Time Warner Services

Fri, December 19 2008

Since we’ve been in San Antonio, we’ve used Time Warner services for our phone, internet and cable. For the most part, the products work well but the customer service has been a little unprofessional. Luckily, we haven’t had a need to contact them.

Our products/services come in a bundled package for about $100 a month which isn’t horrible. It’s likely cheaper than if we tried to get comparable services individually and, for that, I cannot complain. However, I was disappointed when the serve was installed. The technicians who did the installation didn’t tell us anything about our services. Was long distance included in the phone plan? How do we use video on demand? Do we have three way calling or other features on the phone? Is there a download limit with the internet service? Does it comes with e-mail or webspace? While we could live without ever knowing the answers to these questions, it would make our service seem much better.

Let’s start with the good:

Caller ID on TV

When someone calls, their name and number show up on the television if cable is on, This is an extremely useful feature

Fast internet

While not the fastest I’ve ever used, it’s pretty fast

No downtime

We have not experienced any downtime with our phone or internet

No special phone

Our regular phone works fine with the

75-ish channels, including local channels

I know my parents had a hard time getting local channels with their satellite so it’s good to have them readily provided

Onto the bad:

Phone only works with electricity

Considering as we don’t use our landline so much, this isn’t the worst issue. However, in case of an emergency where the power goes out, the phone is useless.

Each phone must be connected to the digital modem

As you can imagine, unless you have a wireless phone or two, you can only use phones within a reasonable distance from the modem.

Cable takes a long time to load

After turning on the power and the box, it takes 5 – 10 minutes to load up so if you want to watch something, you have to prepare ahead of time

Cable graphics are awful

Seriously, they’re straight out of web 2.0 and look horrible. 10 years ago, our Charter cable graphics looked better. Get with the times Time Warner!

Cable has to reset at midnight

This makes sense to me but it takes a long time to load and sometimes lags. Also, it sometimes resets multiple times a night

Hundreds of crap channels.

I don’t need more than one Video on Demand preview channel. Nor do I need my guide to list any channels I cannot access. I’d rather not even see this listed.

Restart “Feature”

Some shows on some channels seem to have the ability to restart them. I see this as advantageous but have never been able to get it to work successfully. Maybe we can’t actually use it with our plan? Then get rid of it.

Ridiculous Remote

Too many buttons. It doesn’t work the same as any cable/satellite remote control I’ve ever used and it relies too much on strange buttons.

Program info seems to cut off

Sometimes program info/descriptions are larger than the box provided them and they cut off with an ellipses but I don’t think it’s possible to read the rest of the description.

System freezes/lags

If you some something too large, the screen freezes momentary. Or, if you scroll too fast, it scrolls further than it should.

As you can see, a lot of the cons have to do with the cable and cable box. I think an upgrade would solve most of these issues. None of these issues really interfere with our service, however. I am still a but disappointed with the information we were not given when our services were installed.

In the end, I haven’t been impressed with Time Warner and would hesitate to use them again or recommend them to someone else.