I've had two separate experiences with Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles, and neither of them have been pleasant. The second, however, has been much more unpleasant, as I have not lived in SoCal for nearly 6 months and yet TW still haunts me.
The first experience involved an apartment with a layout that was very elongated, so I was willing to chalk up the frequent cutting out of the internet service to my being too far from the wireless router.I was a little less enthused about the often garbled cable channels. And when my roommates experienced troubles with the internet as well, that became somewhat annoying. It's a cable internet service, though, so one expects a certain amount of shortages.
My second experience was a fairly standard layout apartment, and I only used the internet in the same room as the brand new wireless router, so no proximity excuses this time. Even so, we would sometimes go hours, even days (GASP!) without internet. Just as I would be about to venture outside and actually see sunlight, our internet service would magically "click" back on. This was horrendous and we would have switched services except that TW was the only high speed internet in the area. I felt like the shaggy dog in Monopoly, landing on Boardwalk every time around the board and having to pay some sycophantic philistine rent but never feeling like I got anything out of the deal except screwed.
So here's the topper: when I moved out, my roommates stayed in the apartment and wanted to keep the internet. Since it was in my name, we had to switch it over to one of theirs so I wouldn't be on the hook for the bill. I didn't know how to do this, so I first checked the website; no info there. Next was the phone call, where I found out they'd have to mail me a form, whcih we would both have to fill out. A month later, no form has arrived, I call again, "I'm sorry to hear that sir, let me put in a request to send another form." A month later... well, I'm sure you can guess. I ask them at one point if they can just e-mail this form to me, or if I can download it from somewhere. Silly me. This is just an internet and technology company; why would they allow something like that? So I wait for another form to be sent by mail.
Some 4 months later I finally receive this form. My old roommate and I both fill out our parts, and I go to fax it back, but of course, as you can guess, no faxing is allowed. So I make a copy, then send in the original. That was a month ago, and after just getting off the phone with TW, I've found out that 1) they don't have any record of any form being sent in, and 2) once they do receive the form, "it could take months" to have the service switched over. On the plus side, their computer is showing that another copy of the same form is being sent out and should arrive soon.
Finally, at the end of the call, the customer service rep tells me "What you could do is go to a Time Warner Cable store, show them your completed form, and they should be able to transfer the name on the service right then and there." Thank you, customer service rep. It was nice of you to tell me that before I spent nearly 6 months doing this dance with you.
Oh wait, you didn't.
The long and the short of it: stay as far away from Time Warner Cable as you can. DirecTV, AT&T U-verse, or heck, even rabbit ears for your TV and dial-up internet would probably be better.
