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Review by paulcan See Profile

  • Location: Painesville, Lake, OH, USA
  • Cost: $61 per month
Cable is the best technology for delivering high speed
Cable companies have a monopoly on the technology
Time Warner has gotten a little better on speeds but still well below advertised speeds.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
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Value for money:

TWC is still exhibiting all the classic behaviors of a monopoly, high prices and low quality. Four years ago I paid 68.00 for internet and a TV service one step up from basic. About a year ago when I found I could drop the TV service to save $ 20.00 I did. Within 2 months they boosted my internet service by about 14.00. Just recently they gave me a choice to buy my own modem or start paying rental on the their modem they required me to replace my modem with 2 years ago. The modem they replaced mine with wasn't any more current than my modem was. The modem I just recently purchased to replace their modem with, so as not to give them $4.00 more per month, is more up to date. It is DocSys3, theirs is DocSys2. However, they apparently don't seem to use the newer technology. My speeds are just as slow as ever. So I sent yet another letter to the FCC explaining to them that monopolistic companies like TWC need to be put on a short leash.

I won't write the volumes I could about their telephone employees and tech people they send to your house. Suffice it to say they are either grossly misinformed by management or they are just dumber than rocks. It is just hard to tell which.

Old Review.

Time Warner suggests their high speed premium internet download speeds range from 13,000 kb/s to 15,000 kb/s. They also suggest their standard internet speeds are from 6,000 to 7,000 kb/s. In reality, speeds they deliver most of the time across the internet are about 25%, and often less than 25%, of those speeds. In short a good DSL service will rival them in speed.

Adelphia was my ISP until it was sold to Time Warner. I never thought Adelphia was all that great but Time Warner is much, much worse.

Adelphia speeds for standard service ranged consistently in the 4,000/6500 kb/s range. Soon after TW bought Adelphia, speeds dropped to around 1500 kb/s on average. I also experienced problems with my VOIP and television at the same time. TW also raised the rates about 5%.

I upgraded to Time Warner premium service 10 months ago to compensate for slower speeds Time Warner was delivering. For a while got speeds equal to about I had with standard Adelphia service. Then the premium speeds dropped to the 1500-2000 kb/s range and I also saw speeds as low as 435 kb/s.

During the ten months I paid for their premium internet service I never saw any speeds over 8,500 kb/s, and those times were rare.

I found after three or four service quality drop-outs that it normally takes over an hour to get speeds back to 4,000-6,000 kb/s. I could write several pages about their low quality help service. The short version is, to correct speed or line quality problems it takes 15-20 minutes on hold before talking to anyone. Once connected to live help, much more time is consumed from being passed on from one poorly trained help assistant to the next until an assistant with sufficient knowledge and authority tries to take care of the problem. Each time the user is passed on from one help assistant to the next, the user must restate the problem, Name, address, phone number, TW account number and last 4 SS# digits.

I know there are cable providers that provide a quality service for a reasonable price. Time Warner is just not one of them.

I believe that the reason is that to save money TW puts a tight budget on the amounts they have to pay long distance carriers, like Sprint and Verizon. They contract with these carriers for transporting signals beyond their local networks by purchasing bandwidth. Bandwidth is a volume concept, and the charge is basically for the number of bits transported in a given time.

In order to stay within their bandwidth budget, they throttle the speed of the signal so that fewer bits per second are transported.

Most people know that AOL bought Time Warner a few years ago. I had AOL dialup service 12 to 15 years ago. AOL had a very similar system of operation back then. That was and still is, advertise the heck out of what the technology is capable of but not purchase the required equipment and services sufficient to deliver an acceptable level of service.

In those days the web could only be accessed by home users with dialup service. AOL users often had to dial an access number up to 10 or more times to log on, only to be disconnected a few moments later. AOL help service was also as bad then as now too.

member for 18.5 years, 19 visits, last login: 11.1 years ago
updated 11.3 years ago

ekimdam
join:2004-01-24
Englewood, OH

1 edit

ekimdam

Member

I've heard that about the 'switch'...

I'm in the north Dayton area and I've heard some horror stories about old Adelphia customers around Cincy and TW. I have a few Friends that got switched out like you and they have had nothing but problems too. I'd say that there is a serious integration issue between the 2 networks. Keep buggin them and you might get results... not that you should have to.

I've had excellent service with no speed dropouts that I have seen or noticed... upgrading to the new Premium tomorrow. The current modem isn't capable of the higher speed but the service is already a bit snappier... anyways.. Good luck!
ImBatman
join:2004-04-21
Lancaster, CA

ImBatman

Member

Amazing Someone Noticed.

When I told the rep I had intentionally dropped AOL, and this is typical of AOL service, he said "We're not AOL". To which I asked, "AOL didn't buy WB, thereby owns TWCable?" He said, "Oh, well, yeah. I guess, if you put it like THAT?"


Good job catching that.
As comedian Gallagher would say, "You're in the top one percentile".
Fleeced
join:2012-10-06

Fleeced

Member

Slow RR

TWC does use Docsis 3 modems, just not for Docsis 2 speeds. Sounds like you're having an issue with signal strengths, have you done any actual troubleshooting?

alibaba
@rr.com

alibaba

Anon

I'm having the same issues with Time Warner

In the past 3 months they have increased my internet bill by over 16. Can't wait to see what the bill will be next month. I pulled out my old cable modem and replaced the crappy one they orginally gave me.

But I think you wasted your money on the docsis 3.0 modem. the 2.0 specs go up to 42mb/s

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

Fortunately for me, i have an option with at&t uverse for my area. Looks like i'll be switching as soon as i can get to the store to make sure they waive all of their "fees"
Fleeced
join:2012-10-06

Fleeced

Member

Re: I'm having the same issues with Time Warner

Those are theoretical speeds, most DOCSIS 2 modems are only tested for 30-35 at most. Your bill probably increased because you lost a promotion. TWC hasn't raised rates for standard HSD in quite some time.
KT2H
Premium Member
join:2008-04-26
Schenectady, NY

KT2H

Premium Member

Buy your own modem

My speed doubled and they don't get my $4.00 increased fee. hehe