Review by jhayann1 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.2 years, 1 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
 Painesville,Lake,OH
 $130 per month (month by month)
 about 60 days
 "none"
 "connecting at 3Mbps or lower when paying for 6Mbps,internet frequently disconnects,digital phone does not work - can't call 911"
 "Expensive, support is lacking, service does not work as advertised"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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We just moved into the area and since we had such good service with our cable ISP in another state, we thought we would stick with cable again. Unfortunately, they don't offer service in our area, so we went with the cable company - Time Warner, and bundled both cable, phone, and internet. We moved and tried to get service connected in Nov 2007. They did not get our service connected until the end of Jan 2008! When we called to question why it took so long after they rescheduled it for a 3rd time, we were greeted with mouthy customer service reps who made us feel like they could care less if we went elsewhere for service. Since we knew of no other company in the area and I am fairly knowledgeable with computers and the internet, we thought we'd give Time Warner a chance since there was no long-term contract anyway, until we could research other providers in the area.
Our service was scheduled to be hooked up between 9am and Noon; the service tech was here around 8:15am - almost an hour earlier than expected, when my family was still in a hustle of getting ready for school/work and such. The service tech who came in to install our service did not wear those shoe covers and tracked mud and snow onto our cream carpet several times. He was here for about an hour because he had problems with the cable box & its remote (their equipment). After all was said and done, he had the cable strewn across the middle of the living room floor, power cords dangling across a fan, and those little twist ties and plastic bags (form their equipment) laying around for my 3yr old to choke on. He basically left a mess.
The service worked ok for the first week, and then we started having problems. Our internet often went down at random times for no reason. The same thing happened with the phone. If people tried to call us, they would get a "due to network difficulties" message and couldn't get through. We couldn't call out when this happened, not even to 911! That's what freaked us out most is not being able to get emergency services in case something happens to us or our children. Random channels we watched -- the picture would freeze and the sound would skip - like an annoying broken record. We were paying for 6Mbps internet speed but were lucky to connect at 3Mbps. If you called customer service, it was always automated and took 30 minutes or more to get a technician on the line. The automated support did not resolve our problems so we always had to wait for a technician, assuming we could call or email them!! There were so many times when we could not do either one, because both the internet and the phone were not working. I've had to use up minutes on our cell phone to call tech support. Most of those who call us don't even bother calling the home phone; they call the cell instead because it was rare for them to get thru on the house phone. This was costing us even more money. It's frustrating to know that we were paying over $120 in exchange for crap service and lacking support.
Basically, none of the services they offered worked well, and certainly wasn't worth the money we were dishing out. If we had to rate the individual services offered from worst to less-worse, I'd say our digital phone was the worst, followed by the internet service, then the cable.
After searching the net even in odd/unlikely places like cafemom.com, we found that not one Time Warner customer in this county (Northeast Ohio) had anything good to say about Time Warner. Don't take our word for it; I'd be more than happy to copy-paste links, posts, etc. if you'd like.
Reading all of those posts and getting responses from others in the area, the consensus seemed to point towards another company as being the reliable, best ISP in the area. As of Apr 17, we have switched our phone to that company, less than a week after we contacted them! They intend to have our internet up and running this week as well (once we get the modem that's been shipped to us). So by Apr 25, 2008, the only service we will have from Time Warner is cable, and that's only because they are the only cable provider in the area; we rent our home and so we cannot have a dish installed on the property.
Here's a list of the equipment we got from Time Warner:
- Modem brand: Scientific Atlanta 2203
- Cable box brand: Motorola Interactive Digital Communications box
- Cable tv remote: Time Warner UR5U-8820-TWA
Here are some speed test results (year 2008):
Apr 22, 12:46PM - 15244 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/262607239.png
Mar 24, 1:52AM - 8230 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/250178734.png
Mar 14, 11:06AM - 19417 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/246295795.png
Feb 17, 2:20PM - 15077 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/235565334.png
Feb 17, 8:38AM - 19700 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/235455029.png
Feb 17, 8:29AM - 26063 kb/s: »www.speedtest.net/result/235452830.png
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