The Time Warner Cable sham
Everyone has their horror stories about phone-based technical support. It seems like the representatives are never fully aware of what's going on, either with you or the company as a whole and they're just marginally better at troubleshooting your issues than you would be. This proved to totally be the case when I called Time Warner Cable recently to find out what I would need to get a TiVo HD up and running with their service.
I did quite a bit of research for this on my own prior to calling. I hate calling companies and would rather spend the extra time browsing forums or other resources online instead of waiting on hold for ages just to get frustrated with an inexperienced representative over the phone. For whatever reason I guess I didn't look online as much as I should have, probably trying to save time by just having them tell me what I needed to do instead of finding out myself. This turned out to be a huge mistake and I wound up investing significantly more time than I would have had I gone it on my own.
In all fairness to Time Warner Cable, it seems like the biggest issue here was that the technology that I was asking about is new (though it was developed entirely by their company) and maybe I shouldn't have expected them to know about it but the fact that it is on their website is what inspired a little bit of (apparently unfounded) confidence in their phone support. The culprit is the tuning adapter required for Switched Digital Video, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After a few hours worth of broken-up research online, I determined that everything would work fine with Time Warner Cable's TV service with my TiVo HD provided I got a couple of CableCARDs from Time Warner. Easy enough. I'll just go pick them up from my local office to have them ready when my TiVo arrives, I thought. I never wound up making it to the store because one of my co-workers (also getting a new TiVo HD on Time Warner Cable) went to his store and was turned away saying that you have to make an appointment to have them delivered and installed. That wouldn't be so bad if the phone representatives didn't assure both of us that we could go pick them up from a local Time Warner store. Strike one.
Numerous tweets about my experience so far are posted and I eventually grab the attention of the Vice President of Public Relations for Time Warner, @AlexTWC. He provides me with some information saying that there's some known issues with Time Warner Cable and TiVo's. This completely contradicts what the phone support representatives had told me when they said all I need is CableCARDs and then I'm good to go. After some conversation with Alex, I find that there's potentially a number of HD channels that would be lost if I were to dump official Time Warner hardware and go it alone with a TiVo and CableCARDs. I ask him what channels will be lost and he promises that he'll look into it and get back to me. He does and assures me that they are not using Switched Digital Video (SDV) in Southern California and I would not need a tuning adapter to prevent loss of any channels.
Feeling some doubt at this point, I decide to brave the phone support jungle again. I waited for nearly an hour on hold and finally get a representative. She was nice, but had never heard of Switched Digital Video (SDV) or a tuning adapter before. I gave her the URL to Time Warner's website on tuning adapters and had to spell "tuning adapter" to her numerous time and then finally explain that there can not be any spaces in a URL, which is why she was getting an error when trying to visit the website. My God. We ultimately came to the conclusion that she had no idea about what was going on at all and so I hung up after gaining only lost time on hold and dealing with her. Very disappointing.
My biggest issue and doubt came from the fact that a VP from Time Warner said that I didn't need a tuning adapter since there was no SDV in my area, but the very website that he linked me to for more information on it says that, based on my ZIP code, I did have SDV in my area and needed a tuning adapter. I placed an order for a free tuning adapter on the website and later received an email saying that tuning adapter's aren't yet available to the public and they have no idea when they might become available in my area. Annoying. In the meantime, my co-worker got his TiVo hooked up and CableCARDs installed and found that, contrary to what Time Warner's Vice President stated, SDV is being used in Southern California and he has lost a number of HD channels because of it. Great.
At this point I'm just totally frustrated with Time Warner and immediately call up and cancel my appointment to have the CableCARDs installed. It's not worth it to go without HD channels that I watch on a daily basis or record shows on weekly without knowing how long I'd be without them. It could be weeks, months, years, who knows... apparently Time Warner doesn't. If they weren't channels that I actually used (I asked my co-worker to try tuning in to various ones I watch), it wouldn't be such a big deal but we just recently got these channels in HD and I'm really happy to have them. Time Warner's DVR is probably the worst piece of hardware I have ever used for any purpose, but it does record shows and tune in to TV channels (although quite slowly at times) and keeping those channels is important to me. I called TiVo to cancel my order that hasn't even arrived at my door yet. They told me to just refuse the package and my service will be canceled and I'll be issued a refund when they receive the box back at their warehouse.
