Let’s get reimbursed!: Time-Warner Customers of the World Unite!

By Alfredo Lopez

Are you a Time-Warner Internet customer? Have you ever experienced an outage? Have you called the company for a reimbursement? Most people would probably answer "no" to that last question. In fact, most company customers don't realize that these companies aren't required to reimburse and, in Time Warner's case, they usually don't. You have to call them.

Maybe it's time to make this sensitive movement for Time Warner a bit more sensitive.

This is already a sensitive time for the Cable and Internet giant because, holding hands with its fellow giant Comcast, the company is asking the Federal Communications Commission to approve what amounts to a merger of the two companies which would give the resulting offspring virtually complete control of cable and high-speed Internet service across this country. Comcast is already the biggest provider of such services in the U.S.; Time Warner is the second largest.

Since they have worked (Adam Smith would have said conspired) for several years to divvy up territory and avoid over-lap and competition, their combination would blanket most of this country's major (and many smaller) markets. The very goal of the regulations that forced them to split up service areas is now being turned on its head by this proposal. Given recent FCC rulings on issues like Net Neutrality riding the wave of corporate cannibalism that has deeply affected the Internet, opposition to this corporate hip-joining has been fierce and nationwide.

So Time-Warner's recent Internet outages are causing a bit of embarassment and spreading the concern activists have long had to lots of "regular" customers.

This past week Time-Warner's service went down for a significant amount of time, ranging from an hour to nearly a half-day in New York, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, and affecting millions of customers. The company explained belatedly that this was a cable problem during "routine maintenance". Two weeks earlier, the service went down in particular locations for as long as 10 hours. Predictably there was a massive outcry from customers on social media and such spasms of collective complaint are becoming more frequent.

This is the kind of spottiness that Comcast customers routinely complain about. In fact, these two firms suffer from some of the lowest customer satisfaction and confidence ratings in any of the utility and service industries...

For the rest of this article by ALFREDO LOPEZ in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromising, four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2433