I just lost an hour of my life dealing with customer service from Time Warner Cable. But the story begins even before today. Several months ago, Citicards sent us a notification that because of a compromised customer database, they need to “protect us” by sending us a new card and deactivating our old one. They were kind enough to give us a whole 2 weeks notice before turning the old card off. Now for most people, that would be OK I guess… but we actually have good credit and pay our statement off in full each month… and thus we take advantage of the convenience of having LOTS of services auto pay to our credit card. Now imagine the frustration of a) remembering all of the places that auto pay to your card, b) logging on to all of the many sites to update your credit card on file, and c) hoping that you didn’t forget a critical one somewhere like your electric or water bill. Thanks Citicard for “keeping me safe” and costing me hours of time because you didn’t bother to keep my data safe in the first place.
Roll the track forward to today. Oops. We must have forgotten to update Time Warner, our Internet provider. We got a message from them that our account was going to be suspended for nonpayment. Hmmm, OK. So I log on to my account at help.rr.com (roadrunner is the name of their Internet service offering). Log in works, not a problem. Except that when I select the link for view/pay bill, I get redirected to a page on timewarnercable.com that doesn’t exist. Not good.
I’ve been using the same service for the past 9 years, through numerous buyouts, etc (@home, comcast, time warner, etc) So fortunately I have a number for their local billing office. I give them a call. The first individual I speak to can’t speak much English. I can’t understand him, but I’m willing to give it a shot. He says that it sounds like a technical problem, so he transfers me to technical support. I wait on hold. Someone finally answers and I explain the problem. They open a ticket, but can’t help me with my bill. Transferred back to billing. I wait, and wait, and wait.
This isn’t helping, so I call the local billing office again hoping that I can speak with someone who can help me. I get connected almost immediately to Jay, which probably isn’t his real name because he is Indian, and I don’t know many guys from India named Jay, but that’s another story. His English is better, so we try to get me logged into the correct billing page for Time Warner. I have my account user name and password which I know works, because it let me log into the support site in the first place. We try that account but it doesn’t work, so Jay suggests that I reset my password. I walk through the prompts which asks me for my account number from my statement. Since I never receive paper statements, I don’t know my account number. After spending some time looking for it, Jay gives me my account number. OK, that seemed to work, except that now it is asking me to validate my security question which is… I kid you not… “Unnamed” It won’t let me get past this page until I give it an answer to the security question “Unnamed”… maybe there is a universal answer to this mysterious “unnamed” question like 42, but since neither Jay or I are aware of it, we are stuck. Jay tries to reset my password, and gives it to me. It still doesn’t work. The clock keeps ticking. At this point, I’m frustrated. I just want to pay my freakin’ bill and get on with my life!
Since Jay is unable to help me, he offers to waive the $1 feel for paying the bill by phone. Seriously!?! You want to suspend my service for nonpayment, but won’t let me pay online, and the best you can do is offer to waive a $1 fee? No dice. I ask to talk to a supervisor. More waiting… and waiting… and waiting.
A new individual gets on the phone, his English is the worst of the bunch. I can’t understand him, but he wants me to give him my credit card number but also wants me to validate the amount of my current bill because he can’t pull it up in the system. REALLY? Strange, neither can I. By this point I am furious. I ask him what he can do for me?? Can he just waive the bill altogether since I’ve wasted an hour of my life. Then he hangs up on me…
Yep… he hung up. Time Warner hung up on me because they can’t take my payment. I’m in disbelief. Wow.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to expect very, very little from Time Warner so my expectations aren’t very high. Their service is seriously horrible, expensive, and they continue to offer me less for my money.
I take a few very deep breaths. I call back and calmly explain my situation and the need to talk to a supervisor. I feel sorry for Akmed. He has to listen to all the sordid details of my past hour. I feel sorry for him because he didn’t cause any of this. His problem is that neither he nor anyone else is empowered to do anything about it. He apologizes, but all he can do is waive the $1 fee for taking the payment online. He can’t update my account, he can’t do anything to help me except take my credit card number over the phone. Next month I’ll have the same problem because my card isn’t updated in their auto pay system.
Sigh. Enough for now. Fine, here is my card number. I love giving it out to strangers over the phone. No wonder Citicard has issues with credit card security because now Akmed has my credit card number written down on a post-it note in his cubicle. I’m done Time Warner. I just wonder how long it will be until you are done too.
Update: I did call back to disconnect my service because I know that the person in that department has authority to do something. Poor Larry. He sounded as beaten down as anyone I had ever talked to, mostly because he has to talk to people like me all day. He COULD actually do something, including updating my auto pay records for me, AND offering me 20% off of my service for a year. Thanks Larry, but it’s a little too late.
