Even Sir Patrick Stewart, famed Star Trek: The Next Generation starship captain, can’t “make it so” when it comes to Time Warner Cable in New York City.

Stewart, who just moved to the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn, ran into a level 10 force field trying to get his cable service established.

He did what so many other consumers do when they run into a brick wall of customer service bureaucracy. He took it to Twitter:

The man who helped defeat the Borg couldn’t survive Time Warner Cable’s dreadfully poor customer service meted out to customers in the Big Apple (it scores a less than impressive 1.5 stars on Yelp), despite the eventual intervention from one of the company’s social media representatives employed to put out Twitter and Facebook fires. Unfortunately, it was too late:

Stewart is not alone. LeVar “Geordi La Forge” Burton has been there too (along with many of the 1,100+ others who retweeted Stewart’s dilemma):

Time Warner Cable has been mailing offers to broadband-only customers offering free cable-TV service if they upgrade their Internet speeds to the company’s Ultimate 50/5Mbps tier, which currently sells for $99.95 a month in most markets.

The company began the promotion in early summer, but targeted broadband-only customers already upgraded to Turbo or Extreme speeds. Now it is available to any Time Warner broadband-0nly customer.

Customers can choose between two levels of service:

• $99.99 a month for 12 months: 50/5Mbps Internet service plus “Digital Essentials” TV, which includes local stations and around 40 additional cable networks;
• $139.99 a month for 12 months: 50/5Mbps Internet service plus “Digital TV,” which includes over 200 television channels and free HD DVR service for 6 months.

Time Warner Cable has regularly targeted its Internet-only customers with promotions to entice them to upgrade to television and phone service, typically marketing a discounted triple play package. This is the first time the company has sought to get broadband customers to upgrade to its most costly Internet tier by throwing in television service as an added incentive.

The company tells customers the deal will improve their online video experience and reduce potential problems when multiple members of a household access Internet services at the same time.

Time Warner Cable is alerting customers in upstate New York they are next in line for a gradual transition away from analog cable television service.

But unlike the near-complete switch to digital affecting many customers in Maine, the cable operator plans a less jarring shift in New York, beginning with switching 4-7 channels to digital format between Oct. 10-17.

Time Warner will also introduce New York customers to the company’s digital transport adapter (DTA). The digital adapter was designed for televisions currently direct connected to cable without a set top box. Time Warner’s DTA will convert digital signals to standard definition analog, so customers can get back the channels they lost in the digital switch without the monthly expense of a traditional set top box.

Time Warner plans to offer its New York customers free DTA equipment until the end of November, 2013 — after which the boxes will cost 99 cents a month. (Time Warner’s DTA website claims the boxes will be available without cost until the end of 2014.)

Customers using DTA equipment will not be able to use them to watch premium channels, but will get back any basic channels that were previously converted to digital-only format and those channels switched in the future.

The channels being dropped from analog service vary in each upstate city. Time Warner is notifying customers by mail about the specific channels that will be dropped in each area, but here is a rough breakdown:

Rochester: CMT, C-SPAN, EWTN, Golf Channel, Lifetime Movie Network*

Buffalo: C-SPAN, EWTN, CFTO (CTV), E!*, CNN International*, OWN*, WXPJ (Ion)*,  Discovery Fit and Health*

Syracuse: CMT, C-SPAN, EWTN, Golf Channel, Lifetime Movie Network, OWN, truTV

(*)-Not in all areas.

Time Warner Cable previously announced it was committed to discontinuing analog cable television service across its national footprint within the next four years.

In a separate announcement, all Time Warner Cable customers will see the addition of more Fox programming thanks to a recent contract renewal agreement.  Fox Business Network, and its HD companion channel, will now be a part of Time Warner’s Standard tier (although the channels will continue to be in the digital format). Fox Movie Channel, previously part of the mini-pay Movie Pass tier will be moved to the Digital Basic Tier. These changes are scheduled to occur Oct. 31.

