Tomorrow, Time Warner is coming out to the house to provide me with what I believe to be my fifth one since June. This latest one I picked up on Saturday. They have a big stack of them behind the counter - presumably because so many of them don't work. I cabled it all up on Saturday, and as of Monday, it was working. So I go to watch some TV yesterday, and all I get is "This cable box is not authorized to function. Please call 1-888-whatever." So, I call the number, and the automated thing tells me to reboot the box, so I do that, and hang up the phone. Come back several minutes later, same thing - it doesn't work. So, I call a second time. Cleverly, it knew I was just on the phone with them, so it routed me straight to Milton, a friendly guy who I actually enjoyed talking to. He remotely reboots the thing, and this time, it's worse than before. Got the splash screen on startup, and then it never did anything further. Milton decided it would be best if he sent someone out tomorrow to have a look. I told him that this was the fourth one I've had since summer, and that I was well familiar with where the place was to go get another one. No, no, we should send someone out, maybe it will be something simple. Is it just me? I've got Time Warner, and the cable boxes have all been Scientific Atlanta units, for whatever that's worth.
I forgot to mention that a few months ago, the cable company came out and ran all new wire from the street to my house. They really made a hash of it on that job - they left the gate to the back fence open, and when I let the dogs out, they all escaped. That was an enjoyable night.
I have a couple of words of advice for you, DIRECT TV Best thing I ever did was switching from cable to Direct TV. It has been my experience that Cable TV companies have not run into the 21st century they have been dragged kicking and screaming. They have been consitently behind the curve on TV technological advancements and thus is probably why you have gotten inferior equipment to use. Ok I'm off my soap box now, LOL.
I'll tell you what, I'll trade you Comcast for Time Warner. Then we'll REALLY see the complaints fly. They flat out SUCK.
Don't fret, its possibly the batch that Scientific Atlanta has botched. SA is contracted by Time Warner and most Cable companies to provide boxes to them. SA is now under management from Cisco Systems. I've had the same SA box (model 8000 or 9000 series) DVR for 1 1/2 years now. TW is the better IMHO, since they at least TRY to help out. i had DirecTV for a few months and i didn't like it, the cost was bad.... i was being charged $20 extra per month for my local channels, instead of cutting off the HBO, Starz, Encore, TMC, Cinemax etc after the free 6 months they started charging me for every premium channel..... at one point my bill ended up being $250. my TW bill is a consistent $104 for Digital Phone, Cable, and Internet. HD channels are free
I've been thinking about getting Direct TV or Dish. I'm sick of dealing with Time Warner. How can a company get so big with such bad customer service. Grrrr
JL, I've actually tried them before. If there was a storm out, the TV wouldn't work. I gave it a try for a few months and said the heck with it, I'm switching back to cable.
Was there some sort of news story that they'd actually made a bad batch of them? I missed that. When I was on the phone with them today, I told them to bring more than one out, and that the cable guy was going to stay there in my living room, until he could prove to me that the thing actually worked. Would it be out of order for me to ask for a month of cable for free?
You bet! That is crap that your cable is down all the time. It simply isn't right. Just tell them how many time you have called in, and how many boxes you have. I don't really have time for TV anymore, but I would chew out my cable company if I took a break and wanted to watch some TV, but my cable didn't work. I am slowly purging all the companies that I don't like! I finally got rid of Telus for internet, and got rid of Bell for cell phones. LOL Strangely enough you don't have much choice in Canada as the big communications players are Shaw, Bell, Rogers and Telus, so your chances are that you will end up going back to a company that you just left, but this time around they give you good service.
no, no news story, just speculation since the TW office in my city has been getting new accounts(no older than 2 weeks) that need their boxes replaced you have every right to ask for a free month of service. my boss had problems with his internet and cable going on and off service that he would not pay a penny until the problem was solved... he was bill free for 6 months and had another 6 months free including premium channels for his frustration after the problem was solved
When I moved, I had the HBO, Starz, etc for 6 months as well. Instead of them canceling it, we had to call to have them remove the premium channels. No problems so far except a few lies here and there. It seems on person will tell you one thing and the next will tell you something completely different. Like they lie to you to get you off the phone.
I think TW has a serious system problem. As the dish guys say, TW is limited on HD capacity and they are trying to add bandwidth. They have revamped the code running in the boxes. I never had problems until they were rolling out this firmware with slow to load menu's, pausing at strange times, reboots if you press keys too fast, etc. They push out firmware updates every 2 weeks (you can usually tell if the box is off and the default channel gets reset). They came out and replaced one box once but that did not help much. I think they have a problem and cannot fix it....The boxes may not have the cpu, power, memory, etc. The STB is basically a PC running a version of linux that loads through the cable.
