US Cable Support > Time Warner Cable TV/Voice > [TWC] Emails from TWC

[TWC] Emails from TWC

"Why can't they send an email to customers in the area with the outage letting them know they might be impacted?"

Unfortunately not everyone checks there email 24/7 so an email about an outage that is read after the outage is over would cause more confusion.

I don't feel that email is the correct vehicle for distributing outage information. Good messaging and good communication to CSR's is.

Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let users subscribe to alerts and decide for themselves. What exactly is a good way to distribute outage information?

I already said. Good messaging and educated CSR's

Hob

reply to jfirstenberg

reply to hobgoblin

"TW has among the worst communication with its CSRs I've ever seen. They often don't know about widespread outages."

In your area maybe.

Hob
--
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

reply to jfirstenberg
I think it should be in TWC's best interest to communicate the outage in every way possible, regardless if the customer chooses to acknowledge the communication. Better to try and fail then not to try at all.

I think with the addition of technology, two things should be implemented:
1. My cable box should call Time Warner when it encounters a problem to notify them
2. My box should know when there's a problem and notify me that it has notified them.

I believe both of these would cut down on time for both fixing the problem and for me to be on hold.

reply to NSA_CIA
I don't trust TWC for internet service, just TV.
Besides, my email is with google so service interruptions wouldn't prevent me from receiving an email on my blackberry or from another terminal. If the company can't send an email b/c of an outage, that would be a different story. The outages I'm refering to are centered around TV service.

reply to lauch
hmm cable box calling TWC when theres a problem? What if there is no power to the box? Built in modem to cable box? Great all you need is to have a phonejack by every tv. no landline? well then just have cellphones built into cable boxes. no biggie, it should add $100 or so to cost of box which is passed along to you the consumer. what if the box dials out false alarms? what if your line is tied up cause your teenage daughter is on the phone.

lets be real now.

Let me attempt to clear up some misconceptions:

a. jfirstenberg, what you had was not considered an "outage" to TWC. To be a true outage, it needs to affect a certain amount of people (actual numbers vary depending on division).

b. There is a network status page for RR: »help.rr.com/HMSLogic/network_status.aspx Some of the entries may be dated depending on your division, but its a good place to look to see if there is an issue in more than just your house. Emailing every customer every time something happens is just not practical/possible in some cases. Even less possible is calling them

c. If its truly an "outage" the CSRs should be aware. Granted, if its in the first stages of an outage, the communications may not have reached them yet.

d. Most events that are "Outages" (Node outage, fiber cut, etc) are known about the moment they happen. And repairs happen as fast as possible.

e. The cable boxes DO communicate back to the network, and techs are able to spot problems in nodes before it affects customers. Having the box automatically setup service calls for customers again is just not practical. How will the box know when the best time to setup a call is? Further, Alot of people have degraded service on a box, but just dont care and dont want it fixed because it "works" to them.

reply to jfirstenberg
I should also add another very obvious point that seemed to have been missed is that if it was a true outage, the email would be useless to 99% of the customer base who can't get to their email. (Uhhh...Whoops?)

On the other hand, most people these days have cell phones they can call the tech support number and if it is a true outage as Rombus clearly explained, they'll, at the very least, have CSR's notified to give you the proper info or in some cases even have a recorded message in the IVR to notify callers of a given outage in X area and an expected resolution ETA.
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I swear, some people should have pace-makers installed to free up the resources. Breathing and heart beat taxes their whole system, all of their brain cells wasted on life support.-two bit brains, and the second bit is wasted on parity! ~head_spaz

reply to jfirstenberg
Not sure how it's set up for other areas, but if you call TW Rochester's 800#, before you get prompted to Press 1 for English, an automated voice comes on and lists any areas that may be experiencing outages, be it TV, broadband or phone and says they are aware of the problems and have crews working on it.

We have that here in Mid Ohio also, but the message being on there is based on the size of the affected group. I recently had an outage and was the first to report it, but it was only my road that was out, so I guess size does matter!

reply to hobgoblin