trinityvixen: (murder)
trinityvixen ([personal profile] trinityvixen) wrote2009-09-28 01:10 pm

Ain't that always the way?

Time Warner Cable can blow me.

Our cable and internet have been out since Thursday. We had someone in our apartment Friday, which should have gone a long way towards fixing the problem, right? Instead, he determined only that the problem wasn't in the apartment, and that someone would need to come back and check the building/street. He left [livejournal.com profile] feiran mumbling something about 24 hours. When she asked, reasonably, "Is that we need to be here in the next 24 hours or are you going to call?" the repairguy said, "Yes." I LOVE HELPFUL PEOPLE.

Over the course of the next 72 hours, I called back once a day to check on this, first on Saturday to ascertain whether or not I was needed to let anyone in. I was told that they would only be doing stuff that would require, at most, the super to let them into the basement or something.

I called back Saturday night and then Sunday when things were still out and got two variations of "Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would tell you that anyone was fixing anything, 'cause I don't see any order to do in the system. Also, you should wait for someone to call you and they'll tell you whether or not you need to make an appointment to have someone come into your apartment. If that's what needs to be done, but hey, we have no idea!"

I called back today to go, "No one called me in the 24-72 hours you said someone would. What, exactly, the fuck is going on?" Turns out there was no paperwork submitted by whoever it was came by on Friday to indicate a) what the problem was; b) where the problem was; and potentially c) that there was even a goddamned problem at all!! So I was told to wait for three days to hear from somebody who would never have known to call me at all because for all they knew, there was no issue! Nothing!

So guess what!? Someone is calling me back in half an hour (yeah fucking right) to schedule something else...possibly! It may mean that I have to go home for the rest of the day and wait on them so they can come look at something in the apartment. But maybe not! At this point, I've heard so many different things--people have to make appointments; this type of person doesn't work on weekends; there's nothing in the system; if it's a construction issue, you might have to wait 5-10 days--that I'm pretty sure every single rep I'm talking to is making it up as he or she goes along.

In the mean time, no cable, no internet. I feel like I'm living in the dark ages here, right down to the routine torture of having to call Time Warner every goddamned day to make them at least type shit into my account status, regardless of whether that does anything or not.

No, really. If the cable giants had to compete for business, they'd have to fix roughly 50% (not all even!) of their stupid-ass consumer relations issues and streamline departments such that they, you know, actually talked to one another. Or else customers would walk. It makes me yearn for something like that North Carolina town cooked up, where some town decided to provide its own town-based ISP. Of course, the service providers immediately moved to enact legislation making such things illegal--probably because they work better, cheaper, and with less bullshit than the TWC and Comcasts of this country. Sigh.

[identity profile] saikogrrl.livejournal.com 2009-09-28 09:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Are there no other options for cable? I hear you complain about these guys several times...

[identity profile] oblvndrgn.livejournal.com 2009-09-28 09:46 pm (UTC)(link)
There are "competitors." You can get DirecTV or Verizon DSL but no cable, so they're not technically considered a monopoly. I thought Cablevision was out there, but it looks like they do Jersey and LI and do their best to ignore the actual city as much as humanly possible.

Is Verizon FiOS available where you are? I'd drop cable for it in a heartbeat if I could get it where I am now.

[identity profile] trinityvixen.livejournal.com 2009-09-29 02:44 pm (UTC)(link)
The options, as are listed below are all sub-optimal. It sounds funny to defend Time Warner after all this bullshit, but they have a monopoly. Which means they're the most effective service in our area. Satellite is impractical, and the internet is not as reliable on a day-to-day basis as cable. (Having had satellite at my parents' place, I know how easy it is for a rainy day to ruin your service. Literally: storms can knock the signal right out.)

As far as I know, Fios is not yet available, so there's no high-speed cable service besides Time Warner in our area. I'd also sooner gnaw through the wall and fix the cables myself than return to DSL. We have...history.

Long and short of it: the American system for providing services like this SUCKS BALLS.

[identity profile] chuckro.livejournal.com 2009-09-28 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Can you get Earthlink? I could when I lived in Brooklyn, but that was also five years ago.

At least this give you time to sort through all of your new mp3s, emulators and cartoons, right?

[identity profile] moonlightalice.livejournal.com 2009-09-29 03:40 am (UTC)(link)
Earthlink actually just rents the cable from Time Warner, so while you pay your bills to them, if you have any actual issues you still have to go through Time Warner. (I had them in my last apartment.)

Verizon DSL is, IMHO, even WORSE than Time Warner. If you can believe it. FIOS isn't in my neighborhood and I doubt it will soon--both TV and I live in ghetto neighborhoods.

[identity profile] trinityvixen.livejournal.com 2009-09-29 02:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I actually begin that process some last night. I wanted to dive into the emulators, but I was burning CDs and didn't want to mess around while that was going on. Good decision, too, as my computer power cord was being even more finnicky than its usual and just about everytime I took it to a new outlet, it stopped working. So I got to spend 40 minutes on the phone with Dell a) trying to get a new one and b) refusing to buy another battery. (I don't use it to travel, and even if I did, having a battery life of 2 hours means nothing to me--if I were to use a laptop outside the house, I'd want it for longer than that, and I'd be on AC power.)

Oh the tribulations of the modern age!

[identity profile] cbreakr.livejournal.com 2009-10-02 05:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Our entire building lost cable and internet from TW for a week and a half, just ending yesterday. Hundreds of apartments, and they send two guys out to look after a week.

[identity profile] trinityvixen.livejournal.com 2009-10-02 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I half wonder if the multiple trucks I've suddenly been seeing over the past week are indicative of a larger problem. Not that they would tell me, though. I still haven't resolved what it is that went wrong or if said problem actually has been corrected or if we're running on a patch or what.

Time Warner sucks, man, is what. I feel your pain.