There's a few things that aggravate me with Time Warner. The first is that their DVR is just so terrible. I used to have a Moxi box, which was amazing. The storage space on it wasn't very large but the interface was great even though it was slow at times. Mine broke, though, and they brought out a new Motorola box as a replacement. The Motorola boxes they offer (and yes, I have the latest one) are pieces of junk. I know it's not the hardware (my Aunt has the same box with Verizon FiOS with a different OS and it's great), but instead the built-in OS. It's slow, cumbersome, and freezes on a daily basis. The worst is when it 'hangs' and queues up all of the button presses that I make when I think it just didn't register my press. About 30 seconds to a minute later they all start executing and the menus start changing as if a robot operating at light-speed were controlling my DVR. In fact, I'm not convinced that this is not what's happening.
The second thing that makes me annoyed is their support. When I can decode what they're saying (it generally sounds like English is not their first language) it usually doesn't have anything to do with what I just requested or is them explaining that they'll have to check their "systems." The last time a representative had to put me on hold to check her systems, it involved her setting down her headset (forgetting to put me on hold) and asking a co-worker (in Spanish) about the issue. That wouldn't have been such a terrible thing if they both weren't completely confused and wrong about my question regarding tuning adapters and SDV, both technologies that Time Warner is using, the former being one they invented (according to their website).
Third, why can't everyone just know what's going on? I got a different answer about the same question nearly every time I called, or sometimes I was just told flat-out that they didn't know what I was referring to and couldn't help. This is really annoying. Is consistency and familiarity with their companies own services too much to ask? Apparently.
I think that the worst part about this is that it wouldn't even be an issue if Time Warner Cable offered good hardware. I'm not even asking for great hardware (like the TiVo I ordered), but just something not horrible. If they insist on continuing to offer horrible hardware, they could at least make it easier for users to get away from it by allowing us to pick up our own CableCARDs and not using SDV. I understand that SDV saves them money, but maybe they can use the money from the rate increases coming in January to pay for the extra bandwidth that not using SDV consumes. I know that the extra money isn't going to go to fix the picture cut-outs, constant volume loss, or poor selection of HD channels.
This turned out to be way longer than I had originally intended, but that's a testament to the frustration and dissatisfaction that Time Warner has caused me to have with their service. Originally this was meant to be a post of praise, thanking Time Warner and Alex (the VP of Public Relations) for giving me the ability to get some questions answered via Twitter. I never asked for help on Twitter and was pleasantly surprised to have a VP helping me with all of my questions over a couple of days. I really thought that they were turning things around (I've always had bad experiences with their phone support) and believed that I wasn't going to have any problems doing what I wanted to do. Unfortunately nearly all of the information that I was provided by any Time Warner Cable representative turned out to either be completely wrong and sometimes just mostly wrong, usually contradicting information listed on their website. Honestly, if there was any way that I could switch cable TV and internet companies and get internet service that's faster than the max of 1.5Mbps down that DSL can offer me, I would switch in a second. I would absolutely love to be completely free of Time Warner's services and despise the fact that there's just no other options for me, short of moving.
I did quite a bit of research for this on my own prior to calling. I hate calling companies and would rather spend the extra time browsing forums or other resources online instead of waiting on hold for ages just to get frustrated with an inexperienced representative over the phone. For whatever reason I guess I didn't look online as much as I should have, probably trying to save time by just having them tell me what I needed to do instead of finding out myself. This turned out to be a huge mistake and I wound up investing significantly more time than I would have had I gone it on my own.
