Another city considers suing Time Warner Cable over service

The city of Los Angeles' lawsuit against Time Warner Cable has prompted a neighboring community to look at suing the cable provider.

Now the city of Costa Mesa, Calif., is also considering suing Time Warner, claiming that its residents have gotten poor service, too. Complaints had gotten so out of hand, that earlier this year the city council called a public hearing to question a Time Warner representative about the issue.

Even though service has improved over the past few months, the city's attorney said that residents have experienced similar issues as those outlined in the Los Angeles complaint, according to the Daily Pilot, the local newspaper's Web site.

Late last week, the city attorney for Los Angeles filed a suit against Time Warner alleging the company broke multiple laws by providing poor service to its citizens. The city is seeking to collect tens of millions of dollars in fines.

The suit is linked to problems Time Warner experienced after it took over cable systems from bankrupt cable operator Adelphia. Time Warner also picked up some systems through a swap with Comcast, its co-buyer in the Adelphia transaction.

Time Warner increased its subscribers in the Los Angeles region from 350,000 to 1.9 million literally overnight. The company was overwhelmed as it migrated e-mail accounts, resolved billing issues, and transitioned other video and broadband systems to its own systems. The result was allegedly poor service and a doubling in complaints.

Specifically, the suit alleges the company failed to live up to its part of the franchise cable agreement, which requires the company to answer subscribers' calls within 30 seconds and begin repairs of service interruptions within 24 hours of notification in 90 percent of its service calls. The suit claims that less than 60 percent of calls for service were answered on time and that broadband and TV "was so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all."

Time Warner says that it's working to improve customer service in the region, but it disagrees with the suit's allegations.

"We're proud of the service we provide to the L.A. area," a spokesman wrote in an e-mail. "We've made great strides in customer service, evidenced by the fact that call volumes are now lower than pre-acquisition levels, despite being apporximately five times larger."

Improving customer service is a big deal for cable operators, especially as they face increased competition from phone companies. Time Warner is one of many companies with several initiatives in the works to improve its service. But will it be too late? Many customers are already ditching Time Warner in the L.A. area and switching to satellite providers. AT&T also provides its U-verse TV and broadband service in parts of the area, which could give some residents another choice.

[lanimichele]

I have had nothing but problems with Time Warner!! I too live in Costa Mesa and dealing with them has been the most frustrating experience ever~ They truly are a fraudulent company!

[08Rabbit]

I've had direct TV for over 6 years now. I love it. The customer service is awesome too.

[Pixelslave]

Long overdue! I used to have a dedicated DSL and TW cable modem. The DSL line is near the edge of the service area and is many times slower than TW's cable service. It turned out that the shaky DSL line wasn't doing too bad. It's up almost 99% of the time. Whenever it had problem, I just needed to use a screwdriver to touch the line coming into the DSL box outside my house. The TW cable? It went up & down every couple minutes. I ended up using it only as a backup even though it's supposedly faster!

[McPlot]

Lets see, they got about 6 times the number of subscribers, but complaints only doubled. How is that a bad thing again? 6 times the complaints would make them even with what they had before. So, if you had 10 customers, and had 2 complaints. You now have 60 computers and 4 complaints. Looks like an improvement to me.

[Lerianis]

Ah, but take into account that companies have a habit of only giving out a small percentage of the amount of problems that they are actually having.... once you take that into account....... 2 times the number of reported complaints might add up to 10 times the number in actuality.

[edaboy51]

This is fuzzy math. I think you misunderstood the story.

[JCPayne]

DUH.... That is when the city should inform TWC that they wont renew the cable license unless they see results.... Poof. Cheaper fix....

[paulej]

Here on the east coast, Time Warner does an excellent job -- really. Their uplink/downlink speeds work as promised and rarely do I experience operational problems. Further, I can tell that they are constantly making improvements in their infrastructure and just recently boosted everybody's download speed.

What really amazed me is that they even provide cable and Internet service even when the power goes out. In my experience, they have been as reliable as Ma Bell ever was. When the power goes out and my machine is running on a UPS, I can still access the Internet. (I have no idea how they manage to do that or how long they can provide service, because my UPS goes dead long before their service does.)

Could it be that they're having trouble because they took over a company that was already providing horrible service? And, they then experienced an amazing growth in subscribers, which then strained them further?

And how would sucking $10M out of them help the cable subscribers? If they are really providing horrible service, do as JCPayne suggested -- threaten to yank their license. It makes a lot more sense to put that $10M in enfrastructure and staff, no?

[HonorOne]

You can't threaten to yank a license when it moves to state. All bets are off and anyone can operate in the area thus competition comes into play if they have the bucks to built the overlapping infrastucture.

[atish505]

TWC is better than the DEVILISH COMCAST.

They are unable to get a clear signal into my home for two weeks even though I am right on their local hub.

[edaboy51]

As to Time Warner digital phone. Don't do it. I took the bait and switched to TW digital phone from Comcast digital phone (which was a natural, since TW bought out most of Comcast in Los Angeles). Well, after the switch, I had no phone service for a whole month. And I spent twenty hours on the phone (cell phone) with various levels of support people who did not understand anything. Four or more site visits by inept installers and technicians were required. They even lost my telephone number (which was supposed to port to me under the law). Don't go there.

[HonorOne]

They have too much turnover in staff and pay poorly. How proficient can you be when you aren't in the position very long?

[chuck_whealton]

Isn't TW one of the companies experimenting with "metered" internet use?

So now, in addition to poor service, you also get to pay more for your poor service?

Incredible...

[HonorOne]

Yes - they certainly are and the Turbo HSD is just a good way to get some xtra dollars!

[Zero187]

i live in new york and residential speeds are ok, but time warner business (road runner turbo plus) is never the speed it's supposed to be. I am supposed to get 15mbps down and 2mbps up but i only get 6mbps down during the early morning, late evening and only 1mbps down during the work day at my office. I am the IT guy and i have called them up numerous times only to be told that I must have viruses on my network. What a joke

[HonorOne]

All city franchises are moving to state franchises thus the terms are not going to be the same. TWC management in Los Angeles is not ethical - I know from an insiders perspective. They care about how much money they can make and it is nowhere near what they want it to be - improving customer service and infrastructure costs millions of dollars and they aren't about to spend it right now with the impending spinoff from Time Warner Inc.. They are going to need all the cash they can get just to fund the dividend payoff and the huge interest and debt payments. Don't count on big improvements very soon - competition is killing them.

[alexandergordon]

Time Warner is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. The products are bad, the pricing is outrageous and the service, as we all know, is award-winningly, stupefyingly inept. TWC is basically a monopoly here in NYC and it shows. As soon as Verizon/Cablevision/anyone shows up in my building I am dumping Time Warner out of spite.