I hate Time Warner!

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I am sure that I will probably be joined on this thread...lol

I live in an area where we are held captive to what cable station you can get. We have no choice. I cant even get DSL because the wires wont reach my house. I used to have satellite for tv but we couldnt get anything but dial up internet back then. I cant imagine going back to that.

Time warner has been promising to come down my road for probably the last 7 years and they finally did about 2 years ago. In the beginning my bill was right at $110 a month. I was thrilled. My satellite bill averaged about $70 a month and the dial up was $10. I didnt mind paying the little bit extra to get the internet even though I lost a few channels but I got dvr even though for the first year I lost HD because they didnt bring me HD boxes. I finally realized that the reason I wasnt getting HD was the boxes were wrong and I went to my local office and complained and they sent a guy out to my house to exchange boxes which actually cost me 10 bucks if you can imagine that. I tried to just exchange them there but they claimed not to have any onsite. Im sure that was a racket.

Well from the very beginning we have had problems. We would drop channels intermittently, the channels would have snow or look like a satellite does when it storms but cable shouldnt do that and it happens even when the weather is fine. I eventually got what is called "whole house" dvr because it was on special and they said it would only cost me 10 bucks more a month but I could record more stuff on any of the boxes and watch it in any of the other rooms. Oh what a lie! I can record in my room and never pull the stuff up in the living room because it says the network is busy.

We have called these people over and over again and they come out and say various things. One time it is some box on the pole. Other times its a transponder somewhere. Other times its a kink in a line somewhere. Then its that we are at the end of the line and they need to put a booster. We get all kinds of excuses. Finally in September I had enough and I went into my local office and complained in person. I told the woman at the desk that I had dropped one of my favorite shows several times in a row and missed the season ending shows and they werent on demand and I was ticked off. I wasnt paying my full bill and I expected a credit on that bill. She said she didnt blame me and she would document my account and I could pay $130 for that month. Well she didnt document my account and the next month they had me as having a late fee and owing 20 more dollars on top of the late fee. I was livid. I called them up and we went the whole go round. I refused to pay it again. I did pay the current bill but not the late fee and the 20 bucks. I have done that several times now. Well we keep building. Today I called and the woman was rude as hell and one of her things is how the guy came out in November and found out that one of the things that was wrong was that one of our cable boxes was bad and that he had replaced it but that I hadnt made any other complaints since September. If things had been that bad, why hadnt I been complaining every week from Sept through November? Ummm, I have been complaining every month since I got cable, I get tired of calling Time Warner every day! Also I am assuming things are going to be fixed at the end of the month when my bill comes out. They keep telling me they are fixing it when I talk to them. So when she gets all argumentative with me I tell her I realize she cant do anything for me and to transfer me to her supervisor. She puts me on hold for 25 minutes and I never got a person. Not even music. Just blank air. She tells me there is no notations in my file of any calls or anything that anyone made any comments to me. Well that doesnt mean they talked to me. Just they didnt write anything down.

If I could change cable companies I would but they are the only game in town. I know no one else will be coming in too because around here cable companies have blocks where only one company is allowed to offer service. Its awful. We are held hostage. Other places have a choice of companies they can go with so the cable companies fight to keep their customers and offer good service. Time warner could care less. They will screw you in a minute.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
I haven't had any problems like that with TWC - not with the cable working/not working (although the digital phone sometimes has issues - my mom has had a lot more of those than I have and has had people out regularly who put a bandaid on it) and not at all with customer service. I've been with them for at least 18 years. They're just expensive as hell. To get my bill even as low as yours I'd have to drop phone service, most cable channels and all but one cable box and it wouldn't be DVR. I'm actually getting rid of my phone and cable and just keeping the internet because I can't afford it.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
When you call, as soon as you get a person and before you make a complaint, ask the person for their name and extension or another way to identify them. That way you'll have a way to identify them so if your account isn't noted again, you can say I talked to so and so at extension 12345 on this day at this time. Just tell them that your cell phone is having issues and you need to have a way to reach them if your phone cuts out during the call or something.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Oh its not that low now. They have jacked it up to over $170 a month now and cant for the life of them explain to me why. I dont have their phone service. I just have cable and internet and they keep telling me I have some sort of special "incentive plan" that I was given to keep me with them. Yeah really. Right now they are offering people $99 bucks a month and a $150 visa card to Best Buy to come aboard. I want my Best Buy card! My cable has been out all night long but do you think they would give me a credit for it? Oh hell no.

