Chief Rum
12-06-2009, 07:25 PM
:rant:
These guys suck. And I'm forced to use TW Cable if I go the cable route? That blows.
I have two digital boxes at my place. One for the downstairs room (the community viewing, bigger TV) and one for my bedroom/den/computer room, where I personally spend most of my "home time", on the computer with the TV on. I have DVR set up on the downstairs box.
About five months ago, my box in my room started acting up. I would go to some channels, and it would give me a black screen and a box saying "One moment please. This channel will be available shortly". The early channels were generally ones I don't give a shit about, so I shrugged it off. The days go by, and more and more channels were doing this. The on-screen channel info pretty much went down; I could never tell what was on anymore. It just got worse and worse. It finally got to the point where I only could watch maybe 7-8 channels.
I'm sure you guys are all saying, "Dude, WTF, why you putting up with that?" and I would have to agree. A sensible person would have been on the phone a while ago and bitching someone out. But you have to understand how I use my TV upstairs. It's mostly background noise to me while I am on the computer. It's not really all that critical to what I do there. I only really use that TV for one thing--to have my teams on in the background if they're playing. And luck of the TW Gods, of all the channels they weren't showing me, they were still showing me the Fox Sports channels. So I got to see my Angels, Ducks, UCLA, Clippers. So it was an annoyance, but I shrugged it off. When I really wanted to watch something that wasn't showing on my box upstairs, I went downstairs and watched. Or I DVR'd and watched it later.
Next thing, for some time now, I have tried to get the online automatic bill pay to work with TW. This works fine for all of my other utility bills. No problems. And TW has a program for this. I sign up for the program to get it going. And when it comes time to pay, nothing happens. Now, I work two jobs and I am in and out of my place rather sporadically. It's one reason I set up auto pays--so I don't have to take the time to deal with it. So my bill goes unpaid for a couple months, and I start getting those phone calls on my call from "Unknown" that is some computer calling me to tell me my cable/Internet TW bill hasn't been paid. WTH? I go online next chance I get, I pay the bill, I try to set up the auto pay again. It (again) says everything is fine, will do the next time, we all go on our way, two months down the line wash, rinse, repeat, stupid auto pay still ain't working.
You would think it wouldn't be so fricking hard to actually PAY them.
Now, downstairs, the box mostly works fine. Not too much problems with it. DVR has been fine. Every now and then, though, a big black box pops up which dominates the screen (right in the center, probably takes up 75% of the screen). Some digital crap characters pop up in this black box, and I have no idea where it comes from or why it shows up. I don't know how to get rid of it (except to wait it out), but it doesn't seem to get in the way of the DVR, so if it's something I want to watch, I record it and come back later when the "black box" is gone.
So today, I'm starving I need to get some lunch, but the KU-UCLA game is about to start. So I set it to record. The black box happens to show up while I am setting this up. An annoyance, yes, but I wasn't going to watch right then anyway. I finish setting up the record (best as I could, hard to make sure with the damn box blocking me from seeing what the DVR is set to do, but I have done it enough that I am reasonably sure I got it recording right).
I leave for lunch and come back in an hour and a half or so, prepared to watch the game in quick view, fast forwarding through the commercials, halftime and "Bill Self is God/Xavier Heny is the next Jordan" commentary. The recording only grabbed 25 mins. WTF? The setting was for 2 bleeping hours. WHERE THE FRICK IS MY GAME?!?
I'm livid right now. This is ridiculous. Funniest part is, my cell phone's receiver (my only phone, I don't carry a landline) is on the fritz right now and I have to send away for a new phone--so I can't even call the fuckers to bitch them out right now.
FWIW, yes, I know, I let stuff go entirely for way too long. I should have called eons ago. Still, this is pretty damn shitty service, and my only option, seemingly, would be to go with a satellite dish service that would cost more and probably get the HOA assholes all in a huff, too.
:/end rant:
These guys suck. And I'm forced to use TW Cable if I go the cable route? That blows.
I have two digital boxes at my place. One for the downstairs room (the community viewing, bigger TV) and one for my bedroom/den/computer room, where I personally spend most of my "home time", on the computer with the TV on. I have DVR set up on the downstairs box.
About five months ago, my box in my room started acting up. I would go to some channels, and it would give me a black screen and a box saying "One moment please. This channel will be available shortly". The early channels were generally ones I don't give a shit about, so I shrugged it off. The days go by, and more and more channels were doing this. The on-screen channel info pretty much went down; I could never tell what was on anymore. It just got worse and worse. It finally got to the point where I only could watch maybe 7-8 channels.
I'm sure you guys are all saying, "Dude, WTF, why you putting up with that?" and I would have to agree. A sensible person would have been on the phone a while ago and bitching someone out. But you have to understand how I use my TV upstairs. It's mostly background noise to me while I am on the computer. It's not really all that critical to what I do there. I only really use that TV for one thing--to have my teams on in the background if they're playing. And luck of the TW Gods, of all the channels they weren't showing me, they were still showing me the Fox Sports channels. So I got to see my Angels, Ducks, UCLA, Clippers. So it was an annoyance, but I shrugged it off. When I really wanted to watch something that wasn't showing on my box upstairs, I went downstairs and watched. Or I DVR'd and watched it later.
Next thing, for some time now, I have tried to get the online automatic bill pay to work with TW. This works fine for all of my other utility bills. No problems. And TW has a program for this. I sign up for the program to get it going. And when it comes time to pay, nothing happens. Now, I work two jobs and I am in and out of my place rather sporadically. It's one reason I set up auto pays--so I don't have to take the time to deal with it. So my bill goes unpaid for a couple months, and I start getting those phone calls on my call from "Unknown" that is some computer calling me to tell me my cable/Internet TW bill hasn't been paid. WTH? I go online next chance I get, I pay the bill, I try to set up the auto pay again. It (again) says everything is fine, will do the next time, we all go on our way, two months down the line wash, rinse, repeat, stupid auto pay still ain't working.
You would think it wouldn't be so fricking hard to actually PAY them.
Now, downstairs, the box mostly works fine. Not too much problems with it. DVR has been fine. Every now and then, though, a big black box pops up which dominates the screen (right in the center, probably takes up 75% of the screen). Some digital crap characters pop up in this black box, and I have no idea where it comes from or why it shows up. I don't know how to get rid of it (except to wait it out), but it doesn't seem to get in the way of the DVR, so if it's something I want to watch, I record it and come back later when the "black box" is gone.
So today, I'm starving I need to get some lunch, but the KU-UCLA game is about to start. So I set it to record. The black box happens to show up while I am setting this up. An annoyance, yes, but I wasn't going to watch right then anyway. I finish setting up the record (best as I could, hard to make sure with the damn box blocking me from seeing what the DVR is set to do, but I have done it enough that I am reasonably sure I got it recording right).
I leave for lunch and come back in an hour and a half or so, prepared to watch the game in quick view, fast forwarding through the commercials, halftime and "Bill Self is God/Xavier Heny is the next Jordan" commentary. The recording only grabbed 25 mins. WTF? The setting was for 2 bleeping hours. WHERE THE FRICK IS MY GAME?!?
I'm livid right now. This is ridiculous. Funniest part is, my cell phone's receiver (my only phone, I don't carry a landline) is on the fritz right now and I have to send away for a new phone--so I can't even call the fuckers to bitch them out right now.
FWIW, yes, I know, I let stuff go entirely for way too long. I should have called eons ago. Still, this is pretty damn shitty service, and my only option, seemingly, would be to go with a satellite dish service that would cost more and probably get the HOA assholes all in a huff, too.
:/end rant: