Time Warner Cable Internet So Cal = just Terrible

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Adelphia used to handle my cable internet service and it never went down. A few months ago, Time Warner bought them out and took over...the result:

Nothing but problems in my area. Internet has been down almost this entire month. I am teeing off my neighbors wireless to get access. My business relies on being online, so Ive had enough of this poor service and bad customer service. I have tried to call their "tech support" 3 times and have never gotten through despite hold times of 30 minutes. Tonight, on a Sunday, the recording says that they are "experiencing high call volumes". I have emailed them 2x with no response.

I am writing this to recommend to anyone in So Cal to not use their terrible services...in case you were thinking about switching or something.

mikester · 10:21 PM

I hear ya man; the bottom line is that if the customer service sucks then you should be their customer.

I use them for my data service at home personally and I have had Zero problems in almost 4 years. The difference is that I live an area that was always TWC. The Aldelphia and Comcast areas are proving to be a challenge for them from what I understand.

I do have some "personal professional" knowledge of the situation. A little over 3 years ago I was an Engineer for TWC managing their broadband network here in SoCal - I also worked for MediaOne before they were Comcast here in LA. I was the fella who made sure the network stayed up and all that good stuff. The true TWC areas are actually very fool proof, from what I understand about the adelphia areas is that they were centrally managed from AD's philly head quarters. Now TWC has a distributed network and of course they have to adapt it. I'm not privvy to any details but I can't imagine it's been easy. For a long time the Comcast areas were actually AT&T broadband and previous to that they were Mediaone which was a partner with TWC in the RoadRunner service so the Comcast areas were likely an easy roll into the TWC network. Based on the same hardware, just interconnect the wires and change a few pointers. The AD sites however are based on completely different technology (Non-Cisco but still good and standards compliant).

Of course if the customer service stinks none of anything I have said matters - and that is the only truth that matters to you.

Unfortunately now your options are limited to TWC or AT&T DSL. It sucks the way things have gone towards monopolies - now we are at the mercy of these companies. My suggestion would be to write a hand written letter to your City council representive. If you're represented by the LA City Council I know they have already been discussing this. If now and you're in one of those left leaning western cities then I'm sure they would love to give a "monopoly" a run through the ringer.

About a year ago when I saw that they were really going to get the whole shebang in Socal more or less I offered them my services. They made me probably the best offer they have ever made anyone but it was shy of what I told them I wanted by about 5% and I didn't want to commute down to the OC where they manage things.

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Wayne, you and I probably live within a mile or so of each other...Im at Torrance and Prospect. if you are getting service I wonder why Im not. The modem lights are solid and my laptop reads the signal, but nothing happens on the browser unless i switch to my neighbors signal. Same on my desktop. This happened a few times this month and at one point TWC had a recording up on their phone saying that the area was experiencing trouble....perhaps its a problem specific to my area or building. I dont think its a problem with any of my gear. The worst part is that they are unaccountable due to being unavailable. Maybe I should just buy a wireless card for my desktop machine and just tee off my neighbors signal...

Thanks for the good info Mike.

dd74 · 01-21-2007, 11:40 PM

TW Cable has been okay for the most part. Late last year and early this month, PBS in particular would pixilate (sp?), and on several occasions, the picture would just freeze. I don't know if it's a cable issue or something else. But just last week, TW cable went out in my neighborhood for two days.

I'm looking into Direct TV now and dropping this cable business entirely.

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Yes...I have Direct TV for Television and the TWC for the internet only. Direct TV is pretty good, maybe costs a little more than standard cable, but offers more variety. I watch a lot of movies and there are a lot of choices there. Sometimes during a strong rainstorm the picture may have an issue but not very often.

dd74 · 01-21-2007, 11:58 PM

All I need is Direct TV and a reasonably small HDTV.

My internet is Earthlink, BTW. There's no way I'd use TWC for all my informational needs.

mikester · 01-22-2007, 08:35 AM

DD, Is your internet truely through Earthlink or are they using TWC's line to give you a cable modem? That's what I did for about 2 years after I left TWC. When TWC and AOL merged the courts declared them some sort of a monopoly and required open access to some of their properties. The original TWC properties in Socal are open access and Earthlink can give you a cable modem through them but you will be billed by TWC and technically serviced by TWC.

Anyway, I also have DirectTV for my TV and they have great customer service and good service. In the last 4 years I have never noticed a single pixel out of place much less a true outage.

If you have an HD TV but don't have the HD hardware they will give it to you for free if you tell them TWC's price is cheaper than theirs.

dd74 · 01-22-2007, 08:49 AM

Hi Mike - no, our DSL is through out phone company, which is sometimes a whole other mess.

Everyone who has used Direct TV seems to like it. I plan on using it as an excuse to get a new television...finally.

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Since I last posted this, the internet was down for 1 week...then came on for 2 days...

and now it is down again for the past 2 days.

TWC does not answer their support telephone line.
They do not return emails.

DavidI · 02-01-2007, 06:55 PM

Since Time Warner took over, we have had problems with our service too. The connection is sporadic.

David

campbellcj · 02-01-2007, 09:11 PM

Mine's been really good - super fast too - but it actually was just down for a couple hours here. I was migrated to the RoadRunner net a few weeks ago and bumped to a faster speed than with Adelphia/TWC for around the same price.

Compared to our previous Covad/PacBell DSL which was extremely unreliable (down for a couple hours almost every day), 1/10th the speed and 2X the cost, I have no complaints as of yet!

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Good to hear that TWC is working for someone (up in Agoura)...
Im hoping they get around to fixing South Bay someday...
and then maybe get to work on answering their phones...
and emails.