If I call Spring and complain that my phone is out for 2 days they give me at least 10 bucks off my bill. My Sprint phone wouldnt work from my house for 2 and a half weeks because someone hit the tower closest to my house. It was a pain in the butt. Now Tony and Billy could use their phones when they were at work and we could text from the house but we couldnt call or receive calls at the house. If we needed to do that we had to drive about 5 miles away. Sprint cut my bill by a third for that month. They didnt rely on me to call them either. They texted me every 4 days to ask me how my service was coming along and to let me know what the prognosis was for when they thought my phone would come back online from home. I would have got even more money off but Tony was able to use his phone during the day and since Cory's phone isnt at my house, his phone wasnt effected. Now they took customer service well into account I felt. I wasnt expecting that amount of credit to be honest. All I wanted from TW was 20 lousy bucks but they have grown the stupid thing to 50 now because they keep adding on late charges to it so I am really fighting it now. They are making me mad.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
Mine is $240 a month and I don't have the whole house DVR thing. Getting rid of everything like I said above - the phone, most cable chances, and all cable boxes but one and it wouldn't be DVR would get me down to around $150. And, yeah, I saw that commercial, too, and was very annoyed.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
They told me if I got rid of whole house, kept 3 cable boxes with only one doing dvr then it would be 154 a month. Thats what I am going to do. Billy can figure out how to record his shows on his computer. I am going to tell Billy he is going to have to start kicking in another 50 bucks a month towards the bills because they have just gone up so much. His 150 doesnt even cover food. He comes home at night after we go to bed and we have told him time and again to turn out the lights in the kitchen. We turn them off when we go to bed so he has to turn them back on and it never fails that when either Tony or I get up in the night that the lights are left back on. Sometimes it happens twice! I have gotten up to go out and get drink and turned the lights back off and then I find out the next day that he has gone out and turned them back off too! That means at some point Billy has gotten up between us to either make more food or gotten something to drink and left the lights on. And we do leave one light on in the pantry at all times so you can see enough to get around. I dont even need to turn a light on when I go in the kitchen when I go in there. Just to make a drink I can see well enough from the light from the pantry.

My power bill runs over 180 a month at the very least in the winter and goes up to around 300 in the summer. My food bill averages at least 150 at the grocery store and that doesnt include the couple of times we eat out. We get take out at least once a week and that is bringing Billy home a plate of chinese food. His plate is almost 10 bucks each. I have stopped buying his "special diet foods" because I think it is just a bunch of bs. He has decided over the last several months that he cant eat cheese and cant drink milk. This is the boy who used to eat 2lb blocks of cheese in a day or two. He would go through whole gallons of milk. Suddenly he wants to say he cant eat it anymore. I simply cant cut staples like that out of our meal preparations. We eat cheese in a whole lot of things. We make mac n cheese. We make grilled cheese sandwiches. Cheese is a cheap filler. He also claims he cant eat eggs. My mother told him when he was a toddler he was allergic to them so he grew up not eating them and now he cant stand them. Well he isnt allergic to them or he wouldnt be able to eat things like cake or bread or even pudding. He eats all those things.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Sounds as if someone is stealing your cable service. When they tap into your box it creates snow periodically, bad picture reception, and dropped channels. I loathe TWC but they at least told me that much and came out and fixed it twice. (twice because 2 different people decided to leech my service for themselves)

Their pricing is horrible, their customer service is worse (ours is a teeny better simply because we're so small a town).

We had TWC for a short while due to some issues with AT&T. TWC's phone service positively REEKS. I had no phone service more than I had it. 3 yrs and they couldn't figure out the issue. ugh

Dropped them and went back to satellite and AT&T. Cheaper and better service.

Why don't you look into satellite again and see what they're internet rates are while you're at it? I think the added cost would be worth losing the aggravation of dealing with TWC and you'll actually get what you're paying for.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
We cant get satellite internet out here. At least that is what they told us. In order to do that we would have to be able to get dsl and we cant get that. To get the actual satellite internet you also have to have another satellite and that costs a boatload of money and the speed is not that much better than dial up. I think its called Frontier net.

I have thought about switching back to satellite and keeping the internet only on time warner but no where on their website can you find out what the cost is for internet alone! They dont put prices up so you can compare plans. I think that is absurd. They also dont tell you what their packages are or what channels they have. They are complete scammers.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I have to agree that they're complete scammers. Did you know your "bill" is actually a month paid in advance? So when they cut you off it's for services not even yet rendered. I've had them (in the past) attempt to charge me after dropping them but I flat out refuse to pay. When they argue I tell them I'll see them in court as you can't charge someone for services not yet rendered when they're no longer a customer. Used to tick them off in a huge way, but they wiped it off every time. I bet their new service agreements have it covered now though. lol

Used to be TWC was the only thing available in our area. Worst yet, if you wanted to watch tv, you had no choice but to use them as due to the hills and such antennae reception in this area blows wind. At least in dayton I could opt out and just use an antennae for local channels. I literally jumped up and down when we found out satellite had become available.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
I have standard internet (none of that super high speed, gaming type internet) and internet alone with fees and taxes is going to be about $60 a month. And that was from the second person I talked to. The first person said it was going to be $70 a month.

