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Review by ke4pym See Profile

  • Location: Charlotte, Mecklenburg, NC, USA
  • Cost: $164 per month
It just works!
Price is a bit high.
We still need competition
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

12/2015 - Dropped DirecTV in August due to the AT&T take over. Got TV + All Movie channels + Phone + Ultimate internet for $164/mo for a year all said and done. Also got a Tivo.

In November my area was upgraded to MAXX. Service has been solid since the upgrade. Getting advertised speeds.

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11/2014 - Service is still great. Nothing major to report.

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10/13 - Service is running fine. No issues. SamKnows agrees.

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12/11 - Only one thing to say - "solid service". Connection stays on, stays fast (as validated by SamKnows).

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1/11 - Got wide band stand alone back in November. Subscribed to the 30/5 package. Was told that it would be "exactly $20 more than I was paying today". Well, I was on a special for RR Turbo at $39.99mo. I asked about that and was told that was true.

First bill came in super high. Had 3 or 4 install charges, and something like $80/mo for the service. Called up. Long story short, I never agreed to the install charges (in the 14 years I've been a TWC customer, I have NEVER, EVER paid an install charge). They removed the charges and fixed me up to get the service for $59.99/mo. They went and replayed my call to get verification of those details. Works for me. Service is reliable even though there have been a couple of hiccups.

10/20/10 - After having Signature home for exactly 60 days, they came out and disconnected me because the service, quite frankly, sucks. The only redeeming product in that line up is the Docsis 3.0 50/5 service. Dropped back to just RoadRunner Turbo (got hooked up with a 12 month special for $39.99). Which got upgraded from 10/.512 to 15/1 on 10/18/10.

7/19/10 - As promised TWC called back to follow up on the install on Friday. Left them with several thoughts. They tried to do a short troubleshooting session on why the upstairs DVR won't play a recorded show off of the downstairs DVR that had a movie recorded from a premium channel. We deleted it and I will record it again and see if that fixes it. If not, a tech will be sent.

7/16/10 - Tech showed up a few minutes after 5 due to storms and traffic. What seemed like a short 2 hour job ended up becoming a 4 hour job. First the tech toured my home to find out where all of the equipment would be installed. Then, he checked the signal levels at the street and at the box behind the house. After installing a pair of MoCA filters on the ingress line and the line to the cable modem, he then verified that all of the cable ends were clean.

Then, inside to setup the equipment. The cable modem went first. Plugged it in and it immediately found a DOCSIS 3.0 signal. Then, it came time to provision it. Followed by the cable boxes. The provisioning took the most time. Apparently, these packages are brand new, and I was the 2nd person to have these services installed. So I can cut them some slack for that. The cable modem assigned me a IPv4 and IPv6 address. Peak speeds were 50,100 down, and 5,100 up. RoadRunner Wideband is $99/mo here. I got it packaged with everything else for $180. That includes RoadRunner wireless (not mobile), home phone with voice mail. Pretty much the works in the toys department. Video services stay the same.

After the DVR's were provisioned we test out the whole home functionality. The two DVRs work together seemlessly. If you record a show on one DVR it shows up immediately on the other DVR. PQ is very good. Could use some HD menus, ability to delete remote shows and enable my external hard drive.

7/15/10 - Got word of TimeWarner SignatureHome. $179.95/mo for Roadrunner Wideband (with 802.11 wireless), a pair of whole house DVRs, and unlimited phone service. This was the first day they were offering this package. Was on the phone for 2 hours getting signed up. Part of that was my fault for asking so many questions. But they did have some issues getting everything keyed in. Install is scheduled for 7/16/10. Because I called late, the 2nd rep said they couldn't get my phone service installed the next day. So they will be out on 7/20/10 to install the phone service.

The DVRs are either Samsung or Cisco (I requested Cisco) 320GB models. And external hard drives are supported. You can record a program on one DVR and watch it on the other, or vice versa. You can add a stand alone cable box and it can act as a client to the 2 DVRs.

Being a Signature client gets you next day support for service adds. It gets you proactive monitoring, and a 60-90 minute SLA should something break (so sayuth the sales rep). Also, there's no calling the national or local tier 1 help desks anymore. You call your team of reps.

4/10 - Running smooth! No noticed outages or issues since the last update. Speeds are good (15-22Mbps down w/Turbo, solid 480kbps up). Would love more upload, though!

1/09 - Since TWC was finally able to resolve my horrible speeds by moving my neighborhood to a new hub things have been solid. They added SpeedBoost to those with the Turbo package. Max download from that I have seen is around 21Mbps. Though it usually is in the 15-18Mbps range.

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1/08 - Uploads STILL at 384kbps. Tonight I notice that my downloads are very slow. 500k down/350k up (which is normal). Call and speak to the national help desk. Long story short, they refuse to help me.

I've been a RR cable customer for 10 years. I know how to do the basic troubleshooting steps. So, I complete them. Still, slow speeds. The first girl I speak with is looking at my cable modem and resets it. Before I can tell her not to do that the call is dropped (using Packet 8). I wait for a bit, hoping she'd call back. No dice. So I call back in and reach girl number 2. Oh boy. Next time I call, I'll remember to explicitly say I don't have a router. She wants me to disconnect everything (never mind that the call will drop). And hook the PC up directly to the cable modem.

