Time Warner Cable After ending internet, said I had two cable modems, charged for RR despite order, disconnected cable despite payment. Wadsworth Ohio

After TW service could not help me get my Road-Runner internet service to work in December, 2005 following some modifications to my computer, I decided to stop the RR but continue the cable service I had for about 18 years (TW bought the original cable company in the mid-nineties). I had used RR for maybe four years or so, but didn't really need it as I have internet at work.

After initially ordering the RR stopped in early February, 2006, they continued to charge for it. When I called customer service (and please understand that each time I call, I spend 10 - 40 minutes on hold), they said I hadn't returned the cable modem (first I heard of this). I made an appointment to turn in the cable modem (at my house - at no point have I ever visited a TW office). The representative suggested 4:30 p.m., but I said I didn't get home until 5 p.m., so she said she would make it for 5 p.m.

No one ever showed up and I found no evidence that they had been to the house. I got another bill wherein they charged me again for RR. I called and they said the service person had come out at 4:30 but I wasn't there so they left a tag on the door. I said the appointment wasn't until 5, and no tag was found.

I made another appointment to turn in the modem for noon on a Saturday. The technician arrived about 9:30 a.m. (I guess it was lucky I was there or I would have "missed" another appointment) and I gave hime the modem. He then said that my account showed two cable modems. I said I was only aware of one, didn't know what I would do with two. It occurred to me that I had some trouble about a year or so prior, and a technician had come to the house and said the modem was bad and replaced it, after which it worked again. I said I'd look around to see if he left it there, but I didn't find it. The technician said he would take care of getting it taken off the account.

The next bill showed the technician was good for his word, as the charges for RR since February (it was April or May by this time) had been removed. In fact, it showed I owed nothing for cable that month as I had overpaid for the RR.

However, the next month, all the extra RR charges were back on the bill. I called again, and was told there had been two modems on my account. I explained my theory about the repair person perhaps not taking the bad modem off the account when he replaced it (but of course the new modem was added).

She asked when the repair had occurred and I gave her an approximate time frame. She asked if I had a receipt for the repair, and I said I wasn't aware of the guy leaving any paperwork - he made my internet work, which was all I cared about since he didn't charge me for it - but I would check. She said they would do some sort of "research".

(Wouldn't you think TW would have records of that sort of thing? Why would they give me another cable modem anyway? I had only the one acocunt in a private residence - two modems would do me no good.) I never found any record of the repair. (Why would I keep it anyway? I wasn't told about the extra modem until I tried to cancel RoadRunner a year or more later.)

Following this, each month they charged me again for the RR service I could not use if I wanted to (my computer wouldn't work with it, and now I had no modem). I called again and again, and each time it was like the first they had heard of it. Each time they ended by saying they would initiate various types of "Equipment Search" or something.

Finally I got a special number to call for someone who theoretically could do something about this. (Maybe someone with some common sense, who could figure out that after decades of paying my cable bills on time I was not trying to steal a cable modem from them or spending hours of my Saturday mornin gs on the phone in an attempt to somehow get one over on them.)

I talked to the lady, who was fairly nice, but also acted like it was a new problem they had never heard of. She invited me to call her again - but it seems though TW puts great stock in their records, they needed me to come up with a record of this repair in order to somehow prove that the absurd notion that I had two cable modems was not true. For all I know the guy kept the modem, and didn't follow their procedures and quit the next day!

I have since written e-mails and hard copy letters to several offices at TW, to no effect.

I continued to pay for my cable service, but did not pay for the bogus charges for the RR service I ordered stopped and which I could not use even if it was still working. Despite the fact I had discontinued the service and returned the equipment, they disconnected my cable in August of 2006, when the outstanding rip-off charges were well over $300. They added a $50 charge for the phantom modem as well.

I wrote a letter to their offices indicating that I had turned the only cable modem I had into them in April, and that I had stopped the service for which they had charged my in February. I said that I would not pay for services I didn't ask for and hadn't received or for equipment I did not have and never had received.

At no time has anyone at TW attempted to offer a theory as to why I wuld be given an extra modem even if I had asked for one, which I didn't. There is no way to use two modems on the line - if you want multiple computers hooked up (which I do not have), you would use a router.

Yet they are willing, being a swollen and unresponsive monopoly, to lose the revenue stream which any cursory scan of their precious records could see had been coming in like clockwork for well over ten years from my address - all because some careless technician failed to properly account for a $50 piece of equipment which failed.

As of July, 2008 I still do not have cable service, and have found that my antenna will pick up some digital stations for free. I may install satellite service and DSL, but these are luxury services after all and I can get by quite nicely without them. Based on my experience, I would be surprised if many more people have not done the same or changed to another media source.

George
Chippewa Lake, Ohio
U.S.A.

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