Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Time Warner Tilt

This post is sub-titled : Southern Californians! Help Change pick a new internet service provider!

Showcase and I have wasted over four hours of cell phone minutes between us on hold with Time Warner Cable for the last 3 days as we try to get an answer as to why our service craps out about half a dozen times per hour. The sequence of events usually happens like this:

1. I get disconnected from the internet after flopping two pair/a set/a straight in a SNG when it's three handed.

2. I lose the hand due to being timed out and I swear a lot.

3. One of us calls up Time Warner and gets a cubicle monkey on the phone who can't explain why our internet is crapping out so much. Cubicle monkey tells us to unplug the router and modem and plug them back in to reset.

4. We tell the cubicle monkey that we've been through this process over a dozen times and it's not going to fix anything.

5. Cubicle monkey puts us on hold. We remain on hold anywhere from 60-90 minutes before getting disconnected.

6. Repeat process.

In at least a dozen calls to Time Warner, we have yet to speak to a real life human being who has (a) told us what's wrong or (b) offered to fix the problem. Just when I thought Comcast was the worst a cable company could get, in waltzes Time Warner.

So we're done with them. D-O-N-E done. And we're open to suggestions as to which internet service provider we shoud switch to. If you'd be so kind to offer your recommendations and/or cautionary tales in the comments, we'd be oh so grateful.

We can't be too tilted though... American Idol is BACK!! Ooooh whoa oooooh whoa!!! I'm already rooting for the 16 year old black girl from Wisconsin who blew the doors off the place with...get ready... "I Am Telling You I Am Not Going."

Like I told Showcase... we're gonna hear that song a lot this season.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Verizon is my phone service, and I've had DSL with them for over a year. I've never had a problem...

Good luck! :)

Berglar said...

I have had Comcast for the past few years and have only had one problem. I did the unplug thing to no avail, but didnt realize until I talked to a guy who I thought was talking out of his ass. He said that you have to power down all PCs, power down router, power down modem, then power up modem, then power up router, then power up PCs, in that specific order. I could not believe it, but it worked.

Anonymous said...

The order is crucial to doing a power surge. Try it out in the order Berglar suggested because I had similar problems while setting my router.

Tully Moxness said...

Are you using Road Runner with Time Warner? Either way, I highly recommend you move over to Verizon's DSL service. My parents were on TW RR cable, and they had nothing but problems (and since I have 28.8 dial-up at my house, I use their computer a lot for any modern day online needs as well). After 3 visits from tech support who were as clueless as us about the root of the issues, I forced them to switch over. Since then, they've never had a time out or any other problems with their service. It's been two years now, so we have a pretty good history. Cable modems are great where the infrastructure is new and streamlined, but if you're in an old neighborhood, forget about it.

KrazyBangs said...

Steal wireless from a neighbor. If there's craps out, at least you aren't paying the bill.