Time Warner Cable Fraudulent Service Offer, Billing Nightmares, Internet Constantly Down Farmers Branch Texas
Since Time Warner tricked me into installing their high-speed internet service in my home office in August, the following nightmare began.
- My First Mistake: I called the toll-free number Time Warner advertised, and a sales representative arranged for me to have service installed for $26.95/month for the first six months, no installation fee, a $25 rebate and a free wireless router.
- Several weeks later the TW technician who was to install the service showed up, stayed 15 minutes and left.
- When I called to inquire about the non-installation, I was told that my order had been cancelled and I would need to place a new order if I wanted service -- for $44.95/month plus installation. I said forget it.
- My Second Mistake: At this point the customer service person breathlessly explained that Time Warner couldn't (?) honor the sales agreement it had made with me but, while there would be no $25 rebate or free wireless router, she could waive the installation fee and give me a $90 credit to make up for the six-month cost savings I had originally been offered. I foolishly agreed. How very soon I would regret that lapse in judgment.
- In fact, given what had transpired thus far, I should have been able to anticipate what followed. I immediately began to receive bills for the installation fee and $44.95 each month; no $90 credit ever appeared on my paperwork. Over the past 10 or so weeks, I have talked to about a dozen TW customer service representatives who all eagerly agreed that my bill was wrong, but who apparently did nothing to fix it. One even suggested: Just pay whatever the bill says and sometime in the next four or five months it'll get straightened out and you'll get a credit.I politely declined to send Time Warner money that I did not owe, money that Time Warner itself agreed I did not owe.
- My last futile call to the Time Warner Customer Service Keystone Cops on Nov. 19 resulted in a fervent promise from Denita to immediately post the $90 credit plus a credit for the $27.95 installation fee (total credit $117.95). I was told that $53.74 was all I owed and my account would be current and nobody would bother me again. In defeat, I agreed, paid, and within the week had received a threatening notice to terminate service and a plethora of harassing phone calls demanding more money (money I, of course, do not owe, as everyone at Time Warner seems to agree with the exception of their rabid billing department).
- Here's The Best Part: Since service began in late September 2007, the Time Warner internet connection has gone out two to 15 hours at a time, over and over and over. I'm a freelance writer who mostly works with clients via email and if I hadn't had the common sense to keep my Earthlink dial-up service (an additional $21.95/month) as backup, my business would be in shambles by now.
I sadly have not found it unusual to encounter a dishonest business entity. I also have dealt with a number of incompetent businesses. But to have this level of both shameless dishonesty and stunning incompetence in one company . I don't understand why the FCC allows Time Warner to operate in this manner. Isn't consumer fraud still illegal?
Adavis
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
M
Irving,Texas,
U.S.A.
Time Warner Cable is a JOKE! They are indeed corrupt!
#3Consumer Comment
Sun, January 06, 2008
Worst Customer Service and CORRUPT BILLING PRACTICES! Corrupt Management! Should be reported to Utilities Commission and all public beware. Horrific Criminal Billing practices, harrassing inept employees perhaps just out on parole?
When TWC took over Comcast, they did adjustments causing outages. When calling numerous times to get credit for cable TV and cable internet services that did not work, one only got transferred from employee to employee for no one had the decency to credit an account that was not receiving services when calling TWC customer "service".
Final upgrade destroyed my modem and corrupted one of my computers. Cable tv was blurred and HDTV was never again the same once TWC took over. Not sure they are broadcasting HD properly despite the fact they take your money for HD. After 3 months of trying to get credit for services that were not working, I finally cancelled internet service in July 2007.
Despite my cancellation, they continued to bill me for it. Every single month upon review of bill, I had to call & suffer multiple transfers repeating the same information over and over to employess that were seemingly trained to take up your time and instead of rectifyuing the problem, simpy transferred caller (me) claiming the next person would be able to help in billing, then in sales, then in tech support, etc... this would take hours.
they would finally remove the charge for internet services that were not being received only for it to reappear on the next month's bill. this happened july, august, september, october, november, and yet again, i n december of 2007. they used to refuse to talk with you if you were recording the call. in fact, they would hang up. now, they let you record the conversations. interesting.
upon final disgust with TWC, i cancelled TV cable services, too. then after working too many hours- too tired to shop for dish services or other cable options, i reinstated TWC cable Tv services. hopeful after cancellation of services perhaps the illegal billing would stop upon reinitiation of only cable tv service on new account.
when i reinstated service, i noticed TWC applied to my bill over $700 of charges for "equipment" within 2 weeks time. and, to make matters worse, they tried yet again to sneak in the internet charge and mislabel it on my bill as to make it seem to vague. so when i called to ask about it, stating the call was being recorded, the girl was in shock upon review of my account history. finally, a decent employee at TWC creditted account for services not requested nor received. it only took 4 to 10 hours of phone calls and emailf per month for 6 months, but now we will see. now i have reinstated services and have kept excellent records of recorded phone conversations, emails, & billing statements from TWC. also, i had to change my phone number.
after being irritated with their customer care department, they put my phone number in a TWC calling service that calls by computer every hour on the hour as an additional harrassment. when i called to get my number removed from their system, the person that i reported the constant calls to knew exactly what they had dfone to me and agreed it was intentional.
i also began getting calls in the middle of the night by an individual that said nothing. i know this was an employee of TWC. it only cost 35$ to change my number and the experience taught me to never give a company like TWC a valid phone number.
TWC's illegal billing simply must be researched. they took monies for services they could not provide. they perhaps have hired very unstable people as employees in their customer care and tech support teams. beware! do NOT let any of them in your house. there must be more i can do for i know i cannot possibly be the only one this has happened to.
after reading about what the person in Lewisville experienced, i just had to add my experiences to remind us all that we should NOT tolerate this from the company that apparantly has tried to monopolize the market and because they have no decency, they hire crooks and are managed by criminals.
hopefully the public will soon be heard and the proper actions will be taken by the authorities and the public alike. i wish TWC did not have a monopoly on the cable market in my area. they are taking advantage of the public and are indeed a RIP OFF!
Adavis
Dallas,Texas,
U.S.A.
Service Disconnected
#3Author of original report
Mon, December 10, 2007
I notified Time Warner Cable that I filed this report and one with the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Dallas. They have subsequently disconnected my service. Good thing I kept Earthlink dial-up, which their rep assured me I wouldn't need anymore. Now I understand why I was encouraged to remove this safety net.