In all fairness to Time Warner Cable, it seems like the biggest issue here was that the technology that I was asking about is new (though it was developed entirely by their company) and maybe I shouldn't have expected them to know about it but the fact that it is on their website is what inspired a little bit of (apparently unfounded) confidence in their phone support. The culprit is the tuning adapter required for Switched Digital Video, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After a few hours worth of broken-up research online, I determined that everything would work fine with Time Warner Cable's TV service with my TiVo HD provided I got a couple of CableCARDs from Time Warner. Easy enough. I'll just go pick them up from my local office to have them ready when my TiVo arrives, I thought. I never wound up making it to the store because one of my co-workers (also getting a new TiVo HD on Time Warner Cable) went to his store and was turned away saying that you have to make an appointment to have them delivered and installed. That wouldn't be so bad if the phone representatives didn't assure both of us that we could go pick them up from a local Time Warner store. Strike one.
Numerous tweets about my experience so far are posted and I eventually grab the attention of the Vice President of Public Relations for Time Warner, @AlexTWC. He provides me with some information saying that there's some known issues with Time Warner Cable and TiVo's. This completely contradicts what the phone support representatives had told me when they said all I need is CableCARDs and then I'm good to go. After some conversation with Alex, I find that there's potentially a number of HD channels that would be lost if I were to dump official Time Warner hardware and go it alone with a TiVo and CableCARDs. I ask him what channels will be lost and he promises that he'll look into it and get back to me. He does and assures me that they are not using Switched Digital Video (SDV) in Southern California and I would not need a tuning adapter to prevent loss of any channels.
Feeling some doubt at this point, I decide to brave the phone support jungle again. I waited for nearly an hour on hold and finally get a representative. She was nice, but had never heard of Switched Digital Video (SDV) or a tuning adapter before. I gave her the URL to Time Warner's website on tuning adapters and had to spell "tuning adapter" to her numerous time and then finally explain that there can not be any spaces in a URL, which is why she was getting an error when trying to visit the website. My God. We ultimately came to the conclusion that she had no idea about what was going on at all and so I hung up after gaining only lost time on hold and dealing with her. Very disappointing.
My biggest issue and doubt came from the fact that a VP from Time Warner said that I didn't need a tuning adapter since there was no SDV in my area, but the very website that he linked me to for more information on it says that, based on my ZIP code, I did have SDV in my area and needed a tuning adapter. I placed an order for a free tuning adapter on the website and later received an email saying that tuning adapter's aren't yet available to the public and they have no idea when they might become available in my area. Annoying. In the meantime, my co-worker got his TiVo hooked up and CableCARDs installed and found that, contrary to what Time Warner's Vice President stated, SDV is being used in Southern California and he has lost a number of HD channels because of it. Great.
At this point I'm just totally frustrated with Time Warner and immediately call up and cancel my appointment to have the CableCARDs installed. It's not worth it to go without HD channels that I watch on a daily basis or record shows on weekly without knowing how long I'd be without them. It could be weeks, months, years, who knows... apparently Time Warner doesn't. If they weren't channels that I actually used (I asked my co-worker to try tuning in to various ones I watch), it wouldn't be such a big deal but we just recently got these channels in HD and I'm really happy to have them. Time Warner's DVR is probably the worst piece of hardware I have ever used for any purpose, but it does record shows and tune in to TV channels (although quite slowly at times) and keeping those channels is important to me. I called TiVo to cancel my order that hasn't even arrived at my door yet. They told me to just refuse the package and my service will be canceled and I'll be issued a refund when they receive the box back at their warehouse.
