June 5, 2008
And This is Different From any Other City, How?
Well Time Warner mght want to hold off on turninig off the UseNet servers. They got a bigger fish to fry. The City of LA just slapped TW with a nice fat law suit for bad service and failure to comply with the contract terms that won them the territory.
The Los Angeles city attorney’s office plans to sue Time Warner Cable Inc. today, alleging that the company caused “major havoc and distress” when it became the No. 1 pay TV provider in Southern California two years ago.
City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said Wednesday that Time Warner violated state law by making false and misleading statements to subscribers. The 25-page lawsuit, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times, claims the company violated its franchise agreement with the city by having subscribers spend hours on hold with customer service representatives and allowing excessive repair work delays.
“Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents were ripped off,” Delgadillo said in a statement. “Time Warner must be held accountable for its promises.”
Which begs the question of the Lede. How is this different than Dallas, Houston, Beaumont, etc? Lack of interest by the powers that be is the only rationale for the difference. But regardless this should be an interesting lawsuit to watch.
Filed under Litigation, Municipalities, Time Warner by Dr. Dog
Comments on And This is Different From any Other City, How? »
admin @ 2:00 pm
Here’s what’s sad: The city will probably win the suit and collect a big fine. Politicians will spend the windfall on pet projects. Service probably won’t improve much, and the customer will likely end up paying more to cover the cost of TWC’s fine. The only answer to the problem is competition.
Dr. Dog @ 9:46 pm
Competition yes. However we have to think out of the box. The problem we have is that the Comcasts and TW’s in either building out an area or buying it end up owning the wire plant. That’s their captive leverage. To induce competition we would need to break that leverage. That is a city like Dallas would set up a public corporation that maintains the cable plant. The city in question would then permit 3-4 providers to offer services. The end customer selects their carrier of choice. The selected provider tacks on the infrastructure cost to the billing.
With IPTV technology this is all possible.
Doubt it will happen though.