Snow Cones Now Being Served in Hell (A Blog about Time Warner Cable)

If I were to attempt to log the issues I've encountered with Time Warner Cable's various services since the point in time that I became a customer of theirs almost three and a half years ago (not mentioning the two years I was with them while in college during which my signal was stolen by other tenants in the apartment complex I was renting from), I'd wind up writing an entry to this here site of mine that might rival the length of your average senior thesis and be layered with so much piss & venom that it would rank high in the pantheon of all-time rage inspired blogs.  I don't want to do that, odd as it may seem given my usual rhetoric, because quite frankly I'm bored with the concept of hating them.  It's a bit like a sports team that's so persistently bad that the concept of their massive ineptitude has gone from being a resource of resentment to that of comic relief.

Just to prove my point, I'll describe a situation from roughly a year and a half ago.  I'd just purchased a beautiful Sony Bravia LCD television for our living room and was looking forward to finally enjoying HD programming.  I get my new TV home, plug it in, and almost immediately I begin noticing issues with picture quality on the digital and HD tiers (of course the problem would be with the channels that are supposed to be better with higher-end TVs like the one I'd just bought instead of the analog channels).  The images would become distorted, almost like some kind of absurd cubist artwork - apparently this symptom is referred to as "tiling" to the Time Warner folks as I heard the term used at several points during conversations I had with their technicians.  In the process of attempting to remedy the situation, I went through the following steps:

• Manually reset my receiver myself (I unplugged it, in other words)
• Had my receiver reset by customer service (just for the sake of being redundant, I guess)
• Swapped out the receiver twice
• Changed out the lines coming into the house from the routing box
• Went from an aerial drop to a buried drop

Allow me to expound on that last bullet point.  The phrase "aerial drop" refers to how the cable line feeding our home came off of a telephone pole, traveled through the air (hence the usage of the word "aerial"), and was terminated when it reached the house.  In converting to a buried drop, that aerial cable was removed and replaced with a piece of wire running down the telephone pole, underneath a road, and through the backyard, buried just beneath the surface.  Why do this?  Technically speaking, it's more idealistic because you eliminate the possibility of the line being snapped by way of environmental hazards, some idiot driving an 18-wheeler through a residential neighborhood, or from all the obese pigeons in the neighborhood converging to roost on that one line at the same time. (Fat pigeons - loveable creatures or the newest terror threat?  Film at 11...)

When it came time to perform this conversion, Time Warner (which makes use of independent contractors to handle grunt work like this) dispatched the crew that was to handle attaching the new line to the routing box on the house before they'd sent out the crew to bury the line.  This delayed the process by several days, but it was finally completed and all parties involved hoped that this would be the end of the story.

As ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso would say, "NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!"

The tiling continued despite these efforts.  I made more calls to customer support and they sent out yet another technician.  This particular technician did something the others hadn't in accessing a diagnostic screen by way of the receiver attached to my beloved TV.  He took one look at the readout and exclaimed, "Oh man, that's HUGE!", in reference to a value corresponding to something called video heap.  As I understand it, the issue was that the receiver was getting more data than it knew how to process (buffering gone bad, as it were).  He left the house, went out and checked a transponder in the area and spotted that it was malfunctioning.  It was subsequently replaced and the issue resolved, albeit nearly 2 months after the initial request for service.

[SIDE NOTE: I can't not also mention the fact that at several points over the last few months our services have gone out completely - no TV, no phone, no Internet.  I would call to report an outage and TWC's customer service wouldn't be able to locate any interruptions in their system.  Then, low and behold, a day or so later we'd receive an automated call stating that an outage in our area may have interrupted our service...Really?  You don't say!  Here I'd convinced myself I'd just imagined the whole thing.]

You see what I mean now when I look back on my experiences with Time Warner and how I think of them as a horrible comedy of errors?  A company this large that spends so much effort in promoting the benefits of their wares and yet it takes 2 months and almost a dozen technicians to recognize the root of an issue like this.

I'm sure by now you may be asking, "If this guy dislikes their service so much, why does he still have it?"  Two reasons: 1) Back before I purchased my TV and things were fine I signed up for what TWC referred to as a "Price Lock Guarantee" which amounted to a two year service contract similar to what you see offered by most cellular companies in that there is a fairly high early termination fee involved, and 2) at this point I feel like I kind of have to keep it.  Think of it as if you were building a house.  You encounter issues after construction has begun that require you to go back to the drawing board and re-think parts of your design.  Do you tear down the house and start over?  No, you keep moving forward, onward, and (hopefully) upward with the project.  I'd hate to essentially undo all that's been done by going to another provider because as of this moment our services through TWC are running about as well as they ever have, quite honestly.

A couple weeks after the most recent set of service calls (2 in two weeks for the same issue; it was something relating to the wiring at the pole, and from the way the technician spoke I almost want to believe someone had attempted to steal our signal), I received a piece of mail from TWC that looked unlike any other correspondence I'd ever gotten from them.  I knew immediately it wasn't a bill because of its shape which lead me to assume it might be an advertisement or promotional gimmick.  As I opened it I realized the weight of the paper from which the envelope was made had a decent heft to it, making it feel like it had a certain level of poignancy.  Intrigued, I finished opening the envelope and could then see that the inside of the pocket had been printed purple and emblazoned with their logo, furthering the sensation that this wasn't just another mailer.  Finally, I extracted the contents of the envelope and found this.

"Well if that doesn't beat all...", I thought to myself.  The concept of TWC actually apologizing for the woes of having to deal with their ineptitude was startling.  While I appreciate the sentiment I couldn't help but add this to the pile of unfortunately amusing things they've put into my life.  For starters, a sympathy card is nice however an offer to give us service credits or (Heaven forbid) a discounted rate on our services would've been more appropriate albeit very unlikely.  I have a better chance at being chosen to play cowbell for Metallica than I do at ever seeing money back from Time Warner.

Notice the part in the text about how we'll have access to their elite service teams - they have their equivalent of Navy SEAL Team 6, apparently.  Okay, that's great, but you mean to tell me that up until now I've been dealing with the Gomer Pyle-level service teams?  You've just informed me that you've got a set of guys roaming around out there who are supposedly great at what they do, which is an inadvertent admission that there are others who - either by directive or thanks to their own stupidity, having lost out on the genetic lottery - just kind of half-ass their way through assignments.  For that matter, why doesn't everyone have access to these elite operators?  We're all paying customers, so why should certain of us get preferential treatment when it comes to maintenance issues?

What this whole thing boils down to is persistent frustration.  Not the kind you seek medical-grade pharmacology to treat, mind you - rather the kind that you almost learn to put up with because the root of the matter is something we want to appreciate but can't in some situations.  I think everyone has had a frustrating relationship here or there throughout their lifetime.  A girlfriend you love but refuses to ever see a movie you'd like to watch, a relative who's alright so long as their favorite sports team doesn't let them down in a big game, or even a dog who only ever seems to take a dump exactly where you don't want him/her to do it.  Unfortunately, putting up with fussy technology is oftentimes worse than dealing with similar issues involving carbon-based lifeforms.  For the money we pay, we expect these gadgets to work 100% of the time, and they should because ultimately it's important that we be able to watch new episodes of Big Bang Theory or play Call of Duty via XBOX Live.  What else is there to life, after all, than the content we crave so dearly?