There's a few things that aggravate me with Time Warner. The first is that their DVR is just so terrible. I used to have a Moxi box, which was amazing. The storage space on it wasn't very large but the interface was great even though it was slow at times. Mine broke, though, and they brought out a new Motorola box as a replacement. The Motorola boxes they offer (and yes, I have the latest one) are pieces of junk. I know it's not the hardware (my Aunt has the same box with Verizon FiOS with a different OS and it's great), but instead the built-in OS. It's slow, cumbersome, and freezes on a daily basis. The worst is when it 'hangs' and queues up all of the button presses that I make when I think it just didn't register my press. About 30 seconds to a minute later they all start executing and the menus start changing as if a robot operating at light-speed were controlling my DVR. In fact, I'm not convinced that this is not what's happening.
The second thing that makes me annoyed is their support. When I can decode what they're saying (it generally sounds like English is not their first language) it usually doesn't have anything to do with what I just requested or is them explaining that they'll have to check their "systems." The last time a representative had to put me on hold to check her systems, it involved her setting down her headset (forgetting to put me on hold) and asking a co-worker (in Spanish) about the issue. That wouldn't have been such a terrible thing if they both weren't completely confused and wrong about my question regarding tuning adapters and SDV, both technologies that Time Warner is using, the former being one they invented (according to their website).
Third, why can't everyone just know what's going on? I got a different answer about the same question nearly every time I called, or sometimes I was just told flat-out that they didn't know what I was referring to and couldn't help. This is really annoying. Is consistency and familiarity with their companies own services too much to ask? Apparently.
I think that the worst part about this is that it wouldn't even be an issue if Time Warner Cable offered good hardware. I'm not even asking for great hardware (like the TiVo I ordered), but just something not horrible. If they insist on continuing to offer horrible hardware, they could at least make it easier for users to get away from it by allowing us to pick up our own CableCARDs and not using SDV. I understand that SDV saves them money, but maybe they can use the money from the rate increases coming in January to pay for the extra bandwidth that not using SDV consumes. I know that the extra money isn't going to go to fix the picture cut-outs, constant volume loss, or poor selection of HD channels.
This turned out to be way longer than I had originally intended, but that's a testament to the frustration and dissatisfaction that Time Warner has caused me to have with their service. Originally this was meant to be a post of praise, thanking Time Warner and Alex (the VP of Public Relations) for giving me the ability to get some questions answered via Twitter. I never asked for help on Twitter and was pleasantly surprised to have a VP helping me with all of my questions over a couple of days. I really thought that they were turning things around (I've always had bad experiences with their phone support) and believed that I wasn't going to have any problems doing what I wanted to do. Unfortunately nearly all of the information that I was provided by any Time Warner Cable representative turned out to either be completely wrong and sometimes just mostly wrong, usually contradicting information listed on their website. Honestly, if there was any way that I could switch cable TV and internet companies and get internet service that's faster than the max of 1.5Mbps down that DSL can offer me, I would switch in a second. I would absolutely love to be completely free of Time Warner's services and despise the fact that there's just no other options for me, short of moving.
Comments
Alex Dudley, aka alexTWC here. Just wanted to let you know, that, while I am not sure what happened to your friend, we are not switching any channels in the LA area. Thus, if you want to run Tivo you will not lose any channels, HD or otherwise. On another note, I find your bafflement with our Tivo support annoying. Tivo is not a two-way device. That means it can't communicate with our network to receive things like video on demand and our increased HD offerings, essentially making it a low-end cable box/dvr.
Complaining that it doesn't operate well on our network is like calling Apple to complain that Windows doesn't work well on your Mac. We'll tolerate Tivo use (in fact we invented the tuning adapter to solve THEIR problem), but it is not our priority. Please also bear in mind that less than 50,000 of our more than 13,000,000 customers use a Tivo, so the number of technical support calls we get on this are minimal.
As far as our dvr is concerned, I am sorry that you do not like it. We have millions of customers who do, however, so while it is not perfect, it is an excellent product, which we support in full.
Most importantly, I want to reassure you and whomever reads this blog that the information I provided through Twitter is, in fact, accurate. We pride ourselves on providing accurate information and are more than happy to help our customers.
"Time Warner Cable has launched Switched Digital Video (SDV) in your neighborhood."
