I'm going on three months now without a TV signal since I've canceled my Direct TV service. It's been a little longer since I've canceled my DSL. Out of curiosity, I called time Warner and asked some questions about their Internet service, but the first representative simply wasn't interested in listening to me. I feel like such a caveman when this happens because I'm in customer service too, and when I cannot seem to get thru to people in answering their questions, I can't help but assume they are from a primordial evolutionary hiccup.
There is a point in the conversation when a person just has to admit defeat, so the way I usually go about this, when it becomes obvious to me that I've been speaking to a hip-hop/rap enthusiast whom at any length of speaking with also becomes enlightened of the fact that the person on the other end of the phone despises any and all forms if organized song lyrics, is to request to speak to somebody who can help me. At which point a feeble attempt, on his part, to transfer me ends up in being disconnected.
My persistence ensued and I called the 800 number again, waited about 5 minutes for the automated system to conclude that the caller was either using a rotary phone and/or his verbal skills contained such a thick accent, no voice recognition machine could ever be expected to understand my pronunciation of English words.
If I managed to be sold on the quotes I received for opening an Internet service account, I probably won't follow thru with it because of the usual herding treatment in which large corporate organizations love to exploit their customers to, exposing them to manipulative questioning about their existing account even before a conversation can be mustered.
What I like about time Warner is the flexibility to start and stop a service on a whim. No contacts! What I don't like is having a technician come to my house and run yet another cable from the telephone pole into the wall. I guess I never got over the horrible service I got from Adelphia, and when I look at my roof, I despise the cable that still runs from the street into that little hole in the wall where a draft seeps in during the winter.
Time Warner at first played dumb with me when I gave them my address. It wasnt until I described the "second" building of the property as apartment B that the opportunist telephone representative decided to say, "after doing a thorough search, I have found that the address you are inferring to is listed as one half." Hence, the quotes he gave me earlier would not apply. No way, no how. Don't even try to get around the fact that I already know what you are trying to do. what a jerk.
One thing the first time Warner rep wasn't able to explain to me was that existing cable TV customers don't need to have a different cable run into the house. A splitter could be used on the same cable that runs to the TV. I know I'm sounding harsh on the customer service department of time Warner, when in fact being disconnected and having to call them back and wait ten minutes before a live person got on the phone served helpful to me to gather my thoughts. Perhaps things go to rapidly during these cold calls for information in which one feels pressed to make a decision. Should I, or shouldn't I make an appointment, open a new account, ask more questions, check my schedule, etc.
In the end, the answer is still no. if I could live by candlelight, I would. It's okay. They still make acoustic guitars and radios/DVD players still can be made to be fully functional on batteries.
Electricity. Who knew it would evolve into so much confusion.