Bodecker

Bright House Networks’ cable system in Orlando, Florida experienced a major outage last Friday, resulting in frozen TV screens and other service interruptions for approximately one hour in the middle of prime time. Orlando: No new episode of NBC’s Law & Order for you!

The Orlando Sentinel‘s Hal Bodecker, who writes The TV Guy and More column, took note of the outage:

What caused TV screens to freeze for many customers of Bright House Networks Friday night?

The cable provider still doesn’t know, spokeswoman Sara Brady said Monday.

So will this be another of television’s unsolved mysteries?

“We will identify a cause,” Brady said.

If you were affected, you can request a credit from Bright House. The outage did not affect all customers, although the company doesn’t know how many lost service. “We handle credits on a case-by-case basis,” Brady said.

Many customers took note the perpetual busy signals they received when calling Bright House Networks to inquire about the outage.  Brady spun the time-honored truth that calling a cable company’s customer service number and getting nothing but busy signals confirms there is an outage — potentially a big one, when she told Bodecker that busy phones indicate that the company is aware there’s a problem.

Many cable companies do not automatically credit customers for service outages — customers are required to contact the cable operator and specifically request service credits.  Many operators will not provide credit for short term outages either, but Bright House Networks did grant customer requests for credits:

Susan Segal of Ocoee said she learned she was getting … 24 cents.

She called that situation “absolutely a disgrace.” Segal added: “We pay through the nose.”

Duane Beaudry of Orlando told me his refund would be … 35 cents.

He called to get the refund, learned that there would be a three-minute wait and spent 20 minutes on the phone before learning the amount.

“It wasn’t worth the time,” he said. But he laughed when he said that.

After customers told Bodecker about the paltry refunds, he penned an update today titled, “Bright House Networks: Maybe that refund wasn’t such a good idea.”