Forgot to finish anyway.. and that Time is none other than Time Warner Cable, which has just recently been bought by ComCast. So now when you call for support, you get the fun runaround of “Hello, my name is with Comcast, formerly Time Warner.” For the last three months I’ve had nothing but trouble… And today is the most fubar’ed of it all. Let me start at the beginning.

After living in the house for almost a year, we started having trouble with our digital cable. The original installer told us straight up “I didn’t install a house-amp, because I think you don’t need one. If it turns out you do, just call us up and we’ll come install one, free of charge”. So we took him at his word and called them up. They quickly analyzed the situation and concluded “We need a house amp”. In addition, we had 2 passive splitters in the attic, and cable run on the outside of the house for one or two rooms, and he pulled all that out and ran new cables direct to the outside box where he added a bit 5-way amplified splitter. The work was fantastic, and they didn’t charge us a dime. That was the beginning of the trouble, and the hilarious situation I find myself in now.
[tag:timewarnercable][tag:comcast][tag:complaint][tag:roadrunner][tag:support]

About 3 months ago (~3 months after the amp was installed) we decided that the “study”, with the computer, was to become the new baby’s room. The guest room, right next door, would become the Computer room, so I would need to move everything into there. Well, I had to move everything out to paint anyway, so I just moved the computer back in. I wasn’t sure if the CableModem would work on the other jack or not, but a quick power test showed it worked. At least for a day or two. After about 3 days it got flakey, so I called TWC and told them to send someone out.

Well, the guy showed up and I told him that we moved it from one room to another and he nodded intelligently (he was pretty good at faking it, obviously) and poked and prodded around the place. I knew we had a house amp, and told the guy that the jack we hooked the cablemodem up to was amplified and that was probably the source of the problem. I figured he would go outside and switch the two cables (I had opened the box once before and saw the special “Internet” port). He wasn’t really a “RoadRunner” specialist, just a TWC Cable guy. He checked the wires and rebooted a few things, and finally came back inside saying he found a wiring mixup across the road that he fixed. Sure enough it was running smooth again… Until the next weekend.

I called again, reporting another problem. They sent someone out and he fiddled around until it started working. Again, he said he found a wiring problem and that should fix it. 48 hours after he left, so did the cablemodem. Such was the case for the last 3 months. Cable would flake out, I could call support. They run a few tests and then transfer me to “National RoadRunner Support”. They repeat the tests and then say “I really don’t see why they sent you up here, they see the same things we do. If we can’t talk to the modem, then there’s obviously a problem on the wire.” They would dispatch a tech, and the whole scene would repeat itself again. I learned few things in this time:

  1. TWC has Separate Cable-techs and RoadRunner techs. Each have their own area of expertise, and if a Cable-guy shows up to diagnose your RoadRunner problems, then expect to call in with more problems.
  2. TWC evidently does not supply their guys with cellphones. Cellphones seem an obvious addition to their field kit, as they do have to phone in to activate those modems. It was really tacky the one time the guy asked to borrow my cellphone (can’t use the landline, it’s Vonage remember? No internet = no Phone) so he could call the central office & register the new cablemodem.
  3. TWC also doesn’t provide laptops for their guys. Laptops are a no-brainer for diagnosing internet troubles.
  4. Even tho you’re guaranteed “up to 5Mbs” connection, they’re happy leaving you with 100kbps.
  5. The field techs generally don’t care what you’ve done to diagnose the problem. Feel free to tell it to them, but they’re not gonna pay any attention.

Finally, on Sunday I had enough. I called one more time to schedule someone to come out and take a look. In my mind I was going to give them one more chance to fix it before I called up BellSouth & DirectTV. They said someone would be out Monday, and so I waited. Monday he showed up.

Miraculously, this guy really knew his stuff. I explained how things had been moved and all the road work in the neighborhood. I explained the “on again off again” nature of the problem, and even pulled up the modem status page showing how it claimed to be “Online” but continuously reporting errors like “Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging – No Response received – T3 time-out” and “DHCP FAILED – Discover sent, no offer received”. (For all you TWC users out there, simply point your browser to http://192.168.100.1 and you’ll see the information). He heard me out and then decided to go outside and take a look. It took him all of 5 minutes to realise the problem that the last 5 guys missed: The amplifier was still on the RoadRunner Line. As many times as I told the guys about that, none of them ever moved it. He rewired it and immediately the numbers on the signals page improved. He also said that he had to run a new wire run to the main junction, but this was the root cause of the problem. He did a little more work (He claimed the entire box was fubar’ed, someone royally hosed it up) and then took off, leaving us with full 4.75Mb splendor.

Today, when we came home from Rhianna’s school, we saw his “brilliant solution” to the wiring.

20061010191311257_1.jpg

20061010191311257_1.jpg


Wide shot from my driveway, digitally enhanced to show the cable

The box on my house
The box on the corner of my yard
My neighbor’s front yard

In case you haven’t figured it out, what you’re seeing is the “new cable” he ran. It runs from the junction box on my house, across my front yard to the corner box. Then it run across the street (just laid out in the middle of the road) to my neighbor’s yard where it taps into his junction box. The padlock remains in tact on my corner box, but his is wide open for the fiddlin-with. People have been driving over this coax all day, and I can only imagine if the neighbor decides to cut his grass. I also dread what the Cops would say if they came by and saw that. “Son, you know stealin cable is Illegal right?”.

So I called up TWC one last time to complain. They say that a ticket has already been filed to fix this, presumably by the tech that was here yesterday. Unfortunatly, it can take 7-10 days before they get around to it. I complained as much as I could while still remaining calm and using the lessons learned from The Consumerist. They were somewhat unwiling to budge. Finally, after being escalated a few times, they agreed to refund me some of the RoadRunner charges for the last 3 months, since it’s been pretty unusable during that time. I had hoped for something more “useful” like Free HBO or simply waiving a month’s bill or two (Their latest offer combines the 2 services I have, digital cable & roadrunner, with Digital Phone & Free HBO for merely $5 more than I’m paying now).

So, will it get fixed? Who knows. I’m sure it will eventually. Whether or not my neighbors get antsy with the mower before then, I can’t predict.

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