Time Warner Rant

NYSpeed Automotive NYSpeed Off Topic
1

So a couple weeks ago I got so sick of Time Warner’s cable issues I canceled my digital cable and had Dish Network installed. For those of you that didn’t see the thread, Dish Network kicks ass. Want details? Search.

So anyway, I decided to keep the cable modem since Verizon didn’t offer naked DSL at my address. Since the cable got dropped it has gone out 4 times, each time locking me out at their network level only allowing me to browse to the account activation page. 2 times I called tech support, they said it was because of the change on my account, and they reset my account and it would work fine for a few days.

On the 3rd time this happened, last night, I was getting pretty pissed so I asked to talk to the next level of techs. “Mindy”, teir II support was nice and honest enough, but not really able to fix the issue. She could reset it again, but basically said she couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. But at least she was nice enough to give me a reference number and explain that I wouldn’t have to go through the bullshit of removing my router and connecting my laptop directly to the cable modem next time.

So tonight it goes out again, same problem, but this time I’m really pissed. I called support, and the dipship level I tech refuses to do anything until I have my laptop connected directly to the cable modem. We do that, she resets it, and of course it’s working again. Now here comes the part that put me over the edge. She then proceeds to tell me the problem must be my Vonage router. I rip into her pretty bad about the fact that the Vonage router has worked for almost 3 years without a single change to the config, and that the only thing that has changed is I canceled my shitty cable service. I also explain that 3 techs before her, including a level II tech, all agreed it was something in the account setup but could not figure out how to fix it. She won’t budge, I demand her supervisor. Amazingly, she tells me there are none available on the floor. I explain to her how they were just on channel 2 news the night before about using the, “No supervisors are available” excuse, and demand she go find one, even if means calling one at home if there really are none available.

Wow… was that a mistake. She found one all right, all the way from fucking India from the sounds of it. Belinda gets on, reviews my long case history, and agrees the vonage router is not the problem. Belinda’s inability to speak clearly is only eclipsed by her total lack of technical ability though. She proceeds to tell me she needs to setup a 5 hour window to have a technician come to my house and test the lines and modem, because in her supervisory opinion my issue is connectivity.

Lets back up a second here and review.

  1. My connection is rock solid when it works. No dropped packets, great bandwidth etc.
  2. My hardware, at least on the cable modem side, was working pretty much flawlessly until I canceled cable service. (I say pretty much because there was that Adelphia DNS issue a while back).
  3. This is the important one. Even when I’m “down” I can still hit the account activation page.

So Belinda and I go back and forth and I finally beat out of her an admission that the account activation page is not in the firmware of the modem, it’s on an Adelphia server somewhere. What she refuses to accept is the fact that if I can get there, obiously the fucking hardware is working fine. I drop it down to the level of “Mr packet leaves my laptop, goes to your cable modem, follows the line out to the pole, travels over to your server, gets the login page, and comes back the same route to my laptop”. “Please explain where the communications link is broken”. So at this point she’s fucked and has no idea what to do. She hands me off to billing thinking they can find something that is causing this. I can tell this is just to get me off the phone, so I manage to get her to refund my account for this entire month before I let her transfer me.

So, now I’m talking to the billing guy. I immediately drop the irate caller attitude and talk friendly to this guy, knowing he is quickly going to realize I just got dumped on him. He agrees, pretty much admits Belinda is an idiot, and transfers me to some super secret department of techs that much be the last bastion of intelligence at Time Warner.

I talk to Mark, level unknown, but I can tell he’s a smart guy. We talk for a bit (again, I’m back to amiable, because Mark hasn’t tried to dry hump me yet). He quickly agrees that tech onr was retarded for suggesting it was Vonage, and Belinda was even more retarded for thinking it was hardware. He agrees with my assessment that if I can hit the account activation, my hardware is good. So Mark decides to pull one from the old school troubleshooting playbook. When in doubt, delete everything you can and start over. He deletes all my account settings and re-creates them, and says that should do it. I like the sound of it. Mark gives me another case number and advises that if I have any more issues, call with that and I will be sent directly to the escalation team.

