Storm damage in eastern Massachusetts. (Courtesy: WGBH Boston)

The northeastern United States got more than its fair share of severe storms these past few months.  Remnants of Hurricane Irene caused severe flooding, heavy rainstorms that followed didn’t help.  But one of the worst of all was the Halloween Nor’easter that left serious wind damage in some areas, heavy snowfall in others, leaving customers without power, phone, cable, and broadband service for days, if not weeks.

Telecommunications companies including Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable, and Metrocast Communications of Connecticut are under fire across the region for not providing automatic service credits for impacted customers.  Charter and Comcast are both facing a class action lawsuit filed last week by a Massachusetts law firm that accuses the cable operators of “gouging” their customers by not automatically crediting affected subscribers for lost service.

Jeffrey Morneau of Springfield, Mass. law firm Connor, Morneau & Olin says up to 1.2 million Charter and Comcast customers were without service, but the companies will only provide credits on a case-by-case basis, and only if customers request them within a short time after the outage occurred.

“If you pay for a service and you don’t get it, the company can’t keep your money,” Morneau said.

Stop the Cap! readers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire report Comcast will grant reasonable service credit requests, assuming you get through to ask for them.

“Hold times are epic,” reports Tom Turlin, a Comcast customer in Massachusetts.  “I managed to get my credit by using their web contact form instead.”

Most providers require consumers to request credits for outages within 30-60 days of the service interruption, and time is running out for Nor’easter credits.

“Most people think they will only get 50 cents back so why bother, but actually with today’s huge cable bills, credits can be substantial,” Turlin says. “I received almost $15 back on my bill.”

Only AT&T, Connecticut’s largest phone company, agreed to automatically credit customers the company determined were without service for at least 24 hours.  Customers who don’t receive credit automatically can appeal to the company for credit they believe they are entitled to receive.

Here’s how different companies are responding:

AT&T: “We will give U-verse TV customers in Connecticut who experience a service outage for longer than 24 hours a pro-rated credit,” AT&T said. “In addition, we will voluntarily give similar credits for U-verse Voice and U-verse High Speed Internet service customers who experienced a service outage for longer than 24 hours. Customers are not required to take any action: the credits will be applied automatically on the customer bill for impacted customers within the next several billing cycles.”

Cablevision: “While state law provides for consumer credits for qualifying outages for cable service only, Cablevision has been providing a credit to customers on an individualized basis for all their services,” Cablevision said. “Customers will be credited when they notify us that they had a service outage. We are extending our normal period to request refunds to 45 days from the date of the storm.”

Charter: Customers must call or visit the cable company offices in person to request service credit.  “We are providing credit to customers for the entire time they were without service, from the time they lost power to the time their Charter services were fully restored, and we are providing credit for all services,” Charter said.

Comcast: “In order to receive a credit, a customer must contact Comcast and identify the time period during which they did not have access to Comcast services,” Comcast said.

Cox: “We need our customers to call us after their service is restored to report that they were without Cox services, and for how long,” Cox said. “We then credit their accounts from the time of the service outage until service was actually restored.”

DISH Network: The satellite provider is waiving service and equipment fees for consumers who need their equipment realigned, reinstalled or repaired due to the storm. “DISH subscribers who indicated that they were without service due to the storm were provided a credit for their time without service,” DISH said. “In addition, DISH subscribers who needed to suspend their service due to storm damage were allowed to do so at no charge.”

MetroCast Communications of Connecticut: It will provide customers with a refund on their next invoice after contacting the company. “The credit equals a prorated amount of the affected customer’s monthly charges for all MetroCast services, calculated based on the number of days during which such services were interrupted, and are included in the customer’s next invoice,” MetroCast said.

Time Warner Cable: Customers must contact the cable company online, by e-mail or phone and request credit for the number of days they were without service.  Most service credit requests that can be verified are granted within hours, and will appear on the next billing statement.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSHM Springfield City councilor Comcast disagree on cable rebates 11-21-11.mp4[/flv]

WSHM in Springfield covers the ongoing dispute city officials have with Comcast, who is refusing to automatically provide storm credits to customers impacted by the October Nor’easter.  (2 minutes)

It's your fault our service doesn't work.

Central Floridians are angry and annoyed with a broadband provider that is more adept at randomly assigning blame than actually resolving serious service problems.  Bright House Networks customers in the Orlando area first noticed their Road Runner service began slowing down around December 23rd.  Web pages took minutes to render, if they finished at all.  Important e-mail was inaccessible at times for many accustomed to a much faster online experience than the bad old days of dial-up.

Problems worsened by Christmas Day, and despite complaints from across the entire region, Bright House technicians spent their time assigning blame elsewhere.  In a classic case of buck passing (Deluxe Goldman-Sachs Home Edition), the cable operator initially began blaming customers for the problems, claiming everything from virus infections to bad routers.

