A Hartville, Ohio grandmother is upset after learning she has been paying Time Warner Cable for a box she claims she returned six years earlier.  Now, the 85-year old former subscriber is appealing to the cable company for a refund totaling more than $600, which represents nearly six years of rental fees.  Her son called Time Warner, who at first admitted they had made a mistake, but only offered to credit Florence Nichols $100, not the $600 she spent on a box she claims she never used.

“I just could not believe it was a bargaining thing now,” said Florence’s son Randy. “Whatever happened to the part about where [Time Warner says] we made a mistake [and] we’ll make it right?”

Several weeks later, the cable company reneged on its earlier offer and refused to give Florence any credit at all.  WEWS-TV in Cleveland called Time Warner, who produced an invoice they say shows the cable company installed two boxes in her home, and she was not entitled to any refund.  Nichols claims she never used two boxes and was only billed for one.  The cable company records claim they picked up her “second box” in 2011.

Nichols is done talking with Time Warner, and is now taking her case to the Ohio State Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau.

Nichols wonders how many other customers are paying for phantom cable equipment and for services they don’t actually receive.  Cable customers are advised to scrutinize their bills carefully, paying careful attention to equipment rental charges and service fees.  Time Warner generally includes the first set top box in the price of certain cable television packages.  Extra boxes cost more.  DVR equipment can carry an equipment charge and a separate service charge, which can really add up.

The longer you wait to protest a potential billing error, the more difficult it will be to obtain a full refund, even if the problem was the company’s fault.

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WEWS-TV in Cleveland covers the story of an 85-year old grandmother in Hartville, Ohio who is fighting Time Warner Cable for six years of fees charged for a cable box she claims she returned.  (2 minutes)

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A Virginia television station is warning customers planning to switch their wireless service to AT&T to think twice.  The company recently announced it was increasing prices on data plans for new customers, although existing ones can keep their current plans.  Virginians considering leaving Sprint, Verizon Wireless, or T-Mobile will find themselves locked into the new, higher prices if they move to AT&T, WTKR in Norfolk reports.  The “grandfathered” service plan, exempted from price hikes and service restrictions, is increasingly becoming a customer retention tool.  (1 minute)

Courtesy: WCVB Boston

Correction: In an effort to concatenate two stories regarding Springfield, we erred in reporting about Springfield’s move to sell its municipal cable operation to Knology.  That story referred to Springfield, Fla., not Springfield, Mass.  We appreciate one of our readers bringing this to our attention, and we regret the error. –PMD

Comcast customers in Massachusetts are hopping mad over the latest round of rate increases from the state’s largest cable operator — the second in 10 months in some areas.  Higher cable bills for customers will start arriving by early spring.

City officials in Boston expect eastern Massachusetts customers will face up to 2.9% more for basic service this spring.  In western Massachusetts, Springfield city officials finally resolved a prolonged legal battle with the cable operator and granted the company a 10-year franchise renewal that preserves senior discounts for existing customers.

Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino said an examination of Comcast’s cable rates over the past few years proves deregulation “has failed” consumers across greater Boston.  Menino says basic cable rates have increased by 80 percent in the three years since the city’s rate control agreement expired.

Menino wants restored authority to regulate cable rates, and has asked the FCC for permission to bring back the city’s oversight powers.

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WCVB in Boston talks with city mayor Tom Menino about the latest round of rate increases for Comcast customers.  Some Boston locals are responding by dumping cable television altogether.  (2 minutes)

Comcast basic service will rise another 4.9 percent this spring, bringing the mostly local-broadcast-channel cable service to $16.58 a month.

The only other major cable provider in Boston, RCN, which serves mostly apartment buildings and other multi-dwelling units, is not planning to increase its prices on the lowest price tier. However, RCN already charges more than Comcast — $17.50 — for comparable service.  Other RCN customers face general rate increases this spring.

Verizon says it has no plans to increase prices in Boston either.  That statement was deemed ironic by some, considering the fact the phone company has never provided FiOS fiber-to-the-home cable service inside the city of Boston.

All affected providers blame increasing programming costs for the rate hikes.

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WGGB in Springfield led a recent evening newscast with news Comcast and competing satellite providers are increasing rates in western Massachusetts, with local residents increasingly questioning the value of their cable-TV services.  (2 minutes)

Research in Motion headquarters in Ontario

The two co-executives of Waterloo, Ont.-based Research in Motion, maker of the formerly-popular BlackBerry, quietly resigned this weekend, turning over leadership of the faltering company to a new chief executive who suggested little needed to change at what used to be Canada’s most valuable company.

Thorsten Heins will replace co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis effective immediately in what analysts are calling a last-ditch effort to rescue a company that has lost at least 88 percent of its peak value and has a share in the cell phone market now below 10 percent.

Heins’ initial comments, intended to calm investors about the company’s precarious position, have instead caused share prices to tumble further out of fear the new CEO remains in denial about the serious state of RIM’s future.

Heins told reporters that no “drastic change” was needed at the company, even though consumers are increasingly abandoning BlackBerry products in favor of Android or Apple iPhone smartphones.  RIM’s tablet, the PlayBook, never got far off the ground and is now regularly being cleared off store shelves at deeply discounted prices.

“If Thorsten really believes that there are no changes to be made, he will be gone within 15 to 18 months. He will be a transitional CEO and this will be a transitional board,” Jaguar CEO Vic Alboini, who leads an informal group of 16 RIM shareholders calling for a radical restructuring told Reuters.

