Anyone have Zoom-Town?

[SeeinRed]

Originally Posted by redsmetz

I'm not sure that's correct all over that "wire is the same as it was way back in the day" - I believe most of Cincinnati Bell's wiring has been fiber optic for a number of years. Now maybe it's true coming into my home, hence the problems. I'll acknowledge up front, I don't know the technical side of this stuff, but I thought I recall that CB upgraded their system to fiber optics back in the 80's or early 90's or so. Correct me if I'm wrong.

They don't run fiber clear to the house. That is the problem. Yeah, they can carry more through fiber, but they can only send and recieve so much from the wires running to an from the house. Fiber is very very expensive. Nobody runs fiber straight to the house right now. AT&T is going to try with their new TV service, but don't look for that to catch on. It is insanely expensive.

[SeeinRed]

Originally Posted by Ltlabner

I wasn't saying you guys forget and I understand why you have to call. It's just a cumbersom system IMO. Tell the customer you'll be there durring whatever window of time and then show up. If they stiff you bill them $75 or $100. If they are told before hand they'll be billed if they stand you guys up, my guess is folks will make an effort to be home. $100/hour would more than cover the cost of the drive over to a house and ringing the doorbell.

The cellphone thing isn't an option as it doesn't work well inside the house and then that would be one more phone ringing while I'm likely on the landline phone with a customer. It's not real professional to ask a customer to hold on so I can take a call from my cable guy.

I've asked the CS person to just have the tech show up but I've always been told they have to call. Are the CS people full of it? If so, that's good to know. Thanks. My guess is the tech will still call ahead. They've (CS) have screwed up calling the right number to my house almost every time I can remember.

The 6:00-9:00pm time frame is handy, however, everybody else and their brother wants that time so the next available slot is sometime next century. I need the internet to work, so if I'm having issues I want the tech there ASAP (within reason, I understand there's people in line ahead of me), not wait until next Wednesday night (or that weekend either).

I just previewed my post and I guess I sound like a whining jerk. But like I said in my first post, it gravels me that I have to sit on my phone for 4 hours because some other idiot can't be home when they schedule a service call.

Scheduling it on a Saturday or Sunday is also an option. You don't sound like a whining jerk. Don't worry about it. I actually like hearing your beef about Time Warner. Maybe I can help, maybe I can't. I just like helping people out with what I know about. Cable is what I know. If anybody has questions about cable and troubleshooting feel free to ask. It will be completely unofficial of course, but I'd love to help. I'll even start a new thread if it would help.

[TeamBoone]

I've had Zoomtown for several years with only a few problems, the most recent described by TeamCasey in her post, and it was fixed in an expedient manner once the problem was identified by my working with a ZT tech online (BTW, ZT's techs are EXCELLENT, which is important to me).

I hear ZT is not as fast as RR, but it's not slow by any means. One of the technicians at the Micro Center told me ZT takes longer to go out and grab the information you want from the internet, but is faster downloading the information once received (he preferred ZT as did another tech I spoke with).

It sometimes takes a bit longer to bring up ZT on your first try of the day (a half minute to a minute), but after that, it's no problem.

Cincinnati Bell upgraded my neighborhood to fiberoptic before ZT became available.

Overall, I'm with whomever gave it a B+ (which is pretty good in my estimation and definitely good enough to keep TW out of my house, except for cable) and the technicians get an A+ from me. They used to be available 24/7... but somewhere within the past year that changed to midnight (not sure when they begin)... still 7 days a week.

[Boss-Hog]

Here's just one of the problems I've had with TWC: I recently moved, so I called a few weeks ahead to let them know that and they insisted that a tech would have to come out to inspect my new place even though they'd had previous customers with the same address. I didn't have a problem with that, so I set up an appointment and the technician called and was here right within the time window. When he asked me if I would be doing a self install (of my cable and RR), I responded that I would be, since 1). I hadn't even moved that stuff to my new location yet and 2). it's easy, but he checked out my new place and said it was cable ready.

When I finished moving everything, everything worked perfectly...until they billed me for $78.64 for "Installation/Other Charges". Since they cleared they not install anything, I called Customer Support right away and explained the situation. Even after speaking with a supervisor, the best I can is that 'I put in a request to credit that amount in full to your account for next month. We've run into this situation with a few customers who aren't happy that they're billed for self-installs'. Well, with all due respect, can you figure out why people aren't happy paying for bogus charges?

In any event, I made it clear that if this isn't promptly and correctly addressed on my next bill, I will be switching (even though it will be inconvenient to do so).