Time Warner Cable (Long Rant) (1 Viewer)

[CharlesD]

I don't know whether this belongs here oor in the TV section, but I just have to publicly rant about the crappy service I am getting from Time Warner Cable in Johnson County, KS.
I have digital cable from them, and it is terrible. They cram more and more niche channels into it with ever decreasing picture and sound quality thanks to over-compression.
Recently I have been having problems with the digital channels and the program guide dropping out for days at a time. I call up their "customer service" number, and after holding for 10+ minutes (all the while listening to commercials about how great their service is) I talk to a completely cluessless person, who knows NOTHING about ANYTHING remotely connected with cable service. Lately they have taken to also asking impertinant questions about confidential information (such as my social seciurity number) which I refuse to answer... I am sure they get lots of fake service requests :rolleyes
The clueless person then sets up an appointment for me to be at home for some 2-hour period for someone to come by to check on things. Upon asking, they cannot give a reason for why I must be home for them to fix a problem that originates on their equipment. And sure enough both previous times the problem on their equipment is resolved anywhere from a few hours to a few minutes before the technician finaly shows up.
The last time this happened was only last weekend. Digital went out Saturday afternoon sometime, and came back Wednesday 5 minutes before the tech showed up. I asked him if had done anything before coming to my apartment, and he said no but "some guys are working out near the street".
Well tonight, only 4 days later, 15 minutes bfore the only show I actually wanted to watch today (The WRC highlights) it goes out AGAIN. No doubt when I call tomorrow they will again insist that I be home (meaning they won't come out for days) and no doubt someone will jiggle a wire in a junction box somewhere else and it will come back before they even arrive.
Time Warner Cable sucks. If you have alternative to getting cable from them, use it. There is a new service going in here (they are laying optical fiber in my neighborhood right now) that will offer high speed internet (up to 3 Mb/s!!!) phone service and cable for a flat fee. The INSTANT it becomes available to me I will take it because TIME WARNER CABLE SUCKS.
Sorry for the long rant about my petty cable troubles, but if people read this and my experience costs Time Warner Cable at least one additional customer I will be happy

 

[Carl Johnson]

If they are so bad then why not cancel the service? Rabbit ears don't provide very good service either but at least you don't have to pay a monthly bill for something that's substandard.

 

[CharlesD]

Good question. I like things such as HBO (Sopranos) Speed Vision (F1 & WRC) MTV (The Osbournes) and BBC America.. none of which I can get with rabbit ears. But at this point I can't reliably get them with Time Warner Cable either... so you are right maybe I should just cancel their "service" and wait for Everest to get their optical fiber in place.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I've had Time Warner digital cable (Cincinnati OH) for a couple of years, at two different addresses about 10 miles apart. I actually have digital cable on two different sets at once right now.
My service has never been out once, and my picture quality (depending on the channel) matches, exceeds, or greatly exceeds the current picture quality of DISH or DirecTV. I can't tell you how customer service is because I've never had a problem.
Three of my coworkers have it as well with similar success as mine.
I'm sure what you are saying is true, but it may not be the case in all cities (each franchise is independently managed).
I may be dropping them this year if they don't pick up newer HD channels like Discovery, but that's a different story.
Also, I find all Digital Cable and non-HD DBS satellite to be over-compressed. SPEED is certainly not one of the better channels. It looks pretty bad on DISH and DirecTV as well.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Some areas also have a CATV regulatory board can can check to make sure that they don't get out of hand. Make a simple call to the city and ask them if there is such an animal in your area. They come down really hard on them.

Glenn

 

[Todd Hochard]

I've also had great service from TWC. Certainly better than the year+ I was with Dish Network.

Picture quality is substantially better than Dish (on all channels), and I get EIGHT HD channels (including PBS national HD feed). The box didn't cost me a dime, which is the best part.

I'm hoping they pick up Discovery HD in June, as they've been very aggressive in adding HD channels up to this point.

