It appears that TWC having been slapped around is not only rethinking their DOCSIS3 plans but now slapping customers around for that always vague ‘heavy usage’ moniker. –
Austin StoptheCap! reader Ryan Howard kicks off our premiere edition with a report that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company’s “Security and Abuse” center.
“I called the number and had to leave a voice mail and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week,” Howard wrote.
Howard was then “educated” about his usage.
“According to her, that is more than most people use in a year,” Howard said.
Howard questioned the company representative about what defines an acceptable amount of usage so he doesn’t get cut off again. He pays extra for Road Runner’s premium Turbo tier, so he already hands more money to Time Warner than average subscribers for his broadband service.
“All she would commit to is less — perhaps half or as quarter as much,” he said. Time Warner is taking their DOCSIS 3 toys home with them after customers reject Caps ‘n Tiers.
Convenient, considering that amounts to 40-60 gigabytes a month, which falls right in line with the now-temporarily-shelved tier pricing.
Ryan felt concerned that the Time Warner representative had such detailed information in front of her about his usage, although the representative reiterated repeatedly that they were not monitoring what he was doing with his account, just how much and when he was using it.
I would really have to question TWC’s long term motives here. I understand why they are doing it. But the gameplan is going to back fire. They already have the ire of the House Rep in Rochester, NY. If they continue along the lines they are going they will have about 8 other House members looking into this as well.
TWC, just remember next year IS an election year. Having your customer base running to Congress rarely does one good.
Christ when it’s working I’ve used 30-40 gig easy in a single day on my comcast line, I easily pull 500 gig on a good month. Caps are BS, especially on the higher end service, for christ sake if I can get gig-e for a couple grand at the office don’t give me crap for pulling 4-8mb for 12 hours a day, I throw you an extra 10 bucks if need be but beyond that all they’re going to end up with after that is a lost pissed off customer going around bad mouthing them to all hell – something I refrain from doing about there shitty service to begin with because they’ve not really pressed the cap crap yet.
KH,
I hear ya. The cost of data transport should be dropping. It is in other parts of the world. Little Estonia is prepping to push 100mb, that we relate in another post.