Heins

Corporate users who formerly appreciated the BlackBerry’s secure platform and business-oriented apps are increasingly allowing employees to adopt competing phones because of recent BlackBerry service outages, fewer BlackBerry-compatible apps, and what some have called “endless” software upgrade delays.

Some analysts have dismissed RIM’s former leadership structure for months as “rudderless,” existing in an environment where cut-throat competition between Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s wildly popular iPhone and iPad are reducing BlackBerry’s place in the North American market to an afterthought.

“RIM had its era, but now it seems very hard to gain back market share in the smartphone market even if the top managers are changed,” Mitsushige Akino of Tokyo-based Ichiyoshi Investment Management told Bloomberg News. “The iPhone and Android are well established in the market.”

RIM acknowledged its market share in North America, particularly among younger consumers, has faltered in recent years, but noted BlackBerry products remain popular in certain European, African, and Middle Eastern countries, with growth also seen in Latin America and parts of Asia.

But perceptions of a company past its prime continued last year with the introduction of RIM’s PlayBook tablet, which was criticized for bringing nothing innovative or new to the tablet marketplace.  Even worse, RIM took a drubbing for releasing the tablet without any e-mail application, an ironic lapse for a company that touted it was “the first to reliably deliver e-mail over airwaves” in the 1990s with its BlackBerry devices.

The BlackBerry Playbook

Several serious service outages, some lasting for days, also had a major impact.  RIM’s next major software overhaul, dubbed BB10, has been long-delayed and will not be released until the latter half of 2012 — perhaps too late for the company to regain its footing.

Still, Heins suggests he is prepared to rejuvenate the company’s products with updates to the PlayBook and a new generation of BlackBerry devices.  The company’s better market share overseas may buy some additional time, but analysts warn RIM will fail to attract much attention in the U.S. or Canada if its products do not deliver something better than current generation Android and Apple phones and tablets.

As consumers invest in a growing number of platform-specific apps, a switch to a competing device becomes correspondingly more difficult.  Corporate users also will not tolerate many more major service outages, especially those that extend for days, not minutes or hours.

“There is yet another ace up RIM’s sleeve — the rate plans of North American wireless companies,” said one optimistic RIM shareholder. “BlackBerry devices are not known for consuming a lot of data, so RIM could market their devices to budget-minded consumers that might not be able afford the latest iPhone or Android phone and a high volume data plan to accompany it.”

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Canada’s news networks treat coverage of Research in Motion on about the same level American news media treats Apple, Google or Microsoft.  RIM remains an important contributor to Canada’s economy, so this weekend’s developments got considerable attention from the media.  CTV National News led with the ouster of the two founding co-CEOs of Research in Motion. Here is how CTV viewers saw the news unfold.  (3 minutes)

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RIM Resets: CBC introduces its coverage with a round-up of this weekend’s developments, noting a management shakeup could have profound implications on the Ontario company.  (4 minutes)

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 CBC’s News Now talks with Research in Motion’s new CEO Thorsten Heins about his plans for a revamped BlackBerry and the long-term future for the company.  (8 minutes)

In what might be considered a funny throwback to The Flintstones if it wasn’t so expensive, some British Columbia residents buying Apple’s popular iPad tablet are bringing home an iRock instead — a box filled with a bag of modeling clay.

Surrey, B.C. resident Sundeep Randhawa was initially delighted to unwrap an Apple iPad this Christmas, until she opened the shrink-wrap sealed box and found carefully-wrapped modeling clay instead.

Randhawa told CTV News she thought at first it was a joke — a gag gift from her husband.

“$695 worth of clay,” husband Mark responded.  He didn’t find it funny either.

Retailers across the Vancouver area initially treated customer returns of the boxes of clay with skepticism, suspecting fraud on the part of the person seeking a refund or replacement.  But as consumers started bringing back more boxes of clay to major electronics outlets like Future Shop, WalMart, and Best Buy, British Columbia authorities, at the behest of CTV consumer reporters, soon announced a crime ring was responsible.

Apple's iRock Claypad

It turns out the affected iPads were previously purchased with cash, replaced with clay of similar weight, and professionally re-shrink-wrapped and returned for a cash refund.  The perpetrators ended up with brand new iPads and received a full refund from retailers because the product appeared unopened.  In turn, retailers returned the products to store shelves where unsuspecting consumers ended up buying them.

“It’s a fraud and it just shows how creative some of these fraudsters are,” says the RCMP’s Tim Shields.

Shields notes finding those behind the scam has turned out to be more difficult than just arresting whoever returns a re-wrapped unit.  That is because the crime ring is using Craigslist to recruit innocent third parties to act as “secret shoppers,” returning the clay iPads to “test” how retailers handle customer returns.  Authorities say those hired to manage the returns have been “unwitting mules” and are not being held criminally responsible.

Wireless providers selling mobile broadband-equipped iPads have so far been immune to the fraud, because most dealers pre-activate the wireless service in-store, which requires factory-sealed boxes to be opened within the store.  Returning the equipment, which is often accompanied by a two-year service agreement, is also much more complicated, making a clandestine 3G-clay replacement unlikely.

But with professional wrapping equipment at the disposal of criminals, other high-value electronics could soon be the next targets of fraudsters.

Although Sundeep’s Christmas was ruined by the fraud, her husband finally managed to secure a full refund.  Now he, along with some other BC residents, are opening their electronics purchases in-store to verify what they are buying before walking out the door.

Investigators suspect it is only a matter of time before this type of fraud reaches other parts of Canada and the United States.

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CTV British Columbia reports on an innovative new fraud that could leave you holding a bag of clay instead of a shiny new Apple iPad.  (2 minutes)