Business & Tech

Are You Satisfied With Time Warner?

The company says they 'regret any inconvenience' caused by last week's outage.

When Time Warner cut a deal with Madison Square Garden to restore Knicks games to local sets, .

But a reported neighborhood-wide outage in Wednesday in Northeast Queens seems to have renewed some ill will against the company. Patch Blogger David R. Yale , and here's an excerpt of a letter from a Patch reader who says she's experiencing other issues:

You may be interested to know that TW also had a "mini" failure [on] Thursday, Feb. 23.  At about 8:30p.m. I was watching Ch 23 and the screen went blank.  I tried Ch 115, that was also blank.  I checked a few other channels at random, and they were OK.  I called TW and the automated operator advised there was technical difficulties in my service area.  About an hour later service was restored. 

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Over the past several months I have had numerous problems with service... I have two cable boxes, one was replaced once and one replaced about three times.  I was experiencing delays in going from channel to channel, frozen channels, i.e., could not move from one channel to another, no sound, and what I was told were pixels on the screen.

Here's a sample of TW sense of humor:  I had TW DVR service installed and knew from friends that there was a booklet available with instructions on how to get full use of the service.  The technician did not have one available and suggested I call the office.  I called three times in a month and did not receive it.  Then, one day I received a large brown  envelope from TW.  I opened it thinking I had my instruction booklet, wrong! it was a laminated card with instructions on how to connect your DVR to your TV.  Well duh, what did I pay TW $40 for?  I finally gave up and photocopied my friend's booklet.

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A spokesperson from Time Warner did not respond to the reader's complaints, but had this explanation for Wednesday's outage;

“At approximately 5:50 pm on February 22, faulty Con Edison power lines burned through Time Warner Cable fiber lines near the intersection of Parsons Blvd. and 45th Ave., causing an isolated service outage that affected some of our customers. Time Warner Cable responded immediately and sent repair crews to the scene, but could not gain immediate access as Con Ed’s repair of power lines took precedence.

Once we gained access, we repaired the damaged fiber line and service was restored at approximately 6:30 am the following morning. We regret any inconvenience this isolated incident caused to our customers.”


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