How to lose customers.

This weekend I traveled back into 1955. That is right kids, I had no internet. On Friday I began to notice that my internet connection was slow to say the least. Come Saturday, I had nothing. So I did the normal thing and called Time Warner. In my head this was going to go something like this.

Me: Hey my internet isn't working.
TWC: We will send a technician out tomorrow, as it is already past noon.
Me: Great, thank you very much.

The next hour on the phone made me realize that some companies just don't care about you. You are a dollar sign and nothing more. When I first called the support line I was talking with a nice lady and explained to her what my problem was and all the steps I had gone through to fix it. Reset the computers, unplugged the modem, hard wired into the modem(eliminate WiFi being the cause); everything that their site says to try before calling. After I explained all of this, I was informed that there were no outages reported in my area, so it must just be me. For some reason this just didn't give me warm and fuzzies like I think she was expecting. 

So next I'm asked if I can connect to any websites at all. I say, it is about 50/50 and even then it is super slow. "Well please try a speed test" Ok not sure how this will help solve my problem but ok. About 6 tries and another laptop reboot, I'm able to load the page. Time Warner has their own speed test page that I was asked to use. Click begin test, 72 ms ping. Not bad. Preparing Download.........10 minutes goes by, 15, 20, 25, 30. After 35 minutes the test completes . I pay for 50Mbs/second. I was happy to see I was getting .04Mbs/sec, money well spent. Upload starting. And the site crashes. Doesn't even try, internet just gives up.

Now at this point is where TWC will lose me as a future customer. I was informed that because I had a connection, that there was no outage, nothing could be done. Excuse me? I'm getting 1/100th of what I am paying for and I'm shit out of luck? This did not sit well with me. I asked for somebody more technical, I have had you guys log into my modem before, why can't you now? I'm elevated to tier two. This lady asked me ping google.com and do a traceroute. Shocking results, 75% packet loss and traceroute times out before the 6th hop. Which six hops is how many hops I have to make before I'm out of TWC network. Now this gets their attention and they connect to my modem remote and attempt to troubleshoot. Note this has been 45 minutes on the phone to get somebody to actually look at logs.

Yup, wouldn't you know it. Critical errors all over the logs, I do have a problem. Let's get somebody out to your place ASAP and get you up and running. How does seven days from now sound?

That is correct Ladies and Gentlemen, I was to wait one week before anybody could think about getting to my place. Needless to say, I was furious. I asked how that could even be thought as a reasonable timeline for an outage. The only thing I got back was an unapologetic sorry. Not good enough. I asked to be transferred over to their billing department because one of two things were happening. I am getting comped for this time without service, or I'll just cancel my service and have another ISP set up in 1 day rather than wait 7 for them. And like some form of corrupt magic, a Monday slot has opened up.

I went to twitter to vent my dissatisfaction, 

@TWC internet outage and the first available time for repair is seven days from now. Unacceptable! Only when I threatened not paying my bill did you magically find a time on Monday. Still, unacceptable.

and was greeted with a response from TWC. They asked for for my information to try and help out. The response I get back.

Thanks I see we have an appointment setup for Monday the 4th from 1 - 3 PM to get your issue resolved. ^JH

So now They aren't helping or reading my messages. I explain that I am still unsatisfied that my service is out for 48 hours with no explanation of what is going on. This is the last response I have gotten from them.

Unfortunately that is the earliest available appointment we have. The notes show your appointment has been expedited already. ^JH

So the notes show that they expedited the appointment huh? You mean the appointment that was never set up because I just threatened to cancel my service? And since when is 48 hours expedited on anything but the mail?

It is just unfortunate that ISP's are monopolies because they don't have to get better. While I was talking with them on twitter, I looked at other conversations going on. It doesn't matter who you are, they don't care. They had business customers who were being told they would be without phones, and internet for 72 hours at the earliest. Business customers, people with SLA's that state they are contractually obligated to being serviced in a timely manner. 

Sorry, that this is just a massive venting post. But dammit, somebody needs to bring down the giant. I am not going to sit on my hands quietly, I'm going to find a way to make it hurt for TWC. The first thing is by canceling my service. And if this post gets even one more person to either cancel their service or decide against stating with TWC, then I have done my part.

And from the bottom of my heart, Time Warner Cable. Fuck You! Go play in traffic and Die in a fire.

As for the rest of you ISP's, get your shit together before Google Fiber spreads like herpes in a Catholic Boys choir.