Complaint Review: Cablevision Systems Corp AKA Cablevision - Bethpage New York

i am an installer for cablevision. many times we are late arriving to customers homes to install their services. this is because cablevision schedules more appointments than the technicians can actually cover.we are given an impossible workload and told to "do as many of them as you can." the length of time a job takes to be completed is estimated by a point system. every 12 points is estimated to be an hour. if one job is 50 points, another is 36 points and another 22 points, how can we complete them all in an 8-11 a.m. time frame? one day i added up my points and i was estimated to have 27 hours worth of work! some technicians are showing up to 2-5 p.m. appointments 10 o'clock at night.

As a correction, the time frames used to be four hours which more recently became three hours for the window (it used to be that a service interruption had to be for over six hours before a customer had to call in to get credit, now it's hours).

Thank you for your response Marilyn. As an additional comment regarding time frames given to customers as to when to expect the technician, at one time there were systems where we told the customer they'd have to wait up to six hours for the technician on a service call (which has been changed to four hours throughout all the systems which my understanding is that this has been enacted into law). If the service call is set up within 24 hours from the time the problem is reported in, then the customer may have to wait all day for a technician (no requests for a morning or afternoon were being entertained). I used to work for a carpet cleaning company that would give out two-and-a-half windows that handled far more territory with less techs that were all subcontractors. In my opinion, there's no good reason for a customer to hang around more than 90 minutes for a tech to arrive (to allow for unforeseens such as additional work, traffic and directions). It'd be interesting to hear from others what the time frames are for other companies and how they were established to begin with. I hope that the company you work for gives good health benefits.

Yes I did work for Cablevision. Up until last week Cablevision contracted with and outside company to handle their overflow. My company handle customer service calls for Cablevision out of 4 of their call centers. Joplin and St. Joseph, MO, Fairmount, WV, and Rocky Mount. We were not as highly trained as the CSR's in the actual Cablevision call centers and often had to transfer calls to them. Part of the reason they contracted with us was to handle the high volume of calls that they expected to receive from all the changes being made at Cablevision. With over 3 million customers it would have been difficult for just the regular call centers to handle all those calls. What Stuart said is absolutly true. If a customer had a problem we could not handle they were transfer to a CSR that had more acess or authorization but not an actual supervisor. I hope that explains the confusion

The first change in the prior report is that customer service operations were consolidated in Newark.

In followup to my first report, after reading the other postings, there's a little mystery here as Cablevision's territory covers New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and a small piece of Pennsylvania. The other posters say they come from Arizona and Kansas. I don't doubt the accuracy of the consumer complaint report, but it needs a further explanation as to which system and town of Cablevision it's actually referring to. The other report from Kansas may be from somebody who used to work at Cablevision, however I'm not sure. The information in that report though is accurate for most systems. For myself, I worked for Cablevision for over six years having left them this past March. In regards to consumer problems, when a number of customers are affected having poor reception or modem problems, the usual reasons are: (1) Weather due to storms, extreme heat and extreme cold. (2) Rebuild which was over 95% completed when I had left. (3) System problems due to technical factors (4) Other factors such as broadcast problems originating outside of Cablevision. The biggest problem facing Cablevision which has been a constant when I was with them is communications as the company always seemed to be understaffed and even more so with all the recent layoffs during the past year. Cablevision doesn't have a manual per se as the business is way too complicated for a manual to cover plus changes are constantly going on (two of the biggest recently is when the operations for consolidated into Newark and converting the call centers into virtual call centers). Virtually speaking, a Customer Relations Coordinator (more accurately Customer Service Representative), is expected to handle calls on his or her own in the call center. In regards to access to reliable info for a CRC, what's available are the computer databases, technical training manuals, occasional classes, the escalation queue and (before going virtual) other CRCs. When a customer requests a supervisor due to dissatisfaction with a CRC response, then the normal recourse would be to transfer that customer into the escalation queue to whoever picks up. This queue is not normally staffed with supervisors which is somewhat a bit of a deception. However the staff is overall highly trained (still you can run across somebody from there who will arbitrarily ask a CRC what can somebody from escalation say to the customer that a CRC can't say or say to an irate customer that we'll have to get back to him or her to avoid dealing with the customer). Due to understaffing, waiting periods can be considerable. Too often teeth have to be pulled to find out what's going on. The computer system itself needs to be seriously updated from Cabledata which is quite limited. The company also needs to set up some forums for all the employees to facilitate communications so that accurate information can be given in a more timely fashion

Since Cablevision doesn't do business in Kansas, I don't see how you would be a current CSR for Cablevision. So do you actually work for Cablevision?

I am a CSR for cablevision. We all understand that there has been a lot more outages recently because of the "Rebuild" work on the systems. The company is switching from anolog to digital service which requires new equipment and new lines. I know this is a lousey excuse but it is the only one we have. Just remember that when your service is out for more than 4 hours you can request a credit for the day. You just have to call back when your service is restored and ask for it. As far as the tech's are concerned I have a tendency to agree with you. There have been many tech's I would have liked to ring their necks. As far as the "excuses", often times when a person first calls in, we don't know what the problem is other than they are doing rebuild or maintenance work in the area. Later when a little time is passed the actual problem will be given on out outage board, but that is after the tech's report the exact problem. We can only tell the customer what we know at that time. I'm sorry if this leads to some confusion. I too, have often wondered about heads of the company. Are they unaware or just don't care.