NevDull’s Take On Things

Time Warner Cable Owns Up

April 25th, 2007

Well, despite the fact that Time Warner Cable billed me $400 more than they should have, they did an OK job fixing up the situation when I called.

I moved on March 22nd, and the week before I moved, I called Time Warner to let them know that I would be moving, to please disconnect my service at the old place on the 22nd, and schedule an install on the 23rd in the new place. They said I could just move the cable boxes I had, and the technician would set them up at the new place, do the wiring, etc.

I have digital cable, the boxes have electronic serial numbers which can be used for remote management by the cable company, etc. The service doesn’t do doo-doo without them, and an installation by a technician always results in the serial numbers being recorded and entered into their systems.

So… you’d think it might be impossible to be billed for the same service with the same cable boxes for the same time period, wouldn’t you? Even if I thought that the possibility for the same service at two locations with only one set of equipment is a possible oversight… since I get billed for the cable boxes themselves, you’d think that I couldn’t be billed on two different bills for the rental fee for the exact same device with the exact same serial number, would you?

Well, as an IT lackey, I could ramble on about “business logic” that’s missing from their system, but I’ll stop there for that bit of it.

It also happened to be the case that the installation of the cable was scheduled for an 8AM to Noon window. The tech arrived at 2. Sure, things happen. Yes, it really sucks to not hop in the shower in the morning because the cable guy might come, and before things are done it’s been 6 hours where you didn’t get done anything that involved making yourself unavailable for more than a few minutes. Since I went to work and Amy waited, gotta give her props for her patience. As compensation for being so late, Amy was told that the first month’s service would be free.

…but I was billed for that, too.

The billing schedules aren’t exactly synchronized, so it’s a little funky getting everything straight, but the customer service rep was quite helpful.

One of the biggest problems I’ve seen with customer service representatives is getting them to see that there is a problem.

I wish I’d gotten his name so I could pass along kudos, but I didn’t.

He saw the problems overall, addressed things in a logical manner, checked into things with his supervisor a few times to figure out how to handle it, and got things all straightened out.

He apologized several times about how long it was taking, but I kept insisting that I was fine with waiting, since he was doing such a good job with it.

By the end of the call, about $400 of credits were applied to my account. Some of the credits were for things that should never have been billed, some which should have been applied without my intervention, but at least everything got straightened out to my satisfaction.

I’m not ready to call Time Warner good, but there’s at least someone there who “gets it”.

Entry Filed under: Businesses that Suck