Complaint Review: Time Warner Cable - Sylmar California

Tis a shame that in order to resolve my issue, I had to have my brother call. Here is the rest of the sordid timeline. May 30th. After more ups and downs than a custom car on hydraulics, this day dawned with zero internet access at all. Zip, zilch, nada. Bright and early I called technical support to find out what went wrong this time. After the first tier monkey told me that it must be because my Windows XP OS was corrupted, I very politely asked to speak to a supervisor, and was transferred to speak to Sam. Sam graciously accepted polite criticism of his technician and transferred me to someone with more networking expertise. Joseph told me that somehow the Mac address of the cable modem I owned had been flagged as disabled in their provisioning system. It was all I could do to stay civil, but Joseph talked me through the problem and we were back online. He made some comment that I hope was joking telling me that if I should get the digital phone service, as it would help them troubleshoot in future, and I remarked that if I owned their digital cable that not only would my internet be disfunctional, that then I wouldn't be able to call them for technical support, so I didn't think it was a good idea for me to add that to my account today. In light of the most recent treatment I received, in hindsight it seems that Joseph might have politely been telling me that I was complaining too often about my service. I resented that comment and couldn't wait to get off the line again and get back to work. Kept my signal for 3 1/2 hours - dropped off the internet during an important conference call with my supervisor. Good times. Called technical support immediately again, and told my story again multiple times to multiple different people, and insisted on speaking to a supervisor, again. I was scheduled for a technician visit tomorrow. 4:45pm, lost signal again for the third time that day, in the middle of a meeting with clients and while working on a project. Blew a gasket, and called technical support again. Talked to Kaley. Kaley sounded like a trainee or she was following a specific troubleshooting script. She instructed me during the troubleshooting process to unplug the RJ-45 cable (both ends) and change the directions my cable was pointing. I asked Kaley if she suspected an impedence problem, and she told me that she had heard that reversing the cable fixed some people's problems. I asked her if she would like to know the pin-out configuration of the cable, as I'd be happy to provide that to her if she felt it would help solve my problem, and I think I heard her neurons colliding as I waited on the telephone. I gently mentioned to her that if the person she was consulting when she was putting me on hold was more knowledgable than she was, that I would prefer to speak to them, and I think she was quite relieved to hand me over. Morgan, who said he was Haley's supervisor, put me on hold for a few minutes to read all the notes that had accumulated so far. He then asked me to hold while he transferred me to "tier 3". I received ticket # 47003345 and was told that I should not speak to tiers 1 or 2 any longer in reference to this particular issue until after the service call the next morning, but to inform the first monkey in line to transfer me immediately to tier 3 and that I have an open case. Good to know. May 31st. Technician shows up in person for the second time. Tells me that he can only help me if he installs a Time Warner owned modem. Installs it and makes sure that only one computer can connect to the network. Refuses to do anything else since he had a good signal from the Time Warner modem. Fine, I can figure out the rest myself. He exits. I unplug everything, and reconstruct my network. You'd think things could not possible get worse. But they are. Now I've lost my wireless router, my switch, and I can only put one computer on the network at one time. I call Time Warner back again. I speak to monkey #1, and explain the situation. Can't get transferred to tier 3, since now I have A NEW PROBLEM. I am boggled. I ask if I need to upgrade to a different plan now that I'm a Time Warner customer, like Wireless Home Networking, in order to be able to put my wireless router back online. Confusion from the monkey. I get transferred to the order department, explain that I already have a wireless network, and just need to know if their arcane rules require that I subscribe to their wireless home networking services in order to get my wireless router back online. I get sounds of confusion from the order monkey, and get sent back to technical support. Starting to feel the blood boiling when I can't get my question answered properly. I start all over again with the next person, and explain the situation starting from May 20th all the way to today, and I ask them to help me put everything back to where it was before they broke my network, now that the cable in the wall and the cable modem have both been replaced. As soon as I tell them I have more than one computer, and I am positive that all my network equipment is working fine but it is just not provisioning an IP address, I can't get any civil answers. Okay, let me speak to a supervisor now. Ed, the supervisor, first keeps calling me Mrs. even though I inform him that I am single, a Ms. He was really rude, his tone portrayed to me that he felt that he was in some way superior to me, and kept asking me rudely how much I think I know about networking, and told me he'd be happy to come out and fix my problem for only $50 per computer. I curse to myself, and politely tell Ed that I'll call back after performing some more tests myself. I have 15 years in the IT business, and as a matter of fact I'm meeting with a client about his VLAN today, so I'm not a schlock just because I'm a woman, and I'm resent Ed's sexist pig attitude. I've gotten a snow job nearly every call I've made to this company for 8 days straight, and I'm really tired of it. A bit more work on my own, and its patently obvious to me that the RCA DCM 425 is not performing NAT translations. I can only lease one IP address. The tech monkey didn't give me a manual for the modem this morning, and the only info I can find on the interet is the tech specs. Back I get on the phone again, and ask Time Warner monkey how I configure my modem to allow my network to perform NAT translations so I can get back to work. I tell them I want things to go back to working the way they did before they broke them 8 days ago, without having to pay any more money, and without having to add services to my account. Tameka gives me probably the best customer service of the entire time, the Time Warner telephone system loses me while she's trying to transfer me to a supervisor, and she actually calls me back to apologize and get me to her supervisor, Sergio. Sergio reiterates what Tameka says, I'm sure its the company line, that he'd be happy to send someone out to network my computers for $50 each, and/or I should consider upgrading to a commercial account. I'm livid, feeling like they are extorting me now, and I quickly get off the phone with Sergio before I say something that might make them turn off my account permanently. In hopes of a miracle, I continue to try and troubleshoot the home network. After countless mumblings of !@#$ and other unprintable comments to myself and rechecking everything twice, thrice, ad nauseum, I give up, and wait for a more level head to come home, because I'm ready to drive to my local Time Warner office and embed the Time Warner cable modem into the nearest "technician". My brother gets home, and I calmly explain the situation to him. He looks over everything, and agrees with me. He calls Time Warner, and explains the problem to them. They should have provisioned the account with the MAC address of my router, instead of stonewalling me when I mentioned that I had a network and that it was working before they broke it. In half an hour, my brother has the network back online and I've been online solidly ever since. The lesson I take away from these wasted 8 days of my life and the 1/2 hour my brother spends on the telephone solving the problem tells me that ISPs (and other computer corporations) really need to meet the challenges head on to solve the sexist misconceptions continued to be put forth by the men that work for them that women are dumb, airheads, computer illiterate and/or only deserving of being patted on the head and told to get back into the kitchen. The owners of these companies should also be a lot more considerate of the way the majority of their customers use their services to put more than one computer online in a home with so many cheap routers and wireless options available in today's consumer market by being supportive and sympathetic and helpful. I could certainly understand paying a marginally higher amount for the privilege of an additional level of technical support for my network configuration if that was offered, in order to receive a positive experience instead of the negative experience and feelings I now have towards the cable monopoly holding me hostage. Unfortunately, Verizon is no better, and satellite is too expensive for me to consider it a replacement at this time. Fortunately, at the end of this fiasco, Time Warner's billing department was kind enough to credit me back with the first 7 days that our service was wonky, and I have to call them back and tell them that it took another day. Yes, its only $15, but its MY $15. I'd love to bill them for my regular hourly rate that I was unable to work. Hmm. Can't hurt, eh?