Neighborhood terminal pedestals can serve from a half-dozen to 200 customers. This one is designed to service a small neighborhood.

Time Warner Cable is asking a Padre Island, Tex. customer to pay $850 to move a cable company pedestal box installed in her front yard by mistake.

Dorothy Harper’s home is located right on the shoreline, so utility companies have traditionally placed their equipment in a utility easement adjacent to the street. But Time Warner Cable, for whatever reason, decided to install their unsightly neighborhood terminal pedestal in the middle of her front yard, in front of her home, despite the city’s request that cable operators keep their equipment in a designated easement along the property line.

Harper has been trimming around the pedestal for years, irritated by its presence but infinitely patient that one day the company would do the right thing and move it to its proper location.

Her patience wore out when competing cable company Grande Communications expanded service on Padre Island and felt its own pedestal box would be right at home next to the improperly located one owned by Time Warner. Harper arrived home one afternoon to find both boxes happily creating a tremendous eyesore.

Harper told The Caller she called Grande Communications, which eventually moved their pedestal to the proper location. But Time Warner Cable proved infinitely more stubborn, even when the city got involved:

Edward Villarreal, who issues fiber optic and utility permits for the city’s Development Services, visited Harper’s property. He took photos of the cable pedestal and made phone calls to Time Warner on her behalf, without success, he said.

“It’s definitely an eyesore I wouldn’t want in the middle of my property,” Villarreal told Troubleshooter Thursday.

Harper got tired of the fight with Time Warner and backed off for a while, she said.

“Every time I drive up to our home, I am angered again at Time Warner and their negative response to a problem that their workers created,” she said.

Recently she called Time Warner again and was told they would move the pedestal if she paid $850, Harper said.

The newspaper’s troubleshooter intervened, calling Time Warner’s regional headquarters looking for a resolution and found someone a bit more sympathetic.

Jon Gary Herrera, regional vice president of communications for the cable operator said complaints about unsightly cable pedestals are common, but the company would be willing to move the one in front of Mrs. Harper’s home if the mistake was theirs.

If not, Time Warner has a solution to quiet chronic complainers. The company has been known to provide a rock facade to cover the ugly pale green lawn stump and make things more landscape friendly.

One reader had a last-ditch solution in case that did not work:

Make the switch to Grande and then arrange for someone to “accidentally” do a hit and run on the cable box thus forcing Time Warner to come out and place it in the proper location.

When Time Warner Cable can’t reach a retransmission consent agreement with local broadcasters, it can thank a loophole left in a badly-written contract the cable company has with Nexstar Broadcasting, a Texas station owner group, for providing a stop-gap solution.

A federal judge ruled late last week Time Warner Cable was allowed to replace local affiliates with Nexstar-owned stations because their contract does not prohibit the cable operator from the practice.

When the cable company’s carriage agreement with Hearst Corporation expired in July, Time Warner replaced affected local stations in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Vermont and New York with Nexstar-owned stations based in Terre Haute, Ind. (NBC affiliate, WTWO-TV), Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (NBC affiliate, WBRE-TV), and Rochester, N.Y. (CBS affiliate, WROC-TV).

Viewers in Kentucky ended up getting the local news from a station in western New York, located hundreds of miles away, but cable subscribers still got to watch their favorite network shows.

Nexstar sued Time Warner in federal court to stop the practice.

But Judge Jorge Solis could find nothing in Nexstar’s agreement prohibiting the cable company from importing the distant stations.

“Nowhere in the [agreement] does Nexstar limit its retransmission consent,” Solis wrote. “It appears the language limiting the broadcast […] is not present when Nexstar gives its retransmission consent under Section 1. In fact, it is specifically omitted when describing the ‘retransmission consent’ under Section 1.”

Solis refused to grant a request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction stopping Time Warner from carrying Nexstar stations outside of their designated local broadcast areas.