Customers unhappy with service change
CITYWIDE — The changeover from Adelphia to Time Warner Cable might not have gone as smoothly as planned in Santa Monica.
From the time the changeover kicked off on Aug. 1 until today, city officials have received about 35 complaints regarding issues ranging from poor quality cable television to rude customer service to relentless disruption in Internet service.
Time Warner Inc. owns a franchising license to offer cable television in the city, although the contract is non-exclusive, which gives other cable television companies the opportunity to also offer their services to Santa Monicans.
In October, the city received 16 individual complaints covering 103 total issues. That number dropped in November to 12 complaints covering 78 issues, to seven complaints and 57 issues in December, according to Kate Vernez, assistant to the city manager for government relations.
The nature of the complaints cover a broad area with customers experiencing everything on the technical side — freezing frames on the television and frequent disruption of Internet service — to the customer service side — dissatisfaction with rates and busy phone lines.
“My experience with them is when I call and ask for corrective action, they follow through,” Vernez said on Thursday.
Bijan Eftekhar, a Santa Monica resident who works in IT, was an Adelphia customer and calls Time Warner service the worst he’s ever experienced out of any company in any industry.
“For two weeks, there was all of a sudden no Internet access,” Eftekhar said on Wednesday. “[The service] would work for a couple of minutes and then go.”
But the major reason for his discontent with Time Warner is the customer service.
Since the switchover began, he has contacted Time Warner regarding cable Internet disconnectivity on four occasion and estimates he was placed on hold for a total of three hours.
“When you call them, the recording doesn’t even acknowledge there is a problem,” he said.
Time Warner converted 700,000 former Adelphia Internet customers over to its own service, called RoadRunner, on Dec. 4-8. To ensure minimal disruption in high speed service, the conversion took place during the late evening to early morning hours, said Patti Rockenwagner, spokeswoman for Time Warner in the El Segundo regional office.
“On the week of Dec. 4, it was possible the customer got some interruption because of the work being done on the server,” Rockenwagner said on Wednesday.“It would have only been in the minutes, not in the hours or days.”
The company received a minimal number of complaints from customers regarding high speed Internet during this time, but it was usually because of a specific modem issue on the individual’s part, not because of a system wide issue, she said.
“If a customer is still having an issue, it’s likely specific to their service and not related to migration to RoadRunner,” she said.
Regarding the extended period of time that Eftekhar claims to have waited on the phone, Rockenwagner said most customers were not placed on hold for long period of times. “Our goal is to serve customers well enough so they don’t have to call us.”
City officials plan to meet with Time Warner officials in January to see if any changes need to be made. The worst case scenario for Time Warner would be if the city canceled the franchise agreement and took legal action, Vernez said.
The transition of millions of customers over to Time Warner was a complex undertaking that combined three large cable companies with different technical platforms, processes and staffing issues, said Patricia Fregoso-Cox, vice president of community affairs for Time Warner Inc. North Division, which covers Santa Monica. Overnight, the number of Time Warner customers jumped from 360,000 to two million in the Los Angeles area.
Work began with the standardization of the digital cable television lineup so that nearly 100 percent of customers in the Los Angeles area will have an identical channel line up.
The changeover should be just about complete around the beginning of next year.
“We know we are falling short of where we need to be with customers, but we are excited that in February or March, we will be back on track,” Fregoso-Cox said on Thursday.
A number of complaints have been routed to the City Manager’s office through Mayor Richard Bloom who himself has experienced a few problems with his Internet service.
“The bottom line is Time Warner is stepping into a very complicated reorganization with the acquisition of Adelphia and my sense is they’re trying really hard to make sure it goes without a glitch,” Bloom said on Wednesday. “I expect there is probably a fair amount of frustration out there.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 22, 2006. Read the original PDF.