I like good television reception, fast internet speeds for my computer, and voice over internet protocol for cheaper telephone service.
The choices available for these services are cable TV, telephone connection, or satellite dish. Having dealt with telephone and dish in the past, I chose cable after moving here five years ago.
From the first day cable was installed in my home, the service from Time Warner has been anything but satisfactory and sometimes downright unacceptable. Many visits from their technicians usually end up with the same excuse … our equipment.
Our first years here we were told that the “system” was scheduled for an upgrade to “fiber optics,” which would solve our problems. The fiber optics are installed, the problems remain. In fact, the problems seem to be worse. I do not like paying for something I am not getting.
After a couple of years of bad service from Time Warner, I started to create a paper trail of complaints using email to the regional tech center in Los Angeles. With this data, I was able to obtain a rather sizable refund from our local cable office.
For the past couple of years, the quality of our cable has been up and down, mostly down. Calls to Time Warner have had the same result as in the past … our equipment.
This time, the problem is not in the delivery of the signal, but in the source of the signal — what is called the “head end” or engineering part of their service. As I was told, the fiber optics is doing its job, but the signal being fed to the fiber optics is not sufficient.
A good signal level is considered to be about or near to “0” decibels (or db) at your house. I was told by their tech I am getting minus 11 db.
I pay for the fastest internet, digital cable TV, Vonage VOIP telephone, and premium cable channels, which makes my cable bill about $150 per month. For this I get constant “tiling” of my picture on my TV, very slow or nonexistent internet connection, and total loss of all services from time to time.
Am I alone in this? From what I have been told by their techs, I am not.
I was also told that at this time I could expect no improvement at least throughout the summer, which I will take to mean probably none at all for a year or two.
If you are not happy with your service, make note of your problems and ask for a refund as I have. Once enough of their profits suffer from our dissatisfaction, perhaps they will fix their system?
M.J. Mitchell
Idyllwild
