Just to share my fun little story getting cablecards out of Time Warner for our new series 3...

By the way, we tried going the TW DVR road because of the expense issue.. but there is just no comparison to a real tivo!  If you have a lifetime sub and sitting on the fence... jump on in, the water's wonderful. :)


 Mark,

I believe you know my saga of customer service (or lack thereof) with your company from the sales rep, Johnathon (who is the one redeeming element to this whole story!)

In case you aren't familiar, let me rehash:

We bought a Tivo Series 3 at the end of December... set up a service call for Wednesday 1/17 from 5-8 PM to get two cablecards.  They promised to call a half hour before coming, and sure enough, I got a phone call around 4:35.

I met the technician at our house, who was very nice.  He had never set up cablecards before, but that wasn't a problem.. I'm pretty techy myself, so I plugged them in (yes, one at a time and first slot first.. it really isn't rocket science, and I wish your company would just allow competent end users the OPTION of picking them up and self-installing)...  Anyway, although the tech was nice, and although we tried several different things with also being on the phone to tech support at your company, neither card worked.  One was pretty dinged up, and they both looked like they'd been around the block a time or two, so it wasn't surprising.... in fact, I heard during several calls with your company that it's not unusual for cablecards not to work...... but it's also NOT (though I adamantly think it SHOULD be) SOP to bring extras on the truck, because stock is apparently low, as well.

Anyway, so the tech called in, and set up a new service call for the following Friday from 2-5 (the best they could do, no evening slot was available).  I arranged another half day off of work for Friday, only to find out at the last minute that the warehouse was out of stock on cablecards (the tech called around 2:30, if memory serves)... and so I needed to call in and reschedule the service call.  Why they couldn't find out on Thursday that they were out of stock, I don't know... or early enough in the day on Friday that I hadn't already taken off of work -- that would have been nice.  Or even, hey, we screwed up -- don't make her call back in....

Anyway, so began the battle of busy signals and hold times.  I really don't want my cell phone bill this month, because calling your company is an exercise in frustration.  But, whatever.

I got ahold of someone, and no....... no one could come out on Saturday, so we set the call for Wednesday 1/24 again 5-8.  It was noted on the call to both call a half hour ahead of time (I was meeting with the IRS that day, and couldn't take off work early for the whole time period), and also to have spares on the truck.

As it turned out, I got home around 6:50'ish, and my husband and son were in our backyard playing basketball.  They had the house phone out there with them, and of course I had my cell phone in my pocket, as I always do.  Around 7:30, we thought we'd call in because obviously the window was closing soon, and it was strange that no one had called.

The customer service person who answered my first call (around 7:45) said that the guy had been at our door at 7 PM, and no, they weren't required to call first -- that was just a courtesy.  Now, I have to admit, that really made me upset, after this whole saga, and I did yell at him.  I usually don't yell at the customer service reps (they are doing a job, and usually not the cause, just the people who have to listen to the irate customers...)  But he was so snotty about him not having to call first, and it was just the icing on the whole ugly cake to this point............. so once I calmed down and explained the whole thing, he put me on hold [forever], talked to dispatch, and said the guy would come back... and that dispatch would call me in a few minutes to tell me a time, but if I hadn't heard by 7:58 to call back in.  [Truthfully, I wonder if he was just getting rid of me, and whether or not that was true.. but who knows..]  I also wonder if the tech really did knock on our door around 7 -- yes, we were in the backyard, but our 70 lb dog was inside, and I know she would have barked her head off, and gotten our attention.

So 7:56, I start dialing back in, but by the time I get through busy signals and hold times, it's 8:17 before I'm talking to a rep.  This time it was a lady and I didn't lose my cool with her... but she was on hold so long with dispatch not getting an answer, my 2nd cordless phone was running out of battery, and she did say she'd call me back.... I was skeptical (and rightly so) and asked her several times if she really, really would.. she assured me she would, and, of course, never did.

