Oh, Time Warner. My time on this earth will not be a success until I can drive a stake of consumer justice into your cold, megacorporate heart.
I came home from work yesterday and booted up Computapus Rex, my laptop. I tried to check my email and got errors. I tried to browse and got errors. I tried a few other online things, and absolutely nothing worked. I checked all of the normal points of failure: the computer was plugged in, I wasn't trying to boot up the washing machine, I was in the right house, etc. All of the problems pointed to the cable modem. That's no big surprise for me as a Time Warner customer; my cable modem's roughly as sturdy as Glass Jaw Joe in Mike Tyson's Punchout.
I gave it a little while to see if the modem would start working, but I had no luck. I had this great idea while I was waiting. I thought, hey, let's watch tv! I went into the living room and fired up the cable modem. It gasped pathetically and wet its pants.
At this point, I knew my cable situation was totally screwed. And since things were totally screwed and I have no patience for that kind of malarkey, I did the intelligent thing and allowed Laura to handle the problem. I gave her the Time Warner phone number and left the room promptly.
After a few minutes, she came back with news. "It's a problem they have to fix," she said. Of course, of course. When can they come out? "In a week." This is the kind of service that $140 a month gets from Time Warner. Thank God I don't pay $135 a month! We'd be out for a month! Why I oughta!
Time Warner, I know that some people live without high-speed internet and DVRs. I call them hillbillies, and I do not intend to join them. Fix your mess!
When I came home from work today, everything was working again. I'd call Time Warner to inform them, but that would require cancelling our service appointment for next week. A representative is coming out to my house and I'm going to make him crawl around in the attic for a few hours. He will do that until my account is credited. At that point, I will shout "Consumer justice!" and let him go home.
Posted by Cody at December 13, 2007 7:08 PMDirect TV is not any better. When we had it in installed a couple of months ago they estimated it would take 2 hours. Over 8 hours after the technician arrived we had TV! I asked him if we won the record for the longest installation - he said yes - because we were his first job ever! Rock on Direct TV!
Posted by: KC at December 14, 2007 8:45 AMDish Network in the house!!!
Yeah, so once every six months it'll go out for an hour or so because of a mega-storm. I can deal with that.
Phone calls made to Customer Service in the past year: 0
Oh, and I do get the NFL Network and I've never watched a single game on it.
Posted by: Pdiddy at December 14, 2007 9:43 AMRE: Installation stories. A few years back, the Time Warner guy came out to get us all set up at the house. About 10 minutes into it, he asked me how much more of his time I was going to waste. I only wish that could've gone on 8 hours for him!
Posted by: Cody at December 14, 2007 12:16 PM