[Vision2020] A Spectrum is now Haunting the Palouse!

[Saundra Lund]

Nick, I’m glad you brought up the topic because I want to share my experience yesterday with TWC/now Spectrum and urge people with TWC/Spectrum’s DVR service to carefully check your bills.

 

We have been TWC customers for many years, and of the most part, we’ve been happy customers.  We have pretty specific needs that were unable to be met by the alternatives (i.e., we’ve owned our own HD DVRs that use CableCARDs for years).

 

Last month were the Olympics, and as those who know me are aware I am an Olympics addict  :)  One of our three-tuner DVRs started acting up, so to make sure I didn’t miss any of my treasured Olympics, we decided to temporarily rent a TWC DVR.  Wow – what a disappointment.  The six-tuner DVRs I’d seen advertised apparently aren’t or weren’t available here, and the hard drive size of what TWC rents is tiny.

 

However, the really disturbing thing was when we recently received our cable bill:  it included charges for a boatload of pay-per-view movies we didn’t order.  There were several instances of charges for two movies “ordered” at the exact same time.  Utter hogwash.

 

I called TWC/Spectrum, which agreed easily enough to remove the charges.  In discussing the situation with the customer rep, though, I was told the probable problem was a software bug that was somehow picking up other customers’ orders and somehow attributing them to our account.  I have no idea how that would even work -- it’s never happened in all the years we’ve had their ordinary STB and only started after we got their crappy (IMO) DVR.

 

Their only solution was to swap out the DVR, which would have defeated the reason we got it (yes, I’m still working through the Olympic events I recorded) because swapping the DVR means losing what you’ve recorded.  I was told that even disconnecting the cable from their DVR until I get through the recorded Olympics likely wouldn’t keep additional pay-per-view movies from being incorrectly charged to our account!  I suspect I’m going to have to go through the same process again to dispute unordered pay-per-view movies next month and maybe even the month after next.  <sigh>

 

This has made me wonder how often this happens to other TWC/Spectrum customers who may not even notice the mistake?  Pretty disconcerting, particularly when even disconnecting cable from their DVR might not stop the incorrect charges from appearing on our bill  :(  I’ll be watching that like a hawk!

 

 

Saundra Lund

Moscow, ID

 

Never retract, never explain, never apologize - get the thing done and let them howl.

~ Nellie McClung

 

 

 

 

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Gier
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 10:07 AM
To: vision2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Subject: [Vision2020] A Spectrum is now Haunting the Palouse!

 

Good Morning Visionaries:

 

I'm sure many of you saw the slick ad for Spectrum, the replacement for Time Warner Cable.  The front page offer was too good to be true: TV + Internet + Voice for $29.99/month.

 

I'm currently paying $93/month for about 9 channels and internet, so I thought I would call.

 

The woman and her supervisor had never heard of this deal, but they did offer me equivalent service for $130/month!  Needless to say, I lost my temper and went on a rant about cable monopolies and how other countries offer far superior service--either as a public service (South Korea with the highest speeds in the world) or the UK, where many companies offer competitive prices in most markets.

 

For those not using Time Warner/Spectrum, what services are you using and how is the speed and reliability?  How is Frontier working out for those who have it?

 

A specter is indeed haunting the Palouse, but it is not Communism; rather, it is monopolistic capitalism.

 

Still steaming from Spectrum's Scam,

 

nfg


 

-- 

 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. 

-Greek proverb


“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant



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