I'm getting rid of cable and am going to have a subscription to hulu and netflix - it will be $16/mo for both. With those I should be able to watch almost all of my regular shows - some will just be a season behind (the ones that come out on netflix are a season behind).

But other than one or two people over the years, I've been very happy with TWC's customer service. I wonder if it's a regional issue.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I dropped TWC like a hot potato about 2.5 years ago... I had set up our service so we had long distance blocks, local calls only, basic cable, basic broadband internet. Locked it in. Then I started not getting bills - and then I would see that they were being mailed on or after the due date (could prove by postmark)! My payments, even when they were before the due date, would be posted to my bank account (check cashed) but not my TWC account for a week or sometimes two making them late. Then random long distance charges started showing up - when no one was even home - including overseas calls! I argued myself silly with them. In 2008 with the windstorm out service was out for 3 weeks and no credit was issued at all. BBB and PUCO wouldn't do anything. As soon as the contract period was up I wrote them a civil but nasty letter about their "locked in rate" and "extra charges" and terminated service. Went to U-Verse. Who came out on Memorial Day to fix a DVR issue that turned out to be my fault and never charged me for the oops. I've never had any problems with their customer service either and the internet has only gone out once, for about 5 minutes.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I dont have anything like the movie stuff...couldnt care less. If I want a movie I will download it off the internet. I have to have local channels because of racing and football. I also have to be able to get Redzone during football season. That is an absolute must for me. I dont think I can do that with Hulu or Roku. I can with satellite though. Now why in heavens name is internet so high with Time Warner when not long ago I saw it advertised for something like 20 bucks? No more than 25? Its not like need Roadrunner, I dont have it now!

Right now the only thing I have is basic, digital and HD. I would be perfectly happy to give up digital and just keep basic and HD. And I dont need all those music channels and movie channels on there I never use. Even when they unblock them for a week or two, I never use them. The only reason I wanted HD is finally we have all HD TV's in my house and I might as well actually use them...lol.

Lisa, we cant catch any signal at my house over the air here either. Cory lives about 5 miles from me and cant afford even basic cable and he has absolutely no TV at all. The only thing he can watch is DVD's. He cant get a Roku or Hulu because cable doesnt even run out to his house. Not that he could afford it. What really irritates me is that the rooming house Buck lives in he gets free basic cable he turned on the cheapest cable package with the box for a few months but couldnt afford to keep paying for it and had to cut it off. He took the box back but they never came out to disconnect the wires so he still gets free basic cable from the wire that comes into the house and he attaches to the back of his TV. Again he gets something for nothing. He knows all the ways to scam the system.
 

flutterby

Fly away!
Those commercials where you see internet so cheap are introductory packages for new customers only (which annoys me to no end) and have a time limit on them - anywhere from 3 months to a year, then they go to regular price. I had a bit of sticker shock when they told me how much internet is on it's own. Usually, your bill goes up and you call them and they find some other kind of bundle, but it's never anything like the introductory bundles for new customers only - or customers they are trying to steal back from satellite, I guess.
 

Lothlorien

Active Member
What about getting hughes net? It's a satellite internet system for people in rural areas. I don't know the cost or anything else, but it might be worth looking into.
I have Directv and cable for internet. I have VOIPO for phone.....love them. $149 for the box...hook it up to my internet and I don't get another bill for 2 years. The best thing about them is that I can forward telemarketers and other unwanted callers to a list of funny or annoying phone numbers or they'll get a busy/diconnect signal everytime they call.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
here we can only get one company for tv unless you get satellite tv. You can get internet through the tv company or at&t or sprint or whatever, but those end up being a LOT mroe expensive. When we lived even further out than our old house for those 3 mos or so, we had no tv, no phone but cell phones and no internet. The internet was the big problem because husband teaches computer stuff. so he spent about 3-4hrs a day at the local bookstore and his cafe bill was HUGE. Esp because he took the kids and got them hooked on mocha frapps. He would then gritch about the cost and I would laugh and laugh at him.

You can watch the current season's shows on many of the network's websites. Xfinity.com also has most of them and is far more reliable than CBS (CBS has a terrible internet setup for videos - very glitchy). You can't get every show, but you can get many of them. They may only be available for a week or two, but the new episodes don't run that often on tv anyway.

We looked into satellite internet and ti was going to be about $230 per month AFTER some federal grant paid the setup and equip fees. This was the CHEAPEST. THe so called unlimited mobile hotspots would only run 1 computer and husband and are both comp junkies. The $230 was also for EACH computer. It was one of the major reasons we moved into town. Now we don't pay nearly that, and we don't spend a fortune on gas either. More for shopping and books, lol!
 

Hopeless

....Hopeful Now
I haven't read the thread just the heading and want to say I agree lol.....I am on the chat with them now and they are idiots. I chat for one issue and now I have more issues with his suggestions....ugh.

He said I can reset your box now. I said no thanks good bye
 
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