They might need to look inside your home, to check the integrity of the internal wiring. Noisy wiring will ruin a digital cable signal.

Todd

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I am determined to be the last customer with analog cable in the Milwaukee area! It's a test of wills! They keep calling me offering digital cable and some deal on a movie channel or two, and I ask 'em "Oh? What's on tonite?"
"Well um, tonight they're showing 'Porky's', sir"
Then I usually laugh and hang up.
I don't watch TV enough to make it worth it. I've noticed they are starting to move the PPV channels to digital only as a form of leverage to get people to switch.
They'll never take me alive. They'll have to pry my analog box from my cold, dead fingers.

 

[Mike OConnell]

I also live in Johnson County, KS. I have the basic cable service, the step above lifeline service, but it is not digital and I also have the Roadrunner Cable Modem Service.

I had some problems with billings about one-year ago and ended up going into the office on 119th Street to get it sorted out, but I have never had loss of my service (even during the recent ice storm) in over seven years.

Sounds like your area of town has some problems that may not be experienced all over the county.

I live near 140th and Nall in OP.

Mike

 

[Todd Hochard]

I'm hoping that in a few years, they'll simply shut off the analog cable channels, and give everyone a digital cable box.
The analog channels are bandwidth hogs, and in my area, they don't look any nicer than the digitals. Why not make them all digital? They could then add another 150 channels that have nothing good on.
If you've got an analog cable box, I don't see the aversion to digital. Unless, of course, your cable company is like my father-in-laws (Comcast in southwest FL)- "digital cable for just an additional $14.95/mo." TWC doesn't charge any extra for it (other than a couple of bucks for the box).
Todd

 

[JasonS]

Charles,

Just feel lucky you get Time Warner. I'm out in Spring Hill, and our only option is Classic Cable. Seems like every other channel is fuzzy, and I'm paying $38 a month for roughly 35 channels. I've been thinking of a dish, but I want the standards(NBC, ABC, CBS) to be available.

 

[Larry Geller]

TWC here in New York is the BEST cable company on Earth (especially compared with Cablevision right next door in Long Island, which won't provide Yankee games at present). Their digital quality is excellent, customer service is very responsive, and THEY PROVIDE AN HDTV BOX FOR ABSOLUTELY NO EXTRA CHARGE!!! Just goes to show you how variable things can be from area to area.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

I won't be happy until TWC of Carthage, NY will allow me to buy multiple channels of televison from Hong Kong, Germany and Mexico. Since it's all beemed-around by satellites anyway, I want the very-best second rate programming the world has to offer! I have a credit card, why am I disallowed Viva la Fiesta! MTV-Berlin and the chinese game-show that involves people in bunny suits hitting randomly selected audience members with eggs!
America rocks, But until we nudity in childrens shows, an MTV which doesn't suck (or at least play something that resembles rock & roll), or gameshows that make "Street Smarts" look like Gone with the wind, we shall never lead the world in the entertainment medium known as "cable TV".
-Thank you

 

[Hugh M]

just the fact that digital cable for time warner means only adding digital channels in digital format, is preventing me from ever paying them to subscribe to that service.

They should let it be known that only the channels that you don't have with analog, will be digital..

satelite is all digital, and if you live in an area which seldom sees heavy clouds and storms, you can't go wrong with satelite.

time warner was gouging me $80 a month for basic cable, and roadrunner cable modem. Shitty service and no break on the price.

told them to give me the lifeline channels ony at $10/month, and I'll get a satelite and receive great signals, lots of channels for $40/month.

 

[Carl Johnson]

I would like to have cable tv but as high as the rates have gotten I can't justify doing it. I would condiser doing a dish but i'm too cheap to get a landline phone so I'm stuck with 2.5 channels via rabbit ears. Fortunately I have my two favorite shows (The Sopranos, Powerpuff Girls) on DVD so I'm not really missing out on much

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Hugh,

I'm sorry about your bad experiences. Maybe your local affiliate isn't very good.

