If you have Time Warner cable or internet service, you know how downright awful this service is. Just moving to a new apartment six blocks down the road led to the girlfriend and I having to wait at the apartment four days while they first brought us this awful Moxie box from 1997, and then brought us a Motorola box that wouldn’t show us the channels, to On Demand never working.. and most recently, to when we bought an HD TV and told them that we wanted them to bring the HD box over. They arrived, hooked up the box, and didn’t even bother to mention that we didn’t have HD DVR, so that’s another day of waiting around the apartment for them.
Well fuck that. I’m switching to DirecTV. No this isn’t an advertorial for DirecTV, I just see their dishes on the balcony of every apartment building around me, and I saw a commercial that says they have 85 HD channels.. oh and they get NESN, and I need to see the Red Sox.. AND I need to be able to DVR those games in HD, which they also offer apparently.
I’m still shopping around for high-speed internet options in Southern California, but again, Time Warner has got to go. I’ve had the internet go down at too many crucial times to bother with it anymore, and now add the fact that they’re looking to start charging customers based on bandwith. This is ridiculous, long gone would be the days where you see your friends sitting on your buddy list saying they’ve been idle for 18 hours.
Time Warner Cable makes you actually have to consider the fact that their customer service is just really really, unforgivably bad. Customer Service experience never enters my mind unless I’m at a Target in a sketchy area. Even then, I just wait patiently as the cashier talks to her friend on the phone while she scans my items. That’s fine with me, that experience is over and I’ve forgotten about it by the time I get to my car. Time Warner Cable, however, makes it impossible to forget how bad their customer service is, because you will never, EVER, have a positive experience with them. Whether it be the mind-numblingly dumb customer service rep that ensures you that everything is a-ok with your cable and then it’s just flat-out NOT, or the “contractors” that they allow to go to their customers’ homes to perform service work. My favorite of these contractors is the buddy teams that come out and watch rap videos or stunt bloopers on YouTube, “to make sure your high speed connection is working.” Oh snap indeed.
The fact that Time Warner is the worst service that ever was is not a new revelation. I wish someone had handed me a Welcome To California brochure that told me the last thing I should do is sign up for Time Warner Cable, but that didn’t happen. Let’s not forget the big class action suit against Time Warner Cable by, well us. I, like plenty of others new to LA, signed up for the seemingly convenient all-in-one cable/internet package through this awful, awful company. But people have been complaining about Time Warner Cable for a while now. GearBits was complaining back in 2005. The ISPGuide had a thread about how awful Time Warner’s internet service is, also back in 2005. Bloggers like myself, AnyIon , Sara Morrison, Brendoman, and KelliAmanda, have remained silent for a while, but it’s time everyone is made aware of this, and you KNOW your company is in trouble if there’s a Yelp page tearing you apart.
For even more grips about Time Warner Cable’s suckage, see this page on Consumerist.
If anyone has any tips on good deals for high-speed internet, that isn’t looking down the road of idiocy toward charging by bandwith, let me know. I want to be as far away from Time Warner Cable as possible.
