We have digital cable and Internet services with Time Warner Cable (TWC) out of Charlotte, NC. For the last several days we’ve experienced an interesting problem with the services deteriorating only at night with a high degree of video artifacts and audio sync issues. For a couple of nights it’s gradually gotten worst until along with digital cable we began losing Internet at night as well. With the rising sun the following morning the situation would improve until all services were quickly back to 100%.
I called the problem into TWC last night and was told it seemed to be an individual issue and they’d have a technician out this morning to check it. Turns out it was a line signal strength issue and a neighbor two houses down was experiencing the same issues.
Cut me off from cable and after a while I’ll get a little testy but disconnect me from the Internet and it’s not a pretty sight. ;-)
I’ll give TWC high marks for response, they were prompt and they did give credit for two days of service. However, tonight will tell if they’ve actually fixed the problem–they say they have.
It seems TWC call centers aren’t aware of multiple calls in one area unless elevated to an area incident. It would be nice if the support person could tell you that another user in the same local area (they wouldn’t even need to tell you who) has reported similar problems–or am I expecting too much?
Update 2/22/09 – The problem appears to have been fixed as they said.
Well, Earl. I’m glad to hear that they fixed the problem. I have a hate-hate relationship with them. Here, around my area, they have abysmal service and I would never use them again, nor recommend them. When I had them, I had outages that lasted up to 7 days. I mean complete outages. No cable. No Internet and during that time my wife was trying to work from home. She had to go to leave home and find a place offering free wireless just to work!
After a couple of those outages, I switched to DSL and Dish Network and have never looked back.
Periodically, I query my neighbors who have cable and they tell me, in general, that their service still sucks! I’m glad that I left and never looked back. Most of them, however, have switched to satellite and DSL.
Go DSL!