Emailed to:
Scott Miller: (scott.miller@twcable.com)
Randall Wells: (randall.wells@twcable.com)
Derrick Moore: (derrick.moore@twcable.com)
Office of the President: (twc.cotp@twcable.com)
Scott, Randall, Derrick, and Office of the President
After being a Time Warner customer for almost three years you'd think I'd have gotten used to a piss-poor product and a sad excuse for customer service, but no. I still manage to be appalled, yet somehow impressed at the fleet of bumbling idiots your company manages to employ.
I'm going to ignore the fact that we've had 3 years' worth of problems with TWC and focus on just this one issue.
Last week, we made an appointment to have an installation done in the apartment we moved into last Thursday. We waited patiently until today, the next available appointment date. We set up the slot for 2PM-5PM & waited patiently. Since this apartment requires special attention, our landlord needed to be here, too, to supervise & assist with the installation.
2PM & 5PM came and went and not a peep was heard from TWC. We called customer service & spoke to a guy named Greg who was moderately helpful. He told us the notes on the account said that the technician was here, called us, left a voicemail & waited. This is not true. We have been waiting here at home *all day*. Upon hearing this, Greg dug a little deeper and got in touch with dispatch. They said that the tech waited outside in front of a big white door for us. This seems to be what the problem was. It seems he had the wrong address. We happen to have 3 very large unmistakeable bronze and iron rod doors in our apartment, not a big white door. At this point, we were assured that this would be taken care of & that we would get an appointment the next day. This led to two wildly frustrating conversations with two customer service "Supervisors" (Richard *IB and George *PX) who refused to acknowledge the fact that their information may be incorrect.
At this point, they began to talk in circles about how if the automated phone call the morning of the appointment is missed, the appointment is cancelled & the technician is told not to go out on the job. I have two problems with this. First, this is an asinine policy. You expect that a customer will consistently pick up their phone no matter what? Why should one missed call give TWC the cart blanche to cancel an appointment that's been on the books for a week?? And without giving notice??? My second problem here is the information we were given by Greg. If this is true, and the tech didn't go out on the job, then how was it that dispatch had very detailed information about his actions when he arrived at what he thought was the location? Something here isn't right.
The problem here is that we were told that the next time that an appointment was available was one week from today which is unacceptable given that we were home and that by no actions of our own, the appointment was missed. Let me be clear; the appointment was missed entirely by the actions of the technician. Not only this, but in NY State, cable companies who miss an appointment are required to provide one month free & free installation; something else which another service rep was attempting to deny us.
That leads me into the point that will bring us up to date. We received a phone call from Krystal (Direct line: 718-670-0264) in customer escalations. She booked us an appointment for Friday 11AM-2PM, but she refuses to give us one month's credit. This is unacceptable. She is taking the same attitude as the other reps did about what actually happened during the time slot.
My problem with these three encounters with Time Warner reps is that they completely disregard the fact that we were home & we did not receive a phone call. According to them, they can only go by the information the tech left. Everything I tell them means nothing. Is this how you see fit to do business? Totally ignore the customer?; The same customer, in fact, who just signed up to pay you more per month!? How absurd! How much further would you like me to go to prove to you that at no time during our appointment hours was any attempt made to contact us? You should be embarrassed that the guideline by which your customer service reps are instructed to comport themselves is "Ignore the customer." Let me give you a quick script that you can use in the future for situations like this:
Customer: Hey, I've been home all day waiting for an installation. I didn't get a phone call, my door didn't buzz, and it's now half an hour past the time slot.
TWC: Oh my goodness! So sorry we put you out like that. Let's get you set up with an appointment tomorrow & we're going to get you a free month for the trouble.
That's it. End of story. I can look past a simple mistake, but by treating me like a liar & refusing to work with me, you've turned what may have been a small slip up with a happy ending into a free-for-all.
Now, this is all on top of the fact that we had just this week signed up for Wideband service. The fact that this is even necessary is alarming in 2011. The notion that Time Warner thinks that it can offer well below what has become standard simply because they have a monopoly over certain neighborhoods is insulting. Cablevision's standard broadband clocks in at 10MB/s down and 3MB/s up. Time Warner's? 10MB/s down, and (wait for it, here comes the whopper) .5 MB/s up. (On paper it's "up to .7", but I've never seen it hit past .53) In this day and age, to expect a moderately heavy internet user to get by with half a megabit of upload is naive. Where it crosses the line from naive to downright offensive is when the customer realizes that to have any upload speed faster than .5 up, they have to shell out $100/mo for Wideband. That is ludicrous. Get with the times. Offer 3MB/s up standard with your packages.
I suggest that you seriously consider a monumental reform when it comes to the way your company does business. In 2011, there is no excuse for a company of your size to not be providing great products with excellent experiences backed up by fantastic customer service. You have a dozen role models to look up to. Take a page out of the books of Whole Foods, Jetblue, Zappos, Amazon, and many other major companies that still manage to make their customers feel valuable. Not to mention, in situations like mine, a company of this stature could very quickly and easily eat some cost & turn an adamant abhorrer into a champion of the company instead of continuing to dig that grave.
Let me make this abundantly clear. Were it up to me, I would not be a Time Warner customer and I would not give you another cent for as long as I live. Unfortunately, since there are no other options in this neighborhood, I have to keep banging my head against the brick wall that is Time Warner Cable until either FiOS gets here, or Cablevision starts covering this area. When the day comes that Time Warner areas are supported by competitors, I hope the company has its affairs in order, because I don't see that fight lasting terribly long.
Furiously,
M!
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 04:08PM 
