You just discovered that the center of the volcanic red-hot lava flow of anger that crashed your consumption based billing scheme to the ground was located in Rochester, New York.  Customers were burning those annoying mailers they get every day and casting voodoo spells on Mike O’Brian.  A congressman had to moderate a debate in a town hall meeting filled with angry customers vs. Time Warner representatives.  A senator came to town and put a podium on your lawn.  So what do you do to placate the masses?

Send company representatives to people’s homes!

StoptheCap! reader Corrine in Rochester writes:

Hi, Phil. A very nice TWC “Residential Account Specialist” stopped at my house this evening. She said she was visiting the customers in her area to make sure everything is ok with their service. She obviously had a printout of what we subscribe to from TWC and took notes of my feedback. Yes, TW is attempting to overcome the bad publicity. I indicated that I am sure she is familiar with Stop the Cap! and knows that it isn’t the local TW employees that there is a problem with — the comments all indicate that the service is great. The problem is with TW management and tiered service.

She admitted that there has been a lot of negative publicity.  The only “propaganda” that she provided was that people don’t understand that it is only the 14% high-end users who are downloading two or three movies a day who would be affected.  I said that although I don’t download movies, I will soon be retired and on a fixed income.  However, when I am home, my computer is up all the time.  With all of that on-line time, I have no idea how many GB I use.  Of course her response was that it would not effect me — even on RR Lite.

I asked for and received the representative’s card, which includes her cell phone number and e-mail address.  As all TWC representatives I have had contact with, whether on the telephone or as service representatives, she is a very personable lady.

I’m sure she, like the majority of local Time Warner employees are friendly, personable, and professional.  We’ve said repeatedly we have absolutely no beef with any of them.  None of our issues are their fault, and nobody should blame them or be disrespectful of them over this.  They are playing the hand of cards they were dealt.

That being said, I am surprised Time Warner is sending representatives out to homes, unless this person is trying to get people to upgrade service.  She obviously has her talking points, and for our statistical department, there is another number – 14%!  I remain utterly unconvinced by their numbers parade.  If you were on the 1GB Road Runner Lite, I guarantee you if you spend your day online just taking care of a website or doing other non-download/non-video applications, you’d blow way past 1GB in a month.

My usage, doing nothing this month except this website, and I'm already over 50GB in/out just writing articles and answering e-mail.

I want people to see something.  My router already tracks usage in this house.  I have basically done little more since April 1, the Day of Infamy, than taking care of this website, penning articles for it, and sending and responding to e-mail.  I have watched ZERO streaming movies or television shows.  The only files I’ve downloaded were the “monthly visits from Microsoft — bug fixes and updates,” backups of this website, and an iTunes upgrade.  I haven’t had time to download music and I am so bad at online/videogames, I don’t embarrass myself by even trying to play.  You can see my usage on your right.  Ten thousand megabytes equals ten gigabytes.  I am already past the initial “heavy user” plan and will probably finish the month close to 60GB of usage.  This is abnormal usage for me, because I’ve used the Internet for little more than old school browsing and e-mailing, and moving text around.  I’ve used Hulu and other services in the past, but not since the beginning of this month.

If you did for two hours a day what I do for many more, you’d be past 5GB by now, not below 1GB.

The numbers just don’t add up, but the bill sure will.  Time Warner doesn’t need to send representatives to anyone’s home.  Just cut the doubletalk and say, definitively, no usage capping or tiered pricing based on usage.  Tier on speed all you want – Verizon does it, as do others.  And there are customers waiting to hand you more money for faster speed today!