(Courtesy: Glasbergen)

Shaw Cable customers in Langley and Aldergrove, B.C., waited as long as four hours on hold to speak to a customer service representative trying to learn when their cable and broadband service would be restored after vandals cut a fiber line.

Days later, hundreds of customers were still without service… and answers.

“When I called [Shaw], I was told there was a four-hour wait to talk to customer service,” area resident Candace Hopkins told CBC News.

That four hour hold time was hardly an isolated case.  Several CBC viewers reported similar experiences, and many simply gave up calling even though their cable service was out for days.

Shaw Cable suspects the vandals were would-be copper thieves, unhappy to discover their efforts would only net them fiber optic cables which have almost no resale value.  But customers suspect the cable cuts have not been a priority for Shaw, leaving customers in the dark about when service would be restored.

CBC News called Shaw customer service and only managed to get a recording, which said nothing about how large the problem was or when it would be fixed, saying only that some service was restored and crews were working on the rest.

Other calls to Shaw’s media relations department from CBC News have not been returned.

Shaw customers are not amused, invading the company’s Twitter account with repeated complaints. Other outages have left customers with similar experiences.  One customer on the Outer Gulf Islands told he’d be waiting up to four hours for help managed to leave his number for a call back.

“The kicker is that after about four hours we received a call from something approximating Shaw,” the customer explains. “I believe that it was a call center in India. To add insult to injury, the voice on the other end of the phone line told me that everything was fine with my line. And, it was. Service had been restored 10 minutes before the call back. When I tried to explain this and asked what the earlier service disruption was about, the voice on the line simply kept repeating that everything was fine on my line.”

Shaw’s hold times are infamous in western Canada.  It is not uncommon to wait at least an hour to speak to a customer service representative as we reported back in September.  Some customers find it quicker to drive to the nearest cable office to arrange for service calls or manage their accounts.  So far, Canadian regulators have done little to pressure Shaw into making improvements.

When service was restored, some customers were brave enough to call Shaw to request outage credits.  “A big mistake,” shares one of our readers.

“The automated voice said there was a two hour hold time and when I finally got through, I was told I couldn’t get a credit because I didn’t report the outage during the outage,” says Stop the Cap! reader Jules who shared this story over his restored Internet service in Aldergrove.

“They didn’t seem to have a good answer when I suggested how difficult that would have been since it took out my Shaw telephone line as well. I got my credit.”

In August, Time Warner Cable’s billing system went haywire for some 15,000 Ohio customers, some of whom found their promotional rates canceled, resulting in a doubling of their monthly bills.

One such Time Warner customer is Linda Sacash, who lives in Russell Township.  She had a three-year deal, in writing, with Time Warner that provided her family with a triple play package of Internet, telephone, and cable service for $89.95 a month.  But when her August bill arrived, Time Warner insisted she owed twice that amount — $179.

Sacash, among others, started calling Time Warner to complain about the inaccurate bills and was told the cable company unilaterally decided to expire promotional packages a year early.  Sacash wasn’t happy with that explanation, and noted a clause in her written agreement that limited rate increases to no more than 10 percent a year.  That didn’t matter much to Time Warner, who looked forward to receiving her new $179 payment by the due date on her bill.

Time Warner’s attitude changed, however, when WEWS-TV consumer troubleshooter Joe Pagonakis turned the camera on himself, and called the cable company looking for answers:

The company responded immediately, admitting some 15,000 bills were processed inaccurately during the summer.

Time Warner quickly corrected Sacash’s bill, and confirmed that her promotional offer will remain in place until November 2012, as stated in the Time Warner service invoice.

If considering a promotional offer, get it in writing and keep the paperwork for the length of the promotion, just in case your provider decides to renege on the deal. If signing up for a promotion over the phone, always get the name, extension/employee ID, and the exact details of the offer and keep those details in your files.  It’s often easier to get a company to stand up to their commitments when you have the name and extension number of the employee who sold it.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland Russell Township woman fights wins battle over inaccurate Time Warner digital cable bill 10-24-11.mp4[/flv]

WEWS-TV in Cleveland intervenes on behalf of a local woman who faced a doubling of her cable bill when Time Warner elected to end her promotion a year early.  (2 minutes)

Stop the Cap! reader Wayne A. dropped us a line to let us know Comcast has been getting very aggressive in the Denver area, poaching CenturyLink customers with enormous discounts:

My wife and I just accepted a package from Comcast to leave CenturyLink for a package that includes:

• Digital Premier HD with DVR
• HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and other premium movie channels
• Broadband service at 25/5Mbps
• Unlimited Long Distance Digital Phone Service

Comcast’s price?  An amazing $109.99/month for the first year, $129.99/month for the second.  Wayne says that’s a savings of $90 a month over ordinary Comcast prices, and compared with what he was paying CenturyLink, he will save $912.12 during the first year and around $600 for the second.

What makes Comcast’s pricing so aggressive is the fact they include much faster broadband speed than many other retention or “capture” customer deals.  They also throw in free premium movie channels.  We’ve seen Time Warner Cable offer triple-play retention deals for less than $90 a month for the first year, but they don’t include movie channels and deliver broadband service at the standard 10/1Mbps speed.

If you are paying Comcast more, it may be time to pick up the phone and threaten to walk unless you can have the same deal.  We’ve found dealing with customer retentions to be a real “your results may vary”-experience.  Don’t be willing to take the first offer.  Don’t be afraid to dismiss weak deals with a non-committal “I’ll think about it” if the price is not right for you.  Then call back.

