High technical TWC (legal) issue

TheInternal

Senior member
Jul 7, 2006
447
0
76
So...

Time Warner Cable has a local monopoly in the state capital of South Carolina. Their service is pretty awful. It's gotten to the point where, if I want to have them address any of my issues, I generally have to put in 8 to 12 hours of work, troubleshooting, and diagnostics (on my end) to demonstrate there is in fact no issue on my end and that, yes... my massive latency spikes, 300+ ping, and regular connection drop outs are in fact their fault.

My question is; do I have any legal standing to bill them for the work I keep having to do in order to maintain even a modicum of quality of service I'm paying outrages rates for? They have most the town by the short hairs since there are no other offerings over 3 mbps available (at least, outside of a $200+ business connection / T1). They keep fucking over customers because they can, and I'm getting extremely frustrated that if I want reasonably quick internet (which, by the way, isn't "broadband" according to the FCC... we're too slow for that in this backwards ass state) that's reliable, I have no option available to me short of making a part time job out of showing TWC that they are inept / unwilling to provide a reasonable quality of service in order for them to even half-ass an attempt at a fix.
 

Cr0nJ0b

Golden Member
Apr 13, 2004
1,141
29
91
meettomy.site
As an ATOT member, I guess i qualify as a sudo lawyer and will say you have no case. It would be much more expensive to figure out how to hold them legally accountable for your time than it would be worth. IMO.

As a note, though, I have to say, that TWC is not the only internet service in your area, so they don't have a monopoly. They likely have the fastest service, but not the only one.

As for your time troubleshooting, I can tell you the approach that I take. I have Cox cable that i often have issues with performance. Not that often anymore, but I used to all the time. Back then, I would usually hook up a single system to the modem and do speed tests. I know what I "generally" get so I could tell if they had a network issue or if it was me. half the time it was them and half it was me. The most common issue was my cable modem, which I swapped 4-5 times over the years. Each time I bought a more expansive one and was happier with performance and reliability at each step.

If I had an issue and I knew it was them, I would call them up to complain. They would run me through some stupid script...and I would "yep...rebooted...now what? Yep, it's the only system on the line...yep i rebooted the modem again...." Whatever they ask I would just say its done and move on. In the end, they would say...hmm...looks like a network issue on our side. I'll not it and have someone dispatched. At that point I always ask for a discount to cover that days worth of pain...usually they would kick me a movie or a some other minor discount...I did it for the principle not the discount.

One other thing I learned, Again in the early days...they didn't have a good distribution system back then and I would see various latency issues related to my neighbors. At 5:00-6:00 there was a slow down and around 8:00 netflix would slow down the neighborhood. Not much to do about that other than help for a network upgrade.

I've been praying for Google or Verizon to drop fiber in my area, but i've come to realize that i'm not that lucky...so i live with what I got.
 

Sho'Nuff

Diamond Member
Jul 12, 2007
6,211
121
106
So...
...My question is; do I have any legal standing to bill them for the work I keep having to do in order to maintain even a modicum of quality of service I'm paying outrages rates for?

Are you a TWC employee, one of their contractors, and/or have you been hired to do tech support for them?

If not - answer is no.