nycityny
Premium
join:2005-08-09
New York, NY
 ·PHONE POWER
·VoicePulse
 ·RCN CABLE
·ViaTalk
| reply to jeffnyc
Re: [CATV] New York - RCN comiong to my building
I've had RCN for about a dozen years. Prior to last fall their big advantage was that they did not scramble channels 2-99, but now they do. Their big disadvantage is that they don't offer New York One local news.
My cable TV service has been pretty good throughout. I had some trouble last summer. They finally sent a guy out and he spent hours trying new coax wires and connectors. He finally hooked my box directly up to the building's source and the problem still existed. Through calls to the home office they determined that the feed into our high rise building was too strong and needed adjustment. So my whole building was apparently getting video/audio pops for months and RCN did not pick up on it from multiple complaints (or nobody else complained?). It was promptly fixed the day after they visited my apartment.
The reason I tell that story is because my phone calls to customer service were to overseas representatives who did nothing more than read from scripts and have me jump through scripted hoops before sending someone out. Multiple calls were required as they would send signals to the box, tell me to wait a few hours and see what happened. This happened several times to no avail.
I had a similar experience last summer with my broadband Internet connection. They sent several people out to address severe packet loss but experienced no such loss during the 5 minutes the guys were here. It was finally magically fixed after about the 3rd visit, though none of the folks in my apartment caused the fix. To this day I don't know what happened.
Aside from last summer, I've been pretty pleased with the products. The service rarely goes out.
The biggest problem I've had with RCN throughout my time with them is their horrible billing practices. Anytime I make a change to my service and am told what the price will be, the first few monthly bills are wrong. It takes multiple phone calls to RCN and multiple promises from them (or accusations that I had never been promised such a rate) to resolve issues.
So in summary: The service usually works and hums along nicely. When it doesn't work dealing with customer service and billing is a nightmare.
I don't know if Time Warner is any better. The sense I got, however, is that Time Warner has local phone support rather than overseas. Also, the local Time Warner office can actually do something for you while the local RCN office simply exists to swap hardware. RCN's office cannot deal with billing issues or service changes - they give you a phone number to call. |
