Time Warner - Underground cable

[Patrick425]

In December I had a technician out at the house. He had to replace the cable that ran from the house to the cable box and stated that someone would come out in the spring to bury it. I was not happy about this, because if I'm correct, this will end up being a nightmare where I'm cutting the grass around this cable for the entire summer until they finally show up in late August.

 

I just called to make sure that something was scheduled on my account (Didn't want to find out in May that no one scheduled anything). I was told that they don't start scheduling cable burials until May 30th. This really upset me, so I asked to speak to a supervisor who told me that they will start burials before May 30th weather permitting and that people who could not get there lines buried in the Winter are first in line.

 

I'm dreading the anticipated phone calls back and forth to Time Warner to try to get this done. Just wondering if anyone else has had any experience with this before and how did it turn out for you.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I work for one of TW's competitors, and I did about a 2 month stretch where I was on the phone/line repair desk due to a shortage of people back about a year ago. (Also subbed for TW as a sweep tech/fiber splicer many years ago) I can tell you in that 2 months, this call, as an employee, is the most frustrating one to take.

 

First, the parent company almost never does the buries themselves, they sub-contract that kind of stuff. Scheduling is a nightmare, because you're constantly trying to coordinate crap with multiple parties that never seem to agree on anything, and lastly, the contractors NEVER live up to the schedule that they agree to.

 

I know as the consumer it totally sucks to be told time and again "We'll get to you next week", but that's the way it works, unfortunately. It'll get done, but never in the timeframe that you're promised.

 

I was taking calls from people who said our techs were promising 7-10 days for line burial, and we're supposed to set expectations for 6 weeks minimum. That really sucks as the phone guy when you have to backtrack over something somebody else told the customer that was just completely wrong, and you're the one taking the verbal abuse from the customer because "they were lied to".

[TSack27]

I had the same problem with Charter. If you can do it yourself, see if you can negotiate a deal with them.

 

I repeatedly tried to get them to bury the line as promised in the spring prior to putting in a new lawn. Since I was already doing the landscaping it wasn't a big deal, but I told Charter I thought it would only be fair if I got that month's service for free, we settled on something like knocking $30 of the bill.

[Invader3K]

You could always "accidentally" slice the cable with your lawnmower, which would force them to come out and fix the problem. I think that's actually what happened when I was still living at my parents...except I really did accidentally run it over.

[DuWayne Steurer]

You could always "accidentally" slice the cable with your lawnmower, which would force them to come out and fix the problem. I think that's actually what happened when I was still living at my parents...except I really did accidentally run it over.

 

They'll come out and temp fix it, but they still won't bury it.