I have both commercial and residential internet cable accounts with Time Warner. Both accounts were originally with Comcast. The reliability and service has been horrible for both accounts ever since I started with them a year ago. It has been Time Warner for the last few months and nothing has changed. Although I have many horrible stories for both accounts I have not bothered to document them until the most recent problem with the commercial account.
As I drove to the office I saw someone working on a telephone poll. I have had lots of issues so I tried to see who it was but was not able to make out the truck logo. I arrived at work on July 26th at 7:30AM. Our internet connection was completely down. I reset the modem and firewall. Still down. I immediately called Time Warner. They quickly verified that they were unable to access my modem. I asked if there was an area outage and surprisingly they verified there was. I asked what the ETA for restoration was but since it was before 8AM and some other office was closed he was not even able to tell me if any techs were even working on the problem. I decided to drive back to the person working on the telephone poll. Sure enough it was a Time Warner van. I got out and started to talk to the tech. He informed me that my area was being upgraded today and that my Internet service would be down until around 4PM. This is not a residential internet account. This is a commercial internet account for a business that happens to be an internet based retail business which will have no internet access from 7:30AM until 4PM on Thursday. It would actually be less disruptive and easier to work around if the phone system went down all day.
I find this incredible.in summary:
1. They are taking my internet connection down for an entire day in the middle of the week on a commercial account with no advance warning or notification.
2. When I call tech support they have no knowledge that my area is being upgraded. I have noticed before that various departments within Time Warner will have no knowledge of what other departments are doing but this is beyond belief.
Now this is not the end of the story. On Friday July 27th at about 5:30 PM the internet connection goes down again. I call tech support and they verify that my connection is down. Since it is after hours they are UNABLE to schedule a service call and tell me I just need to call in Monday morning. I complain that this is unacceptable and that this account is for an internet based retail business and it is needed during the weekend. He places me on hold and much to my surprise when he comes back he says that they are sending the on-call tech to my location but he cant tell me when. At about 7PM I call Time Warner back and to verify the tech is still coming out tonight. I am told there is no record of my earlier call and nothing in the system indicates that I have a problem let alone a service call. While I am on the phone with him my internet connection happens to come back up so I end the call. 5 minutes later the tech shows up. My connection is back up so there is little for him to look at. He said it might be related to the upgrade that might still be in progress but doesn't really know. He calls someone at Time Warner and has them do some testing and they say that although my connection is up, their noise on the line. He tells me he will have a line tech come out on Saturday.
Sunday morning the connection is still up but Saturday afternoon at around 4:30PM it is down again. Again I call tech support. Again they verify they can not talk to the modem. Again I am told they cant schedule any work because it is the weekend. Again I complain, again they tell me the on-call tech will come out. I give them my cell phone and tell them I will be 10 minutes away and to call me when they are near. It is now 8PM. The connection is still down and I have not heard anything from them.
At least 3 or 4 other times I was part of an area outage they were unable to confirm that and always scheduled a service call. Usually my internet just comes back up again and I never hear anything. Once they sent the tech out and he said I dont understand why they sent me out, this area is under an outage. At my residence it is worse. I call up and they will schedule a service call between 2-7 days later. The tech comes out and checks my modem and finds nothing wrong and says I need a line tech. Usually they schedule the line tech but once they didnt and I had to get the regular to come out, recheck the modem and then schedule the line tech. Once the line tech just replaced a connector on the line from my condo to the condo distribution panel. Other times I never hear anything. Some times the connection comes back on its own before they do anything. Other times they claim to made some adjustment and my connection will be up for a couple months.
Why do I have cable internet? My commercial space is too far from the central office for DSL to work and I don't have a land phone line at home.
Mark
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.
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