Some of us have very good picture quality from our cable system, better than either DirecTV or DISH, which have very distracting compression artifacts on large screen TVs. I speak from experience...I have an HDTV, and I have had DirecTV before.

 

[Todd Hochard]

I would condiser doing a dish but i'm too cheap to get a landline phone

When I had my Dish Network system, I didn't hook up the phone line for months. AFAIK, it's only necessary for PPV purchases.

 

[Greg Rowe]

...At least TWC doesn't send you "past-due" notices for cable that you NEVER ORDERED. They tried to tell me I owed them well over 100$ for cable that I never ordered. They lied to me and told me a technician was in my apartment. I asked for the work order papers that I would have signed if they were there. They then changed their tune and said my service was turned on "office only" - meaning they just started billing me with out me even asking for cable. In addition I got past due notices with out even getting a normal bill!

...And this took over 3 months to clear up. This was a major PIMA.

Greg

 

[Alex Spindler]

I'm also in the Overland Park area (135th and Nall). I certainly see the digital compression on the niche channels, but my frequent travellings have been on channels that receive fair service. Of course, I pay through the nose to get all the premium channels, and as long as you stick to the big ones (HBO, Max, Starz), the service is pretty good. But the smaller premiums like the Action/Mystery/etc and TMC get short shrift.

BTW, I had the same menu problem and I had to disconnect the power to my box and reconnect it. It was okay after that. Seems they make a change and you lose sync until you reboot the box.

 

[CharlesD]

I have become expert at re-booting the box.. you can also press and hold the power button until it says 'boot' on the display, this sometimes fixes things, but not always. Sometimes unplugging it and leaving it off for 30seconds will help also.
I do get HD channels (2HBOs and PBS) for no extra charge and they can look absolutlety stunning. All 78 (or whatever) of the regular HBOs come in fine, but many of the digital tier channels look like crap.
I can't wait for Everest to finish laying their fiber in my area so I can switch to them!
For the record I have now had un-interupted service for almost 3 days! woo-hoo!

 

[MickeS]

America rocks, But until we nudity in childrens shows, an MTV which doesn't suck (or at least play something that resembles rock & roll), or gameshows that make "Street Smarts" look like Gone with the wind, we shall never lead the world in the entertainment medium known as "cable TV".

CharlesD, I had a similar problem with Cox Cable here, but it was only the sound.
On about 10 channels, the sound would only come out of the left speaker. I call them up, and they insist on sending a guy out (of course thay have the damn 3 hour window, why can't they just set an appoinment like other companies... oh well).
The guy comes out, measures everything and it all checks out, but the sound on those channels is still only in the left speaker. After explaning to him that I have checked all connections, even replaced my receiver and VCR with another receover and VCR, he decides to give me new audio cables, and hope that fixes things. It doesn't of course, so he puts in a "service request", which basically was a way of saying "I don't know what's going on, maybe some guy above me does".
Another guy comes out a few days later, he doesn't know what it is either. I go through the same thing, no fix. He puts in another service request, another guy comes out a few days later, same result. Guess what he does? Yeah, he puts in another service request. It's now been over 2 months since I first called about it.
This time though, the service request went to a guy that actually seemed to know what he was doing. He came out, I explained the situation to him, and he made a phone call to the "command central" or something.
It turns out that the problem wasn't in my house, not in my neighborhood, or in my part of town. Apparently every Cox Cable customer in Tucson had this problem, because there was a control in the command central that was set incorrectly. I'm guessing that most people don't get the sound through speakers set as far apart as mine, but from their TV-speakers or something, and that's why it hadn't been discovered before. A few minutes after the guy made the phone call to the command central, the audio was fully functioning again...
So, the point is.... eh, what was the point... oh yeah, that all cable companies suck, not just Time Warner.
/Mike