You can see this online here: http://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal/products/cable/sdv/default.html
Sorry for your confusion, but that is problem one. There is no single reliable source of information at Time Warner.
I happen to find Time Warner Cable's anti-competition and monopolization of city or county-wide cable services annoying, but there's not a whole lot that I can do about that.
I understand that you believe TiVo is a low-end DVR, but keep in mind that's all based on someone's opinion. Your Video On Demand and Switched HD offerings (available non-switched on other providers) are of no true value to me. I can get On Demand video through Amazon or Netflix on a TiVo. Unfortunately I'm stuck with your switched HD "solution" because Time Warner has monopolized the cable market in Southern California by buying up all of the competing cable companies. It doesn't surprise me that chages are being made to Time Warner Cable to further stifle competition and to save money at the cost of the consumer. Shouldn't changes like switched TV channels reduce your costs and prevent rate hikes like the ones we're getting in January?
Your example of complaining about TiVo is not quite true. It's not TiVo's problem. Time Warner Cable made the change to cut costs at the expense of the consumer and any competition. Your comparison would be like complaining to Microsoft because you can't install your new video game on CD because your PC manufacturer didn't include a CD-ROM drive to save money.
I absolutely believe that a very small portion of your user base uses a TiVo, and now I can see why. It's hard for people to successfully make use of a competitor's product when the bigger company does everything it can to block the competition while still staying in line with FCC regulations. Also keep in mind that the main questions regarding my calls were about SDV, which is clearly linked under the 'Products' section of the SoCal website. None of the representatives I spoke with over the phone had ever heard of SDV and instead jumped into reciting their scripts about the DTV conversion coming in February. Nice.
I'm quite positive that you don't have millions of customers that like my particular DVR model and OS version. I do know that just about every market has their own DVR hardware and OS and believe that probably every other market has one that's better than ours. I'm complaining only about the hardware that I've been issued (I've gone through quite a few units to rule out a unit-specific issue) and not of anything outside of my market. As I mentioned, I know it's not the hardware itself but instead the OS that Time Warner ships it with. It's vastly superior to any other DVR that I've seen from any other company, other Time Warner Cable markets included.
I understand that you're trying to save face and say that the information you provided is accurate. As I mentioned in the beginning of my comment, however, what you claim *directly contradicts* the text on your website. You stated that SDV is not in my area, yet the Time Warner Cable SoCal website clearly says something different. For reference, here it is again:
"Time Warner Cable has launched Switched Digital Video (SDV) in your neighborhood."
You can read it yourself here: http://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal/products/cable/sdv/default.html
So which one is right? It doesn't really matter because it further proves one of my biggest complaints about your company. Nobody has any idea about what's going on. Maybe one person thinks they do, but another person thinks something different and their supervisor thinks something different from the other two. On top of that, a VP thinks another thing and then the official Time Warner Cable website even contradicts that person. See what I'm getting at? Everything is so completely disorganized that it's impossible to tell what information is accurate. You're basically telling me that your website is wrong, right?
I'm in LA too, and had a similar experience setting up my Tivo. Phone people told me to go get the cablecard from the store, and so on.
I also found that most of the HD channels weren't working, but it wasn't because of SDV. I spent two calls and a truck roll to find out that on their end, they need to do some extra fiddling with my account to authorize the cablecard to display everything. Normally, this is something that should be done in the install process, which is their excuse for charging us to send a guy out to stick a card into a box, but it wasn't done.
Once they figured that out, I've been able to get all the HD channels (no SDV tuner needed yet). This might be the same problem you're having.
Alex, if you read this,
I switched to Tivo because the Motorola box you rented was horrible. The interface was clunky and useless, the program guide was small because it was stuffed with ads, and simple tasks like finding a program to record took far too much work. I expect this 50k/13m number is largely a function of your customers not knowing that there is an alternative. They might also be scared of the problems that the rest of us encounter in setting these things up.