Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Claim: East Village super holding Time Warner hostage for free cable

We've heard that some people in certain sections of the East Village are without Time Warner Cable/Road Runner service.

Last night, Adam called Time Warner and got a rather unexpected response. He documents what happened at Adam's Life. To an excerpt!

Finally, I connected with a service rep. He sounded young. Stumbled a little bit over the script he was reading. I assume he's new. This will be important in a moment. I asked him what the heck was happening. And he told me this:

The box that controls the cable, internet, pretty much everything else for Time Warner Cable in my area of the East Village is located in the basement of a building. In order to service this box, Time Warner Cable needs to contact the super of the building and be let in.

The super of the building, according to the service rep, REFUSES TO LET TIME WARNER INSIDE.

"Why is he refusing?" I asked.

"He wants free cable," the rep responded.

Apparently, Time Warner has tried to reason with the man, but he refuses to budge. Today, he's refused to answer the door or his phone. He's cut off all communication.

"It's a very unusual situation," the rep said.

To top if off, the rep gave Adam the super's address. Adam is mulling his next move. Read the whole post here.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

No one comes between me and my cable TV! Adam, you should be able to look up the name of the owner of the building online. I would contact the owner directly. If that doesn't work, it's time to go public with the address! Good luck!

Dhys said...

Aw c'mon - day 2 without cable/internet. This is nuts!

Anonymous said...

Why won't they give him free cable, who cares? If they want access to the box in HIS building, giving him free cable is nothing.

Anonymous said...

whew. adam has updated his post to say that twc is back in action. i missed my internets last night.

VH McKenzie said...

Spectacular!

Our building has been hounded by the Verizon people of late, requesting "permission" to drape cables across our property in order to service the neighborhood when requested.

I asked if they would pay for the privilege and they insisted they had permission to do so without such, according to state law.

YET they still needed us to sign away the permission to access our property.

Hmmm, mulling our options......but who wants free FIOS?

I'd actually prefer a voucher for free TWC plus HD DVR!

Anonymous said...

This sounds suspiciously like the problems we had many years ago on blocks between 2nd and 1st Avenues, when it was alleged by the cable company that the landlords of the Estroff Drugstore building (when it was still in the corner location where Dallas BBQ now is) wouldn't let the cable company have access to their cellar to put in a junction box. History repeating?

Anonymous said...

"YET they still needed us to sign away the permission to access our property."

too bad cable companies don't ahve power like electric companies to simply shut down your building's electric for being an asshole.

Anonymous said...

Re: VH. The contractor that wants to install FIOS for Verizon has been harassing our building as well. He's called / emailed at least 10 times. The guy is obnoxious.

Anonymous said...

Cable just went out again around midnight on 4th and 2nd ave.

Anonymous said...

Widespread Time Warner cable, internet, phone outage seems confined to East Village. Any reports from other parts of city. Outage since 11pm last night.

Anonymous said...

4th and Ave A no time warner cable service since last night.

Anonymous said...

2nd between a and b still no service since the 4th

Anonymous said...

Same here 2nd day without cable and interenet and i work from home - currently using my 3g to do things that need to be done! 2nd between A and B.

Spoke to one of there guys who are camped out on 3rd between A and B and told me it was a fire which caused damage to there cable ..... asked about the idiot who would not let them in the building and he said nothing of it and they are fixing the damage which he said was "intense".

Unknown said...

It's days later since this post, but we're continually having problems with our cable. I think Time Warner upgraded or something and everything went kaplooey.

Just this evening, our TV wasn't recognizing channels being selected. It got stuck on one channel, wouldn't let us change channels, then completely froze up. We rebooted, but then cable box got caught in a loop and now I'm heading to bed.

Anyone else experiencing same issues?