She won't look at the signal strength or anything without me completing that. I tell her about the last girl helping me without issue. She goes on and on (very quickly too) about all the things they want to do (never mind I work around PCs, servers and networks for a living). I told her to escilate me. Her supervisor comes on the line and basically says the same thing. I ask "how am I supposed to disconnect my phone and still talk to you to hook something directly to the cable modem?" His reply? "Call your VoIP provider". I about went berzerk. I have never, ever had such pathetic support as I did tonight. I finally get him to get me to the local office. Person I speak with there is very nice, checks my modem, wants to reset it but I ask her not too. Checks a few more things and schedules a truck roll.

I'm ready to turn all my services off if this is how tech support is going to be.

1/07 - Our uploads still remain at 384kbps. I usually see around 360kbps in tests here. Service is solid as a rock and has very high uptimes. Otherwise, review below remains true today.

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I signed up for RoadRunner in the spring of 1998. I was one of the "Early Birds" as they called it then.

Advertised service is 5 megabits-per-second down, 384 kilobits per second up. I usually see 4.2 to 4.5 megabits-per-second down and 361 kilobits per second up using BBR's speed tests. The results are consistent throughout the day.

With the exception of DNS issues that cropped up in March when RoadRunner raised the download speeds, my cable modem has been solid (read: telephone uptime solid) for a couple of years now. The last outage was in 2003 when we had one of the worst ice storms this region has seen (that storm even knocked down telephone service for a couple of days).

I've upgraded modems a couple of times and am currently using an AmBit modem. The first one I got was defective, so a quick run to one of the local offices fixed that problem.

My only complaint with RoadRunner is the slow upload speed. This is the age of individual content creators. It's more than "running servers". VoIP, gaming, sending video to friends, webcams and the like take bandwidth. It's high time RoadRunner upgrade our upload speeds to a minimum of 768 kilo-bits-per-second as basic service.

member for 19.6 years, 8247 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 8.2 years ago

ramsiny
join:2003-11-20
Staten Island, NY

ramsiny

Member

TWC Level 3 (aka National Support)

I totally agree with ke4pym about national support. I too have a technical background. Today I experienced the same attitude with lev3 support of their unwillingness to troubleshoot until all the preliminary steps are done (even though you have already done them). My problem was caused when I disconnected a hub (yes I paid for an additional IP address) and connected directly to my computer. Problem turned out to be the connection speed changed from 10Mbps(forced by the hub) to 100Mbps (allowed by the ethernet card. Once I changed the setting on the card from automatic to a hard 10Mbps everything was ok. Level 3 didn't even attempt to stir me in that direction. I was told it was a computer problem and I had to get someone to fix it. "I" did.

By the way, local support in Staten Island, NY were very polite and are to be commended.

To ke4pym, I'm glad you finally go your connection speed resolved.

CptGemini
Inside your computer
Premium Member
join:2004-11-29
Corpus Christi, TX

2 edits

CptGemini

Premium Member

Re: TWC Level 3 (aka National Support)

I have to agree, ever since they moved it to where all calls go to the call center, their support has gone down hill. The Local support however was always the best but I guess in an effort to save money they quit allowing local calls direct to the offices.

I am thankful that I dont have any problems here in my area, I am on a good node. Though if I do have to make any calls I am one of the most persistant son of a bitches they might ever meet, I am one to stay on the line with them until I get the answer or answers that I am looking for.

They need to hire some people that speak better english too and not a bunch of complete retards that seem pretty much like scripted robots.

I did used to have packet8 some time ago when I had to make call to tech support and they rebooted my modem when I was on the line with them and my call never got dropped, it just went silent for the duration the modem was rebooting. I canceled my service 2 months before the contract was over because after some time I started getting a bunch of packet loss and overall poor quality of service.
hottboiinnc4
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

hottboiinnc4

Member

Tier 3 is NOT national Help

National Help is Tier 2 and is based in Canada. Tier 3 is the local office and you can't get to that internal number without a ticket and a transfer or them calling you after the ticket.

And a VoIP device is a router- why? because it gives your PC a NAT address and NOT the actual IP RR issues you.
ke4pym
Premium Member
join:2004-07-24
Charlotte, NC

ke4pym

Premium Member

Re: Tier 3 is NOT national Help

said by hottboiinnc4:

National Help is Tier 2 and is based in Canada. Tier 3 is the local office and you can't get to that internal number without a ticket and a transfer or them calling you after the ticket.
Not sure about your neck of the woods. But here, I call the local 7 digit help number and get straight into my local help desk located down the road from me by about 10 miles. I can't tell you the last time I dealt with national help.
hottboiinnc4
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

hottboiinnc4

Member

Re: Tier 3 is NOT national Help

you're dealing with the Local Call Center---known as customer service...some areas will still let you talk to them but for the most part and its becoming common you'll talk to Tier 2. In many areas that 7digit number does call a call center and you have no clue where it goes. the Cleveland Number does that, The Columbus numbers do that, Dayton, Cinci, NYC, all do it.

Also Adelphia's old call centers still do operate and as National Help at times

jkingo
@rr.com

jkingo

Anon

TWC webmail

agreed. well said. i hate paying my TWC bill- and..., they keep telling me there's no issue:/
maybe if they removed the TONS of local animated advertisement pop ups?!?!
frankly i'm angry- i wouldn't want to use this webmail as a free service.
TWC really, really sucks.