L.A. to Time Warner Cable: See you in court

Spotty cable connections, long hold times, tech support reps who showed up late for appointments or not at all—that was the name of the game for Southern California Time Warner Cable subscribers from fall 2006 to spring 2007, or so alleges a lawsuit that Los Angeles city official plan to file against the cable carrier.

The L.A. Times reports that the 25-page lawsuit accuses Time Warner Cable of violating its franchise agreement with the city, which dictates that customer service calls be answered with 30 seconds and that repairs for service interruptions should begin within 24 hours at least 90 percent of the time.

Instead, only about 60 percent of service calls were answered on time, according to the lawsuit, and repair workers frequently missed their appointments. Meanwhile, cable and Internet service "was so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all."

You know, I can believe it. I'm a Time Warner Cable subscriber in Brooklyn—granted, 3,000 miles away from L.A.—and I've certainly endured my fair share of long hold times, rude customer service reps, and long waits for service visits.

Indeed, when I lost my cable Internet service a couple of years back, a TWC service rep curtly informed me that I'd have to wait a week for tech support to show up—because I only had "residential" Internet service, not business-class service.

And about a year ago, my cable connection went bad again—and it took multiple visits from Time Warner to fix the problem, with each service rep having his own opinion of what was wrong (and no idea what the last guy tried). That was fun.

Is Time Warner Cable any better or worse than, say, Comcast or Cablevision? I couldn't tell you, since TWC has a monopoly in my neighborhood and I'm unable to compare.

Anyway, back to the point—kudos to the city of L.A. for standing up for local cable subscribers. It's about time.

Related:
L.A. to sue Time Warner Cable over poor service [L.A. Times]