Efforts by local officials to attract more cable competition are paying off in suburban Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Mich. where customers will soon be able to choose between two cable companies or AT&T for cable service.

WOW!, a Denver-based cable overbuilder, has announced it will expand service to Lathrup Village, Mich. and Sheffield Lake, Brunswick, and North Ridgeville, Ohio between now and the middle of next year.

North Ridgeville City Council president Kevin Corcoran last week announced WOW! would begin head-to-head competition with Time Warner Cable starting in 2014. Corcoran told The Chronicle Telegram the city began looking for a competing cable provider after hearing complaints from residents about Time Warner Cable’s poor customer service and reliability. He approached WOW!, which has provided competitive service in parts of the greater Cleveland area, about expanding in North Ridgeville.

“My only pitch was that people are dying for some competition,” Corcoran told the newspaper.

Corcoran met informally with WOW! officials to discuss the prospects of expanding into North Ridgeville before more formal meetings were held with city officials including the mayor and the safety-service director.

Making life easier for WOW!’s entry is the presence of existing utility easements, which means WOW! can run cable on existing utility poles without formal approval by the city council. But WOW! will still need certain permits from the Building Department to move forward with wiring. The company will use Ohio’s statewide video franchising law, originally pushed by AT&T for U-verse, to obtain video service permits and a franchise agreement with the Ohio Department of Commerce.

WOW!’s regular prices are much lower than Time Warner Cable’s promotional prices for new customers:

• Standard triple play (15/1Mbps Internet, Cable TV, phone) costs $105.98/month from Time Warner ($118.97 with DVR), $85/month from WOW! ($92 with DVR);
• Standard double play (15/1Mbps Internet, Cable TV) still costs $105.98/month from Time Warner ($118.98 with DCR), $75/month from WOW! ($82 with DVR);
• Internet-only service (15/1Mbps) costs $40.98/month from Time Warner Cable, $30/month from WOW! (promotional pricing expires after 12 months).

Time Warner Cable said it welcomes the competition.

Warren County

CenturyLink left Warren County, Ohio’s 911 system out of service for more than 15 hours after a 70 mph derecho blew across the region in late June, eventually forwarding emergency calls to confused operators at a 911 center in another county at the other end of the state. When local officials asked CenturyLink to attend a meeting to explain what happened, they never showed up.

Now Commissioner Dave Young wants CenturyLink kicked out of the county, turning 911 services over to a provider that actually answers their phone.

“I want to switch sooner rather than later,” Young said. “The way this went down and the response we got from CenturyLink and now three weeks later we still don’t know the reason? We call our liaison and her solution to the 911 system being down is keep calling the 800 number. There’s something wrong there.”

Young was particularly peeved that CenturyLink did not send a representative to a meeting investigating the lengthy outage.

“So essentially they blew us off this morning,” Young said.

Geauga County

During the outage, callers initially heard nothing after dialing 911. Sometime later, someone at CenturyLink reprogrammed the equipment to forward calls from the Warren County 911 system in southwest Ohio to distant Geauga County’s 911 center in northeast Ohio near Cleveland, surprising operators.

Initial reports blame inexperienced technicians, human error, and understaffing at CenturyLink. Young wants the contract transferred to another provider with a better track record.

CenturyLink’s errors left Warren County without 911 service from 5:15pm until 8:30am the following day. County officials later learned the technician assigned to work on the problem did not actually commence repairs until 3:30am — more than 10 hours after the outage was first reported.

“CenturyLink is confident we can come to a resolution on this issue.” said Joanette Romero, spokeswoman for the company.

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.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland Hartville woman disputes cable billing 1-20-12.mp4[/flv]

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)

The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland last week was busily helping desperate consumers against holiday-time foreclosures, disputes with big companies that go unresolved, and those in need of basic legal advice until AT&T disconnected dozens of their phone lines over a billing dispute.

According to the Society, AT&T remotely shut off dozens of their lines over an unpaid phone bill that belonged to another customer unrelated to the group, and the phone company said it could take weeks to turn the phone lines back on.

“If you can shut us down in 30 seconds, why can’t you get us back up in 30 seconds,” Margaret Terry tells WEWS-TV. “I mean what kind of organization are they running?”

So far, AT&T has only forwarded incoming calls to another Aid Society in an adjacent county — one with just four incoming lines.

An 6 o’clock news account of AT&T’s foot-dragging seemed to speed things up.  Company officials were promising a resolution by this morning.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland ATT phone service problems 12-21-11.mp4[/flv]

WEWS finds out what the problem is after AT&T disconnected dozens of phone lines belonging to the Legal Aid Society in Cleveland — all over an unpaid phone bill that belonged to someone else.  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEWS Cleveland ATT service issues 11-11-11.mp4[/flv]

A late August thunderstorm brought down AT&T’s phone lines in the backyard of 80-year-old Isabelle Hendricks of Cleveland, Ohio.  More than two months later, the cables were still strewn across Hendricks’ yard, her phone line was only sporadically in service, and AT&T was still ignoring calls pleading the company to do something about it.

Nephew Anthony Mauldin took his AT&T Horror Story to YouTube, and the phone company still refused to get the lines off the ground.

“It’s been very frustrating, because we’ve been trying to get somebody out here since the first of September,” Mauldin told WEWS News. “They gave us a date, but they didn’t show.”

Mauldin says his aunt has been hospitalized over the past week, and lives alone.  He’s concerned AT&T’s landline is so intermittent, she may not be able to contact anyone in the event of an emergency.

AT&T claims it could not complete the repairs because when the lines fell, tree debris came with it — too much debris for AT&T crews to be comfortable working around.

More than two months later, Mauldin called WEWS-TV in hopes a little media exposure might do the trick.  It did.  Within two hours of the newsroom calling AT&T, crews were in Ms. Hendrick’s backyard cleaning up the mess, along with their telephone cables.  (2 minutes)