MY CABLE AND INTERNET PROVIDER

With so many horrid things going on in the war, why shouldn't I spend some time and comment on something really trivial.

My professional contact with the cable business has been limited to dealing with cable networks, like Lifetime, HBO or TNT.

In amongst my media peer group, going back many years, we would disparage cable companies in a variety of ways. We would joke about cable by asking questions like: "Please tell me, what cable is?" The answer; "cable companies do not answer their phones, they send bills for too much money that no one understands, and most of all, they somehow do not think that it is there responsibility to repair their service when it does not work."

That definition worked almost thirty years ago, and it continues to be valid today.

When I moved to Beverly Hills almost twenty years ago, my cable provider (or provider once in a while) was the disastrous Century Cable Company that morphed into Adelphia Cable. Adelphia was recently acquired by Time Warner, a small sized media company. (OK, so it is a GIGANTIC media company, the largest in the world if you are keeping score) but their service leaves much to be desired. They have been integrating Adelphia along with some former Comcast systems into Time Warner Cable, (TWC), slowly and badly.

I will not whine in detail at this time, but during the TWC take over period, a lot of bad stuff has gone on that has left me without a variety of services that I count on in my daily life. Mostly I have experienced internet connectivity issues, and not getting incoming email messages, or not knowing if my outgoing messages were being sent.

I contacted TWC, and they would ALWAYS blame me and my faulty computer, and suggest that the lack of service was MY FAULT, and that I should have my computer fixed. This unnecessary work cost me about $300 a couple of months ago and $100 this week, and the difficulties were in fact the fault of TWC. They spent several days blaming me because the people I spoke to DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THER OWN PROBLEMS.

I lost the majority of my email service for 6 days, and a series of calls to TWC ALL ended with them asking me to check on my computer "settings" which I did six or seven times. When at last I spoke to a supervisor on Sunday (MY SIXTH OR SEVENTH CALL), I insisted that they check further, and this person went away for a few minutes and returned with the news that they were having server issues that they had been unaware of regarding email, and that they expected to have it repaired WITHIN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO!

The next day I called TWC again, and I gave up holding after 15 minutes in that I expect that they had nothing new to tell me. I phoned the City Of Beverly Hill Cable line and they told me that a TWC person would call me to expedite the solution to my problem.

Fifteen minutes later, a young lady called "from the office of the President of TWC," and she went on to say that someone would call me to hear specifics of my problem within forty eight hours. She was shocked when I told her that forty eight hours was unacceptable. I asked to speak to her supervisor, and she told me that she was "in the office of the president" and that there was "no higher authority."

I spoke to someone else at TWC who called me as a result of my incessant whining, and she, as everyone else, said that someone would be in touch with me... within 48 hours, and that is what appears to be the magical number at TWC.

A TWC service person visited me along with MY computer person, and the conclusion is that all of the emails that I have not received are gone forever, and I can only hope that the system will perform better in the future. When the TWC person called his office, he ALSO received a message that there were server problems effecting email delivery.

Technology stuff breaks at times, but TWC should have the infrastructure to notify their customers when they call, and repair it expeditiously.

While I certainly am not familiar with the inner workings of Time Warner, I have worked for operating divisions of several major entertainment companies. I sadly assume that TWC is trying to squeeze every nickel of profit from their systems, and in that most of their customer base can not migrate to other suppliers, they can behave anyway they like, and not be prepared to handle these situations.

TWC should have enough people to service their franchised customers, who for the most part are captive customers, at least for cable, and that the "we will get back to you in 48 hours to listen to you tell us what is wrong," will not be an acceptable answer. I go nuts at the incessant waits, "press one if your Mother did not love you" stuff. "Bigger" in these situations should be "better," but sadly it isn't.

There was is no urgency to my problems at TWC as there is no P&L pain associated with their lack of service. Sadly, the City of Beverly Hills has no franchise authority as it pertains to TWC email business, and I think that if they did, I would get much faster and better responses from TWC.

If TWC were to pay a $10,000 fine for every verifiable outage day, I expect that problems like mine would be ameliorated quickly. They are not at any financial risk with any individual, and that their customers only high speed internet delivery alternative would be the lesser service available from ATT&T, not an exciting alternative.

What a "pain in the ass" all of this is.
I expect more from Time Warner.

Norman Horowitz
Not a happy camper