How to handle Time Warner & Road Runner

Time Warner Road Runner

Just yesterday the installer came out to hook us to the pole for cable and internet. Not much to my surprise but the speed numbers they quoted to me where totally off, even at the time I was thinking “hey this doesn’t sound right”, but also I was thinking that these people know what is going on, boy was I wrong.

The number that was stated to me for down/up was 10mb/s down with 1mb/s up and this was more than one person that did this to me. So I am thinking that they are correct while I am on the phone but I have never even heard of the speeds being that high in this area. So the installer gets the cable line all hooked to the modem then I start with my playing around to get the entire network back up and running with a better connection than the neighbors wireless. During the process I had some major issues because I had used my DDWRT router as a repeater to, again, the neighbors wireless. Once I reset the router I then took the backup I had created and restored that back to the DDWRT router and had minor issues from there. The problem was with the cable modem not passing the DHCP information properly to the router leaving the router unconnected to the modem resulting in having to reset the modem every time the router resets. Sure this can be a pain but at least it works for now.

I went from this 71 Road Runner

So now that I have my router all hooked up it is time for me to visit speedtest.net to see what they are actually giving me in throughput. So I fire up Firefox head to speedtest, run the test and low and behold…. it isn’t the speed that was sold to me, which brings up a good point to always be certain to get the speeds before install time. The speeds I was getting at speedtest.net where about 5mb/s down and 384k/s up which would be standard speed for the area that I live in but again this was not what was sold to me.

So with my speedtest results still on the screen I make a call to Time Warner Customer Service who listened intently to my problem then transferred me to another department based in the Phillipeans where I got a nice lady that spoke English like she had a large quantity of marbles in her mouth that then confirmed that the speed that I was getting was not what the standard speeds should have been based on yet another speed test done from one of the Time Warner servers. So at this point it was then again confirmed to me that what I was being billed for was correct but what I was receiving was not what I was paying for. At the conclusion of the call the lady then transferred me back to my local area to speak with a customer service representative whom I got to right away. The young man that answered, “Alex” I believe, informed me of quite a few things while I was on the phone with him as follows; Time Warner offshore most of their call center work to the Philippines, there is no accountability in this company when someone sells you something but gives you something else, Time Warner uses “bait and switch” tactics, Time Warner customer service representatives are more apt to have you cancel your service than to make something right or to make you happy.

To this 70 Road Runner

So maybe that last paragraph is a little over the top but during my conversation with the man who answered I felt that he did not care initially about making things right as he told me that there was nothing that he could do. The conversation began to turn when I started to explain to him how I had been sold something that I would never be receiving, he counter with well you are paying for a service and you can cancel at any time. So to counter the cancellation he stated I said, “Yes, I could but that would then lead us to the argument of a refund on my installation”, and yes I am paying for a service that is supposed to provide to me a certain level of accessibility for what I had agreed to not just provide me with a basic service that is, or could be, changed at anytime with no user interaction. I then explained to the man that I had already paid for installation and the first months bill to have the service even turned on and had I known that the speeds would not have been what I agreed to that I could have easily gone with another carrier that I would not have had to call to correct problems.

After a lot of run around with words and him telling me “I can’t do anything”, I simply stated that I was not getting what agreed to pay for and that Time Warner would either have to bill me a little less for the annoyance or bump me up to RR turbo to accommodate a compromise to the situation at hand. So at this point he says to me that he would have to see if a supervisor would approve it, which the supervisor did, and I got RR turbo for for the cost of basic service to me for a year.

And got this SUPERBIRD!!!

After some time the modem reset itself and I was seeing speeds of 10mb/s to 18mb/s down with 485k/s up, so all in all it was a great compromise for me but also might give Time Warner a message that some of us are technology savvy, will not stand for the “bait and switch”, and perhaps make people become a little more accountable for what they say and do.

Speedtest.net

In the end I am very happy with my service and the speed is amazing but since I know how Time Warner operates I know that when the bill comes I will be calling back to correct a billing mistake.