In closing…

PLEASE VERIZON… HURRY THE FUCK UP WITH FIOS… I WANT TO DUMP TIME WARNER LIKE A USED RUBBER

cliffs… if you don’t want to read it, click the back button. :slight_smile:

Edit: and grammar/spelling nazis… have fun. I typed this entire thing without proof reading or spell checking, so I’m sure there are errors. Considering people can read leet speak I’m sure they can figure it out.

2

hmm, i havent had problems with my TW in a very long time

3

I’m glad in Level II on the Time Warner side and not Adelphia… :slight_smile: sounds like you ripped those level 1’s a new ass hole haha

4

Ouch, you got the Spanish tech support supervisor.

5

HAHA i was wondering… lol

6

haha, that sucks

move away

<— former Tier1

just move away

you can’t fix it, it’s fucked

7

I drop it down to the level of “Mr packet leaves my laptop, goes to your cable modem, follows the line out to the pole, travels over to your server, gets the login page, and comes back the same route to my laptop”. “Please explain where the communications link is broken”. So at this point she’s fucked and has no idea what to do.

bwahahaha

8

Thread of the month by far :slight_smile:

9

the mr. packet bit was great.

i cant believe that i work at the same level of support as these people do.

10

Man so much I want to say if I didn’t fear for my job. Man I need to really find a new place to work.

11

Having worked at Softbank, most (not all…) the level 1 people are right off the street and trained for 2 weeks, if you’re lucky. Most their answers are from a manual/FAQ they are given access to.

And I feel your pain about speaking with someone from India. I deal with individuals from India and a daily basis. And most everytime I end up telling them how to do their job, i.e. write a program properly.

And yes, Time Warner is worse than Adelphia.

12

I’ve lost service once in the past year and that was due to the storm

13

You guys in buff are getting royally fucked by this transition. Weve had Roadrunner/tw service for the better part of 7 years or more and its always been good. occasioannly my wifi router goes bonkers but thats just that.

14

I’ve dealt with similar situations with both Adelphia and TW service and not getting anywhere’s with Tier-1 people, and even a couple tier-2 people. It took adelphia 4 trips to my house to figure out that the lines from the pole to the house had issues are were causing hours/days of outage time on my internet, not to mention the hours spent on the phone talking to people to finally get them to send someone out to the damn house. I’ve had nothing but problems whenever something goes wrong; when it works, it works great, when there’s issues, it takes FOREVER to get things working again.

15
  • eleventy billion

All they do is read from a book. They have no real technical knowledge. I hate having to deal with India. Especially when they pick up the phone and say something like, “Hi, my name is…Bob. How can I help you?” To which I must respond, “YOUR NAME ISN’T BOB!!! IT’S OSIMGIALIBHEA OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT! TRANSFER ME BACK TO AMERICA!”

Oh and ya Time Warner does suck ass. That’s why I dropped them. DirecTV wins every time.

16

I have had time warner back home for about the same time, and only had problems once, since moving to bufflao i have yet to have a problem with it…weird :shrug:

17

I’ve never actaully had a problem either, but there is always someone that will have constant issues. Doesn’t matter what service it is, there is always someone.

18

The worst part is my cable modem service was perfect until TW came along. Once I figured out it was their DNS servers I plugged some high level public ones in to my router and the service went back to being great. All these problems started because I canceled their shitty cable service.

19

Ha,

I bet I know who that Mark is.

He used to teach network security at ITT part time.

I took a couple of his classes, he worked for adelphia doing security for them full time, then he would come in and teach network security classes to us at night.

Real good dude, he has more certs than I thought existed.

He makes boku money, he used to give us case studies based on actual stuff that happened at adelphia. Really interesting class.

I remember he told us, that he only took about one support call a week from the outside. They only called on him as a last straw when “the idiots didn’t know what to do”

20

direct tv is here now installing the dish… and TW just came to take their stupid box… we still have powerlink… but are looking for a dsl… but there is nothing in the area cept for direct tv and parents say they want to much for it