In the last few weeks, we’ve found Time Warner Cable’s best deals still go to customers who actually schedule a service disconnection. Within hours, Time Warner starts calling, looking to “make an offer you cannot refuse.” The retention specialists at Time Warner who reach out to you generally have the most aggressively priced deals. You qualify if you call, schedule a disconnect a week or two out, and wait by the phone. You can keep your service running while company representatives try to convince you to stick with them.  Just make sure you answer those unfamiliar Caller ID-calls — it’s probably the cable company.  Most will ask why you disconnected.  If you answer “price,” the deals start coming.

Unfortunately, there was no way we could take advantage of any of their latest offers, which literally started two hours after disconnecting my late grandmother’s cable service.

It’s a buyer’s market for telecommunications products, so never settle for the regular price when a substantial discount is a phone call away.

Canada’s transition to digital television was supposed to be a non-event for cable and satellite customers, because those providers will continue to service analog televisions for sometime to come.  But Shaw Communications found a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of some of their subscribers anyway.

While Canadian broadcasters were discontinuing analog over-the-air television, many Shaw Cable service areas were also dumping an increasing number of analog channels in favor of digital.  In Kamloops, B.C., Cheryl Whiting discovered that conversion was going to cost her plenty.  Although Shaw provides one digital set top box for free, each additional box rents for $2.95 per month, and Whiting will need four of them if she wants to continue watching cable stations above channel 13 throughout her home.

“I may as well sign my paycheque over to them,” Whiting told The Daily News.

Shaw’s ongoing “digital upgrade” is clearing away much of the analog cable dial to make room for additional digital television signals and faster broadband, but that transition comes at a price to customers who now need a set top box on most of their televisions.

Many customers were upgraded during the month of August, with most of the rest scheduled for conversion during September.

[flv width=”540″ height=”416″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Shaw Digital Network Upgrade – Analog Customers.flv[/flv]

Shaw tells customers it is moving all of their cable channels above “broadcast basic” to a digital platform, requiring customers to place digital set top boxes on all of their televisions.  (1 minute)

For the sake of public relations, most cable and telephone companies are happily providing service credits to customers who ask after they lost service as a result of Hurricane Irene.  Denying those requests through invocation of weasel contract clauses referencing “acts of god” or “weather-related incidents” will assuredly leave customers less than pleased.  That’s a lesson some employees in Comcast’s call center still need to learn.

The fact is, most consumers shouldn’t have to pay for service undelivered.

Here is one Comcast customer’s plight:

When I contacted Comcast in the days following Irene I was initially told I’d be without service for a day and would receive credit for the loss. When I called two days later, I was told it would be two days, but I would receive credit. When I called six days later I was told they didn’t know how long it would be and that when it was restored I would not be receiving credit for the lost service.

“Wait, you’re telling me you’re going to try and bill me for service I never received,” I asked the customer service agent.

“We’re not going to try. We will be billing you,” he responded.

Another customer service representative verified the information with a supervisor, but sounded as incredulous as I felt when he came back to the phone.

The outage, he explained, is now considered an “act of god”.

“I can’t believe we’re going to do this,” he said.

He suggested I call back when the service was restored for credit.

“I can’t believe we’re not going to give credit,” he said again, before telling me to have a nice weekend.

To be fair, this is the experience of a single customer, and a search of prior storm events in Comcast service areas does show the company is usually willing to issue storm-related credits, as long as it was their service that was disrupted.  One of the issues cable providers have to deal with in weather disasters is ascertaining exactly who and what suffered the outage.  If the area’s local power company loses service, Comcast cable service could be affected directly or not at all.  A widespread outage could cause amplifiers to lose power, cutting off cable service to those with or without power.  But should Comcast credit you for lost service if the only thing keeping you from watching is a downed power line in your neighborhood that hasn’t affected cable service?

That dilemma many customer care professionals solve with courtesy credits to maintain customer goodwill.  But not every provider may automatically issue them, especially when dealing with low level employees in a customer care center.

If Comcast is refusing to provide you with service credits, there are a few quick steps to bypass “the unauthorized to give you what you want”-team and get your money back:

1. If calling by phone, ask if you are talking with a local customer care representative or one located thousands of miles away.  Ask to be transferred to a local office for assistance.  Those on the ground going through the same storm nightmares you are are likely to be more amenable towards giving you a service credit.
2. If using an e-mail form or online chat, call Comcast or visit your local Comcast cable store instead.  Again, someone sharing your misery is more likely to find a way to get you a service credit than someone who hasn’t lived through it.
3. File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau online requesting your service credit.  While Comcast is not BBB accredited, the organization has helped satisfactorily close more than 2,000 customer complaints.
4. Call your local television or newspaper “consumer reporter” and alert them.  Bad publicity is a great way to get any unyielding business to bend.

We expect a few negative stories in the media will be more than enough to inspire Comcast to provide service credits, gracefully.

Besides, if Comcast gives you a hard time about “acts of god,” you can always tell them the same thing when they ask to be compensated for cable equipment that succumbed in the storm.

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Storm-weary Long Island residents are getting fed up with extended service outages.  One went as far as to allegedly threaten a “Columbine-style attack” on a Long Island power facility.  Repair crews are also being hassled.  WABC in New York reports.  (3 minutes)

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WCBS found the same kind of anger in Suffolk County, aggravated by self-congratulating press conferences by utility companies even as hundreds of thousands of customers remained in the dark with no end in sight.  One Connecticut man even threatened a repair crew with a gun for trespassing.  (2 minutes)