“The technician said he was certain it was either my router or my Windows XP had become hopelessly corrupted with viruses, and I might have to reformat my hard drive and start all over,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Kris.  “Two days before Christmas was the worst possible time for something like this to happen, and it was clear Bright House’s biggest priority was to get me off the phone as fast as they could.”

As customers abandoned all hope of using their broadband accounts on Christmas Day, calls continued to pour into Bright House customer support.  Even the media got involved, noting the cable company adopted a “mum’s the word” strategy on their website, saying nothing about the increasingly maddening service problems.

By then, company officials must have figured out blaming the customers wasn’t working too well, and they blamed Christmas instead.

“I was told heavy Christmas web traffic was responsible,” said Jed, a Stop the Cap! reader.  “They told me with everyone getting new computers and laptops and other electronics, it might be awhile before things got back to normal, perhaps even as late as next week when people returned to work.  Considering I was getting less than 56kbps service at this point, I wasn’t buying it.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFTV Orlando Internet Outages Frustrate Bright House Customers 12-27-09.flv[/flv]

WFTV-TV in Orlando is credited for being among the first in the media to shine a spotlight on Bright House Networks’ failure to address their ongoing Internet service problems (2 minutes)

As the weekend wore on, enterprising customers learned it was probable a DNS server or other connection point further up the Internet was probably causing all of the trouble.  Yet that theory was repeatedly denied by Bright House, who was forced to begin issuing statements to the local press, still blaming others for broadband woes.

“Some Bright House Networks Road Runner Internet customers are experiencing intermittent problems accessing various websites,” Bright House spokesman Brian Craven wrote. “The issue is a result of off-network congestion. BHN engineers are working to resolve the issue.”

Customers were also on the receiving end of that old chestnut ‘the exaflood,’ the theory that the Internet is being crushes by a global traffic flood worthy of Noah’s Ark.  As comments piled up on Orlando media’s online message boards, customers traded the excuses coming from Bright House, wondering why the company couldn’t spend as much effort actually fixing the problems with Road Runner on Xanax.

Finally, several days later, company officials admitted the problems were coming from a lot closer to home — theirs, not yours. Brian “It’s Congestion” Craven was back with a revised statement:

“A hardware problem experienced by a Bright House Networks vendor caused some Bright House Networks customers to experience intermittent problems accessing some Internet websites. The issue was resolved at 11 p.m. Sunday. Bright House Networks Internet service was never down.  The situation only affected some customers’ ability to access certain Internet sites.”

Some websites like Google, for instance.

So it wasn’t your fault after all.  It was one of their “vendors.”  Customers pondered when they would be able to receive service credit for several days of useless broadband.

The answer?  Never… tough luck:

“Customer credits will not be given because at no time was Internet service down. It was a latency issue in which some customers experienced intermittent problems accessing certain websites. The issue was caused by a hardware problem experienced by a Bright House Networks vendor,” Craven added.

Customers began lighting the torches.

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WOFL-TV in Orlando reports on growing customer rage over the lousy customer service being provided by Bright House Networks. (1 minute)

News accounts noted some customers disappointed by the company’s callous response were returning the favor by unceremoniously dumping their cable modems on the counter at the nearest Bright House cable store, canceling service.  For those brave enough to stay, lessons were learned. As one Web Worker Daily contributor lamented, the most effective way to get Bright House off their collective butts was to embarrass them in the media:

The biggest help [came] when the media started reporting the problem. A local TV station and the Orlando Sentinel both picked up the story. Within only a couple hours, the problem that supposedly didn’t even exist was magically solved, after having dragged on for at least a week.

The lesson I came away with was that fighting as a group is more powerful than going it alone — and even better is having a reporter or two in that group.

The Internet… interrupted: Bright House Networks’ holiday gift to you.  A week of buck passing, liberal use of the “excuse-o-matic” that blames others for their own problems, and a complete unwillingness to do the right thing by customers.  When a service doesn’t work properly, customers don’t want to hear a finger-pointing blame game.  They want the service fixed… fast, and receive credit for the inconvenience they experienced while trying to use your service.  Anyone aware of good customer relations already recognizes these are not unreasonable requests.

Too bad Bright House spent most of its time creatively not fixing its problems until the media got interested.  They should stay on the company’s case until it provides the credit customers deserve.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFTV Orlando Bright House Not Taking Blame For Outage 12-28-09.flv[/flv]

WFTV-TV in Orlando reports on the inevitable customer blowback that happens when a service provider treats their customers with disregard.  [Apologies for the audio sync problem.] (2 minutes)

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.”