So......... around 9:30'ish, I called back in, and this time I got Christopher.  Again, another nice customer svc rep who was apologetic at our whole ordeal, and he did offer a $40 credit (which probably is about half of what I'm going to be charged for cell phone minutes for this month, so not really that exciting but at least it's something!)   Anyway, Christopher did the long hold thing with dispatch to find out to no one's surprise that they weren't coming back that night.  [If you're counting, that's attempt #4 that failed.]  He set up the call for the next day, Thursday, from 5 - 8, and marked on there to call a half hour ahead of time.  I pointed out that my son had basketball practice, but it was just a few minutes away at the local school, but it was imperative it be marked that they call first.  According to him, they are supposed to call twice, even, if no one is home.  Anyway, he set us up for the next day, again in the 5-8 block, and clearly marked it as must call first.

Thursday, around 12:20, I was in an AR meeting at work, and my phone rang with a 214 number.  I didn't recognize it, and since I was in a meeting, I ignored the call.  Later, I listened to my voice mail, and it was Kathy from Time Warner dispatch, calling about our missed service call, and she left the main 972 number as a callback.  I figured she was calling about the credit or to apologize (hah) or something, and the few times I tried the main number, I got busy signals, and the number she dialed from went straight to voice mail, and I didn't leave a message.  Around 5:00 PM, I finally didn't get a busy signal, and sat through the hold time and got ahold of Johnathon.

Let me say that I hope y'all give Johnathon a huge attaboy, and put something nice in his file, because he's the only decent part to this story!

It turns out, when my phone rang around 12:20 PM, they had tried to go to my house around noon, and she was calling about a newly missed service call.  Excuse me?!  One, the appt was supposed to be 5-8, and two they were supposed to call before going, not show up and then call after the fact to reschedule.

You can only imagine how upset I am at this point.  Johnathon took it in stride, though, and communicated how much he wanted to help fix it.

Every 2-3 minutes, he kept coming back on the phone just to assure me that he was still holding with dispatch, to hang in there.  I told him if it got close to 6'ish, I was going to have switch over to my cell phone, because my son had basketball practice and I needed to get on the road.  He scoffed, saying it would never take that long.  Yeah, right!  Little did he know!

At 5:38, I finally asked him to put me on hold, call my cell phone, and then I would hang up with him.  He told me he'd call me when he got through, that that wasn't necessary.  I told him, no offense, but that's what the lady had said the night before, and I was highly skeptical.  Still... I want to believe the best of people, and I finally relented and trusted him.

I went home, helped my daughter with some homework, got my son to basketball... and sat there getting more and more and more upset... thinking Johnathon had let me down and what a fool I was to believe that he would call me.  By a little after 7, I started the process of holding with Time Warner (I am SO tired of your hold system, let me tell you!) but around 7:26, I got called waited.. and lo and behold, it was Johnathon!!  Amazing!

He said his shift had ended at 6PM, but he left his personal cell number with a supervisor along with the story, and they should call him as soon as they knew something so he could call me.  He hadn't heard anything, but he didn't want me thinking he didn't keep his promise.  Also, he was optimistic that I'd have my cards that night, that we just needed to wait for dispatch.  I told him I thought it was cute that he was that optimistic, but I knew better by now....  he also told me that when he went in the next day, he'd check my account, if I didn't have cards, he'd take it to a VP on the sales side he knew (If I'm not mistaken, that was you.)

So, Friday.. on the way in to work, I called the straight number that Kathy from dispatch had called from and left a message to please call me, that I was returning their call, and was upset with them, and I wanted to hear from someone at dispatch.  I'm sure you won't be surprised that no one returned my call.  I wasn't.

By midday, I thought even Johnathon let me down, and I figured I'd start the process again after lunch.  But, around noon, a tech called me to schedule a time to meet that day..... I asked him what time he thought he'd show up, and he wanted me to say what time I wanted.  I mentioned 6-6:30 (since I'd already impacted so much work time during this ordeal), but he said he normally got off at 3, and that 5:15 was the latest he could do.  So, we set it up at 5:15, and I asked if he had spare cards, and he said no, it wasn't the policy to let them have spare cards.  However, he did say he would try and see if he could have some, given the background info I gave him.  About an hour later, Johnathon also called and I let him know the tech had already called and scheduled also.  He seemed pleased and said he'd call back this evening to see how it went.

