Time Warner Woes: 5 Steps to Actual Customer Service

uglyjohnny shares his Tips on dealing with Time Warner on the Park Slope Forum | DailySlope.com Message Boards:

“We’ve had repeated outages of TimeWarner broadband in our N Slope area for about four weeks… Getting a response has been frustrating. Here are some tips I’ve learned:

1.TW will not recognize an “outage” until a whole bunch of people have called to complain. (One CSR said the magic number is 10.) So if your service goes down (one or two lights on the modem blink monotonously), and you’re pretty sure it’s not just you (your neighbors are down, too; a number of open wifi networks are concurrently disconnected), you must call…

2. Calling customer service (718-358-0900) is a real hassle, but you can make it easier. Again, if you’re sure it’s an outage and not just you, you can avoid the useless automated troubleshooting system (20 minutes easy) by refusing to respond to one of the recorded questions, or by saying something that’s not one of the listed choices. (“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” “None of the above.” “I want to talk to a human being.”) This may take some experimentation. After the first CSR tells you to bring in your modem or schedule an appointment, insist on speaking to a supervisor.

3. Call back the next day. Maybe that will count as two complaints.

4. Tell your neighbors to call, too.

5. Getting a credit for lost service? Good luck with that, but making the phone calls is a necessary first step.

What else works? Link: Tips on dealing with Time Warner (Park Slope Message Board)