Time Warner Cable

They are running some compelling television ads for people or actors who say they work for Time Warner Cable. It's impressive.

Today I called - 1-888-890-7515 - to ask about the cost of converting to digital cable. We get just the basic service that includes the news cable channels.

The first problem was that the agent could not find out account. It took almost five minutes for him to track it down.

Then he wanted to answer a separate question, but finally answered my query. What I wanted to know was simply what it would cost - because after promotions expire, this is where we may be - to upgrade to digital cable (instead of 57/mo, it would be 76.95) . If we added HBO? Another 11/month.

Then I asked what it would cost to get Universal Sports. He asked two people, spent time searching and said he could find nothing about that channel. While he did this, I searched for Universal Sports and on their site found the search for where carried. It told me that we could get Universal Sports on channel 218. It is not marked as such on Time Warner's website and this was new to the agent who could not verify what I found.

Finally, I asked about any French channels. He said he was half French and was sure there was none. I asked how we put in a request to add it. He did not know. He switched me to customer service. He did not know either, but started checking. He came back and said I should start a peittion and send it with signatures to Time Warner! No guidelines or procedures. I hung up.

There sure is a huge gap between their commercials and my experience. I'd take some of that money now going to those commercials and invest it in dealing with issues like these.

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I called back the next day to learn more. This time, the system seemed to recognize me.

My first question was about HBO. Apparently there are 18 HBO channels. If you add HBO to digital cable for 11/mo, you are able to look at any of them, although an HD television may be needed in some cases. I was assured that the 3 listed in the daily TV listings - HBO, HBO Family, HBO2 - would all be available to us without any new television sets.

Then I asked the most important question. What happens to the promotional rates they offer at the end of the promotion term, which seems to be either 12 or 24 months? The answer is that they go to whatever the current regular rates are at the time. What this approach seems to do is to soften the blow of the increase - as noted above from 57/month to 88/month over a one or two year period. That's not to say that it is not worthwhile, but that's how it works.

Of course, the agent on the line wanted to press me for more, and I ticked him off by insisting that I get answers to my questions and not his sales pitch.