it) that it doesn’t agree with Windows XP Media Center 2005. So apparently that what was crashing the computer. I reformatted, installed Norton - everything was fine until I finished the installation for the DSL. So I restart in safe mode and remove everything that says SBC and then get back in okay. I talk to their chat support. I wait, and wait, and wait to have my turn and then? Um, call this number and talk to someone.
GRRRR.
Dumb internet companies. We are paying them big bucks to screw us and to turn around and shove our money into trying to get rid of net neutrality. They are such a necessary evil!!
( January 1st, 2007 at 9:26 pm )
Chau — > So I should be scared already? :p The 2nd time my connection went down, it was down for several hours and came back up the next day. Their customer service does suggest restarting things even if you tell them you already did that.
How is Comcast for you now, since RoadRunner [Time Warner] bought them too? I heard they are upgrading all California customers to 2 options: either 6 mb download or 10 mb download.
Jerine — > Interesting point. I wonder how many people are considering lawsuits because of such issues, since these issues are coming to surface more prominently now because of TimeWarner buying two other companies, Adelphia and Comcast.
Valerie — > I don’t like using such software. Over time, I got rid of the software that came with SBC and had a connection with no extra software installed.
It is indeed unacceptable for support to tell people who have been waiting for hours to call another number for support. Customers are paying a lot for the service, support and communication, and in the end, many customers end up not getting good results on all of these points.
About Net Neutrality, I think AT&T will make some concessions about it in order to get the SBC merger approved by the government.
( February 5th, 2007 at 10:47 pm )
Add it to the laundry list of terrible Time Warner service. Everyone is worried about other companyies, mainly telecoms with monopolies but TW is a joke compared to them. They really need to hire more people or develop a system that actually works.
http://rezonance.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/time-warner/
( February 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm )
Nathan, thanks for sharing that information and the link.