Ladera's Recent Internet Problems with Time Warner Cable

[Forwarded Message]

From: Phil Becker <psbecker@gmail.com>
To: <residents@laderaheights.org>
Subject: Ladera's Recent Internet Problems with Time Warner Cable
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:53:12 -0800

As many of you are painfully aware, we in Ladera Heights, along with many other communities in Southern California, have recently experienced numerous outages or periods of very slow service when trying to use Time Warner’s Internet service. Most recently, our Internet service was completely unavailable for several hours starting at about 8:30 PM on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. There have been at least three other, similar outages this month, plus numerous times when response time has been extremely slow. Furthermore, during these outages, their support lines are so overloaded, that it can take more than an hour to reach an agent who will then only confirm that the service is not working and they have no idea when it will be fixed.

I became so frustrated with this poor service, that I have done some investigating about what we in the area can do about it and would like to share my findings with the rest of you so that you don’t have to repeat all of this if you decide to take action on your own.

First, I called Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas’ office and was transferred to a County department called the “Cable TV Section of the Chief Executive Office.” I spoke to a very knowledgeable gentleman named Jose Ramos who is responsible for working with the various cable companies in Los Angeles County. He was unaware of the scope of TW’s recent problems and asked that each one of us call him whenever we have a service issue with TW so that he could see for himself what we are experiencing and how widespread it is. The department phone number is 213-974-2323. He is the person who can bring pressure on TW to get their act together, so I strongly encourage you to make a quick call to his office whenever your service goes out.

Second, I have talked to numerous people within TW. The first thing I learned is that when there is a widespread outage, it is not worth the effort to call their published customer support number, which is 888-892-2253. You will probably have to wait upwards of an hour to reach a human being and will then be given little or no explanation of what is going on. What little information you receive will frequently be incorrect. For example, most of their agents would have told you that the recent outages are due to service upgrades which should result in better service for us in the long term. In fact, according to my subsequent conversations with senior management at TW, those upgrades were actually completed a while ago. What we are experiencing now are network problems which they have not fully identified much less corrected.

Instead, I suggest you go directly to the office of the President. One of the senior people who covers our neighborhood is Deborah Picciolo, whose title is President, Residential Services, Time Warner Cable, West Region. Her office is in Chatsworth but I cannot find an accurate phone number. When I called the published number and asked to speak to Ms. Picciolo, they refused to give me her office number and immediately hung up on me. When I called back, a supervisor told me that giving any customer the number of their headquarters office is a firing offense. TW senior management seems to go to extremes to avoid having to talk to their clients. Then again, if I treated customers the way TW does, I wouldn’t want to talk to them either.

However, you can contact the president’s office via email at dl-los-metro-otp@twcable.com. I sent them an email describing what we have been experiencing for the past few weeks and did get a next day response via email and a phone call from a gentleman named Todd who apparently works for their office of the president. Interestingly, Todd says that he lives in Ladera and is familiar with the recent problems. He explained that they have been unable to solve the problems, and don’t know when they will be fixed, but would be willing to give me three months free internet service as compensation for this “inconvenience.” I suggested that the service has been unavailable to all their Ladera clients, so TW should give the same compensation of free service to everyone. He declined and said you would each have to contact him via email at the above address to request your free service. I suggest that it is worth the effort.

Regards,

Phil “Smitty” Becker
6219 S. Corning Avenue
310-645-4482

[Forwarded Message]

From: Phil Becker <psbecker@gmail.com>
Subject: Ladera's Recent Internet Problems with Time Warner Cable
Date: Fri, 6 March 2009 15:15:16 -0800

Hi,

As you may recall, last Friday I sent out an email to you all about my experiences with Time Warner Cable. I also gave some contact names that you could use if you experience similar problems. Unfortunately, I just realized that typed one of their phone numbers incorrectly.

Within the office of the County Supervisors, there is a department called “Cable TV Section of the Chief Executive Office.” This department is charged with coordinating relations with the various cable companies within LA County. If any of us have an issue with Time Warner, we should call the head of that department, whose name is Jose Ramos, whom I have found to be very responsive and easy to work with. The correct number to reach his office is 213-974-2323.

As while talking to a person in the TW Office of the President, the gentleman claimed that TW sent out an explanatory email about the problem to everyone who the assumed had experienced this problem. After explaining that I for one (along with at least everyone I talked to) never saw this email, he sent me a copy which I have included below:

During the past week, hackers have launched a series of attacks on Time Warner Cable's servers. Time Warner Cable is working with law enforcement agencies to resolve these crimes.

As a result of these attacks, you may have experienced a temporary "outage" when attempting to surf the Web, including an intermittent "page cannot be displayed" error message. The outages did not result in services being 100% unavailable; and were limited to sporadic timeouts which appeared to be random events. Some users may have experienced a total disconnect. These types of attacks are not uncommon, especially for a network as large as ours. We suspect that the attackers are using "zombie computers," or hijacking unsuspecting subscribers' machines to perpetrate the attack without its owner's knowledge.

All of us at Time Warner Cable take these attacks extremely seriously. As previously mentioned, we are working with the appropriate law enforcement agencies that specialize in investigating these types of crimes. We will pursue prosecution of all perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law. We apologize for the inconvenience that these attacks may have caused and encourage you to report any suspicious activity. Instructions for reporting security abuse are located at http://help.rr.com.

Sincerely,

Time Warner Cable Customer Service

By the way, several of you responded to my email and said that they had switched to a competitive service from AT&T called U-Verse which is now available in Ladera. It appears to be competitively priced, maybe even somewhat below the cost of TW and offers a very complete range of fiber-optic based Cable TV, Internet and Telephone services. Everyone who mentioned the service to me seems quite happy with it, so it appears that we finally have a viable alternative to dealing with TW.

Finally, this subject of Time Warner Cable has generated a lot of email discussion so we have created a new thread on Ladera’s discussion forum. It can be found at http://www.laderaheights.info/forum/viewforum.php?f=11 This is really simple yet effective way to communicate what any of us have experienced or learned about the subject. Please feel free to add your comments or observations that you wish to share with our community. If you wish to contact me directly, please send your emails to psbecker@alumni.princeton.edu. Do not just send a return to this message as that will go to the Ladera web site and will not reach me.

Sorry for any inconvenience that I may have cause by my referencing the incorrect phone number.

Regards,

Phil “Smitty” Becker

[MSMITH]

We experienced the same problems in our home during December and January. After considerable exchanges, the problem was resolved. We did not receive the email notice below.

Part of my professional responsibilities is managing consumer complaints like this for a city in the south bay.

There are differences between AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, and Time Warner Cable. Before you sign on the dotted line, you might want to compare services, products, limitations, and channel line-ups.
Michael D. Smith 5243 Shenandoah Avenue |Los Angeles CA 90056