Well, I left work around 4:35, and at 4:40 my son called to say TW was outside the house already!!  I had my neighbor step out and make sure they knew I was on my way home and to just sit tight!  Of COURSE I hit every bad traffic Fort Worth has to offer, and the normal 20 minute drive was much longer -- but when I got to the house at 5:20, they were still there, and not even mad at me for being a few minutes late!  I left so that I was going to be home early before them... but figures traffic would be bad.... I was cutting across medians and doing all kinds of crazy driving to get there, because I could just see them giving up and leaving, and having to add another chapter to this story!!

So... once I got there, there were 2 techs waiting, and they were very knowledgeable and efficient.  The longest part of their call was waiting (imagine that) on hold with dispatch so they could enable the cards.  One tech tried calling someone else, but they were told they had to go through the other channels and wait on hold... so see, even the contract techs aren't treated very well!  Why wouldn't they and the customer service guys have some kind of direct line in and not have to spend so much of everyone's time sitting on hold?

They did mention that they had had 3 supervisors check on the status of this call, and that your company had upped the heat on getting this done.  For whatever part you played in that, if any, I am eternally grateful.  To Johnathon, as well, who started the ball rolling and was the first to care, and obviously went far above and beyond the typical customer service rep role -- on his own personal time and everything.

Speaking of Johnathon, the two techs had barely left when he called to say he'd seen on our account that we had two active cable cards, so he must have been watching all evening! 

Anyway  -- I want to accomplish two things with this email:

One -- to point out all the stomach-churning frustration this whole ordeal was.  I got the feeling from several of the different conversations that this is not unusual, either.  I can't add up the cell phone minutes, missed work time, frustration, etc... what a whipping.  It should not have been this hard to get two cablecards installed.  Sheesh.

But, also.. two -- to point out Johnathon's performance particularly, because he did as he said he would, and did go far beyond the typical customer service role.

I've got to say, even typing this has my blood pressure a bit up, I'm still that frustrated.  I've got to think that Time Warner has a serious customer service problem if this is a typical story. 

The ladies at work were laughing at me, saying I was going to have a nervous breakdown over Time Warner.  They'd also had much milder stories with Dish and Direct TV, and had gotten 6 months and a year of premium channels for free respectively.... all Time Warner offered was a measly $40 credit that probably doesn't cover the extra minutes on my cell phone.  While some reps were apologetic, the impression I got over and over that this was typical, and how sad is that.  It shouldn't be, "that's just the way it is," and I can't even imagine a non-monopoly getting away with treating customers like that.

Maybe you think I'm wrong for having been this frustrated at what was clearly a chain of events -- and each individual piece by itself is not that bad on its own... but until you came out and installed those cablecards, I had a $600 doorstop.  I also had a timeclock ticking on when I could transfer over my lifetime Tivo subscription -- not a Time Warner issue, but it needed to be done by the end of this month, and I kept telling everyone that -- once that offer expired, that was it and no one could ever get that back for us.

If you read the tivocommunity.com website, you will find that there are gazillions of stories like this about Time Warner around the country, and the difficulty in getting cablecards installed -- both because of techs who aren't knowledgeable about them, and high failure rates and footdragging on providing them.  Obviously, if cards are going to be recycled, TW needs to have a policy of carrying spares on each truck, so if it does fail, it doesn't result in a second (or third) call being required.  Also, if a customer is told that TW will call ahead of time, they sure as darn well NEED to call ahead of time.  Fully 50% of our experience was that they didn't call first, but I was told every time that they would.  That's certainly a large part of the pain of this story.  And finally... you should think about addressing the problems with dispatch and their poor customer service to external AND INTERNAL customers.  The sales side wasn't as bad, but oh the minutes I held while your own employees were on hold with dispatch, and the lack of calling people back, and all that.  Reprehensible is the word that comes to mind.

Anyway, that's my venting.  If it wasn't for Johnathon, we'd have our appt to have DirectTV installed already accomplished, so you can thank him for salvaging a customer.  But I do still have a VERY bad taste in my mouth about this whole ordeal, and you aren't getting good word of mouth from me right now.

Oh -- and finally... why can't Time Warner let customers who are comfortable with electronics pick up cablecards at a service center and self install?  Think how much heartache that would have saved, too!


Linda