SubscribeBack in April, Time Warner advertised a “central” e-mail address it wanted customers to use to “share ideas and views” about their gouging Cap ‘n Tier pricing scheme. The company promised it was on a listening tour, enthusiastically promising to read, consider, and respond to customer concerns.
Over on Broadband Reports, “De” finally received a reply to input sent more than a month ago:
Well I eventually submitted an email to TWC about the caps on April 14th. To prove they pay attention to their customers, they sent me this reply today (Over a month later) LMAO:
To: RealIdeas
Subject: Greedy Bandwidth Caps. The truth!?
Sent: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:22:52 -0400< >was deleted without being read on Sun, 31 May 2009 01:49:12 -0400
Just goes to prove they don’t care if the consumer wants the per byte billing or not – it’s coming anyway.
Our opinions and views are nothing to TWC — all that matters is the $$$$. The whole PR about them listening is just to ease media and political pressure. They have made their mind up already.
And I’ve made up my mind already. I’m moving soon and I will no longer subscribe to Cable TV. That’s $80 a month loss revenue for them.
Take that, TWC!
TWC see themselves as the Seven Sages of Greece and we’re a bunch of bumpkins
No offense, but the language in the subject line is a little, well, strong. If I were them I wouldn’t read it either. Greedy? Even though I agree with you on that, they are going to say, “Whatever dude, delete.” Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with your subject. I think the SOB’s are greedy little pinheads that would upend their customers so they could shake every dime out of their pocket if they could get away with it.
I too received the same responses to my messages sent to realideas, and I belive that their subject and contents were objective:
Your message
To: RealIdeas
Subject: In response to Landel Hobbs 4/9 Statement
Sent: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 23:39:36 -0400
was not readTue, 26 May 2009 01:38:19 -0400
Final-Recipient: RFC822; [email protected]
Disposition: automatic-action/MDN-sent-automatically; deleted
Hmmm, interesting….
I’ll add that your evidence points to whoever was assigned this e-mail address just simply didn’t decide to check it. So that’s pretty crappy.
The only possible explanation that’s not due to laziness, mismanagement, or a stupid mistake (like not routing [email protected] to anyone’s actual address) is that the box got so swamped with mail due to an overwhelming response that it was just impossible to read everything.
Either way, it’s not a good indicator.
I did receive the following respons (around 4/30) multiple times to earlier emails sent to realideas on (4/9). The thing that got m was they referenced the statement from 4/9, even though they abandonded the trials on 4/16. Hello, Thanks for taking the time to provide us with your feedback. We really appreciate hearing from you. Although this is an automated response, please know that your e-mail is being read and your thoughts are being discussed as we continue to research the tiered pricing program. As you may have already heard, TWC’s Chief Operating Officer, Landel Hobbs, issued a statement… Read more »
Ah hah! Well, that explains what happened. They gave it a mailbox on the Exchange Server but no one checked it. An autoresponder was set up.
The number of e-mails hit whatever limit they set for it (probably something low like 5MB–just a guess). After that it just started deleting FIFO.
Someone dropped the ball: Either the person who was supposed to check these, or the person who was supposed to assign this responsibility to someone.
There is a lot of ball dropping going on lately with this company.