pulling the plug
I did it.
I am free.
The DSL line has stabilized and seems to be working quite well. They did have to knock down the download speed a bit to get it stable, but I can live with it for now.
So no more time warner cable for me. I called them up and canceled earlier today. Interestingly, the first time I called I was disconnected... or hung up on. I was transfered to the cancellations department and told the rep I wanted to cancel my service and he said "oh, I'm sorry... *CLICK!*" and I thought "hmmm... typical".
I raced over to give them their cable modem before they closed at the end of the day, so I have washed my hands of them completely.
I no longer have to deal with their stupid policies (eg. $50 extra for one static IP) and most satisfyingly, I never have to deal with their stupid fucked up billing system ever again.
But just throwing down the words "stupid fucked up billing system" doesn't do it justice. Here are some examples:
At our old apartment, a billing error (I was overcharged) went unresolved for over six months, even though I called them every month when I received a new letter about an unpaid balance, and every time they assured me it would be taken care of. It went on even two months after I canceled the service and we moved out of the apartment. Of course every time I called I had to wait on hold, sometimes for more than an hour. By the last time I called, I was near tears.
Paying my monthly cable internet bill here at the house was always a headache. They give you three ways to pay the bill: mail, phone and online. I don't use checks. I hate checks. I do not pay ANY bills by checks sent in the mail. I use my credit card or I use online banking bill payment. That has never been a problem for any company... except the cable co.
I started out using the "pay by phone" option with my credit card. At some point they implemented an automated phone payment system. Key in your card number, get a confirmation number, you're done. That worked okay for a while, but then one month it failed to process my payment with some generic error message. Month after month I would try the automated system, have it fail, and have to wait on hold to speak to someone to run the credit card payment (and it ALWAYS worked when the human operator did it). While they were processing the charge, they would always tell me that I should use their automated system, and I would always have to contradict them and inform them that it didn't work.
Eventually they developed an online payment system. Or at least they tried. The first time I accessed it I got an SSL domain mismatch error. Yes, they were hosting their site under a different domain name than what they had registered their SSL cert for. They didn't even have a DNS record for the site on the cert. Dumbasses. I tried to contact them to point out their obvious error (it was something trivial like https://www.something vs https://something) but I never got any response and they never did fix the problem.
Despite the SSL error, I attempted several times to use their online payment system. The biggest problem was that it was offline or would give me Internal Server Errors and the like, probably 50% of the time. When I did manage to get it to process a payment, it informed me that it would email me a payment confirmation with a confirmation number. NOT ONCE did I ever receive an email from the system.
The most impressive account of time warner cable's billing stupidity is probably the ordeal they put my friend through, which caused him to cancel his TV and Internet service and get DSL and satellite. One month he suddenly quit receiving his cable bill in the mail. He called them and got the "well, we sent it" routine, so he payed it by phone; but was irked that it never arrived. Next month, same thing--no bill. They again claimed it was sent, and blamed the post office, however he had continued to receive all his other mail as usual. He waited a few more days and it still hadn't shown up, so he got online and used their crummy website to pay the bill. After several days he checked his credit card account online and did not see the payment. He called time warner and they said they had no record of the payment, and furthermore they advised him that he needed to pay the bill immediately or he would be charged a late fee. He was not happy about their threats and he told them that a) he hadn't received a bill in the mail for two months and b) that he made a payment using their online system, yet they denied any responsibility and stood by their threat of a late fee, all while telling him: "our online payment system has been hit-or-miss".
That might as well be the fucking company motto: Time Warner Cable: "We're hit-or-miss!". So long, and good riddance.
