If you live in Southern California, chances are you have Time Warner Cable for your internet service. Some people don’t even have a choice of providers, it’s Time Warner or no service at all (like that’s really an option).
For the past few months service has been shaky at best and seems to love to go down at about 5pm each night when everyone returns home and starts updating their Facebook profiles. We know we aren’t the only ones that are having serious issues. I’ve seen numerous tweets going out, and there are even a few Twitter accounts set up that just retweet pissed off Time Warner customers, myself included.
Supposedly they are “doing” something about it, but each time I see a Time Warner truck in the neighborhood, there is either a guy sitting and eating a sammich, or a van like this one, that almost took me out while barreling down the street.
How long are we supposed to put up with crappy internet service? Especially since some of us, funemployed included, need it to do our jobs everyday! And the crappy connection isn’t even the worst of it for some. Kevin Pereira, cable television darling and Host of Attack of the Show on G4, had his credit damaged costing him over $1k a month!
Not a week goes by I don’t unplug my modem or reboot my entire house because my Time Warner service is lagged or unresponsive at best. I pay for their fastest service available, which essentially means I’m the first to see error messages when their DNS servers go down. Despite paying for service, I actually use OpenDNS (a free service) because Time Warner’s servers are less than reliable.
These aren’t just white-wines for the sake of complaining. I would GLADLY switch providers, without hesitation, but sadly there is no broadband competition in town. Either I install a phone line and sign up for DSL, or continue using my deplorable Time Warner connection to check if Verizon’s FIOS or AT&T’s uVerse are available in my area yet. Which, they aren’t.
If that’s how they treat their paid in full, top tier customers, I wonder what they will do to us for this post.
Alexia Tsotsis, tech reporter for the La Weekly, has also been receiving the royal treatment. She had a horrible, unexpected visit from the media conglomerate recently. Without warning, and probably after the sammich, Time Warner showed up to shut off her service. Guest posting on Gawker that day, Alexia was not about to give up her service and informed me that she even considered grabbing a knife to keep them off of her cables.
Michael Dorausch, our resident LA Chiropractor, has been having issues like the rest of us for about a month now. One day, after weeks of spotty service, the modem no longer showed connectivity, so he called TW support to have it addressed.
I have a business account (5 IP – 15mb) and as you know connectivity is critical to getting work done. A service rep came out and checked the modem, connection to my building, the pole outside, and ruled it was a bigger issue. Still no service. He said someone would come to service the area in general on July 1. On July 6, I called to see what was up (still no service) and a service guy came out on the 7th. He installed a new modem, and my connectivity went to about 7mb down (better than nothing). What I found most interesting is he said my account had been “deactivated” and that’s why there was no service
So it seems the bottom line is this. Time Warner is either screwing you in the wallet, shutting off your service unexpectedly, or just deciding they don’t care enough to provide you with a service that you are paying for. Maybe they could get it right if they wern’t so busy making a calendar. No really, they made a fucking calendar.
Just in case TWC is unclear on what it is we are all in a huff about, I have made a list of complaints.
- Every 2 months or so they have at least 1 week of useless service, this is LA wide
- Their DNS servers are constantly under a DoS attack because people hate them just that much.
- Hold times suck
- They show up to turn off your service without warning
- The requirements of a contract is bullshit and not fair for a cable provider
- They deactivate accounts without prior warning or reason
Feel free to add to this in the comments. I sincerely hope these issues get resolved quickly, but in the mean time you can always do what my husband does to get service. Plug in an 3G wireless network card from AT&T, yet another fabulous company.
(Photo from NYdailynews.com)
