Time Warner Charges Flood Victims $300 for Each Damaged Cable Box

FoxNews ^ | Wed., July 31, 2002

[Turtleman]

Well, you know, I find this interesting. I had seven feet of water come into my apt. last summer with Allison, right here in Houston. I had digital cable with Time Warner and both of my boxes were damaged. I returned both of my boxes to them and they didn't charge me anything. They just said that they would if I didn't return them, damaged or not. Double standard for the folks in San Antone?

[College Repub]

On the contrary, Ted is AOL's LARGEST stockholder. He's also the largest owner of private property in the usa

[Kaslin]

You don't need a cable-box if you have a cable-ready Television

[WKB]

Just one more reason to remain a loyal DirecTV subscriber

I only have one question about Directv.
I wonder why CNN is at 202 with ESPN and all the other news channels are in the 360's?

Could it be they waant more people to watch CNN?

[Guillermo]

He has no say in how it's run, he's out of the loop, and has been since 1996.

[FreedomPoster]

You AGREE to pay for the box they lease to you if it is destroyed.

No arguments there. But do you really think that box has a replacement cost of $300? For AOL-TW to attempt to profit from this is simply a scummy business practice, for which they should catch some serious heat.

I'll eat the computer sitting in front of me if it costs AOL-TW more than $100 to replace that box, unless we're talking about a combined cable box-Tivo unit.

[JavaTheHutt]

I would think this is a homeowners/renters insurance issue. If my car gets swept away by a flood, I don't go to GM and ask for a free replacement.

Homeowner's policies do no cover loss or damage from flood. The only insurance that covers flood loss/damage is National Flood Insurance. That's right, government issued insurance. What the A-holes at AOL are going for is tax dollars, yours and mine. They are seeing this as an opportunity to feed at the government trough at the same time the feds are investigating them.

[Guillermo]

Probably not, but that's not the issue.

Ford makes about a $10,000 profit on each Explorer they sell, does that mean that they should cut the price because of an "exorbidant profit"?

[FreedomPoster]

If the $300 is buried in the mouse print legalese on the contract, AOL-TW has every right in the world to collect. And that still doesn't make this anything other than a scummy business practice, for which it is entirely proper they be slammed by consumers. Just because some lawyers wrote it doesn't mean that it's right to enforce it.

[Guillermo]

I remember, many yrs ago, when I got a cable box.

They told me, more than once, that the replacement fee would be $300 bucks. They made sure it was perfectly clear to me, and it was.

A roomate absconded with it, and I was responsible for the payment of it.

[FreedomPoster]

As I made clear throughout, I'm not arguing that these folks, and you, aren't / weren't responsible. But charging $300 for a <<$100 device in a situation like this remains a scummy business practice, and I would choose to not do business with them, and encourage others to do likewise.

[DJ88]

It's not my friend, is it? I have helped out my friends when they needed because I can.

I'd rather have friends that I could count on one hand that are caring and humane than people like you who wouldn't raise a hand to help them.

[DJ88]

I wasn't patting myself on the back. I was simply telling you how I was brought up. To be civil and help others when they need it. It's not about me, it's about people who are in need of help and those who are willing to be there to help them. You obviously don't understand that.

Good for you that you didn't whine about your medical bills. I had medical bills too when my son died, and I had to pay what my insurance didn't cover. It took me 13 months just to pay for his headstone and funeral. It took me another 2 years to pay off the neonatal doctors who charged $25 for a freaking bandaid.

Once you've made your point, which you have, isn't that enough for you? Or do you have to keep coming back and insulting people? That is the tactic of a whining leftist, pal.

In the future, we may agree on a certain subject. However, it's apparant that we do NOT agree on this subject. That's fine. We all have opinions, although we may not LIKE the other's opinion, we still have the right to voice it. I've voiced mine, you've voiced yours, so we both know where each other stands.

I consider the subject closed.

[CDHart]

"I would think this is a homeowners/renters insurance issue. If my car gets swept away by a flood, I don't go to GM and ask for a free replacement."

I agree. That's why people carry insurance.

Carolyn

[Guillermo]

You can't force others to be generous.

And if a company doesn't want to be generous, that is their right.

I'm not going to bash a company because I don't think they're subscribing to my definition and demand of generosity.

[Darling Lili]

No charge for flooded cable boxes

By Katherine Leal Unmuth
San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 08/01/2002 12:00 AM

The president of Time Warner Cable San Antonio said Wednesday that "miscommunication" caused some employees to wrongly tell customers they would be charged for converters damaged or destroyed by flooding.
On Monday, Time Warner spokeswoman Karen Hartley said the company would charge customers $300 for cable boxes destroyed by flooding.

But on Wednesday, President Kevin G. Kidd said the company had decided not to charge customers for the converters.

"There clearly has been a lot of miscommunication on this issue in the last few days," said Kidd, who replaced Navarra Williams as president last week.

He said an executive response team was set up to handle problems involving flood victims, and those team members were instructed not to charge for any damages resulting from the floodwaters.

Kidd confirmed that the company's usual policy is to charge customers for damaged equipment, and that policy was communicated to several customers who phoned in questions about destroyed converters.

"Clearly some (customers) didn't get through to the executive response team and were handled by the normal day-to-day policy," Kidd said.

Charlie Caldwell said he was relived to hear that Time Warner had "a change of heart" and would not be charging him for his two damaged cable boxes, as he had initially been told. Caldwell and his wife, Melanie, lost their Canyon Lake home in the flooding and are living in a trailer.

"It made me feel good. But to be honest, with everything we lost they would have had a hard problem collecting the money anyway," Caldwell said. "I understand if it's stolen, but when you bring it back to them and it's covered in mud there's hardly any doubt what happened."

Caldwell's stepdaughter, Dannielle Guerra, said a representative from the company called the family Wednesday to apologize for the misunderstanding.

"I didn't want any special treatment from them; I just didn't want them to charge my family or anyone else," she said. "I'm really excited that they dropped the charges."

kunmuth@express-news.net

http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=773949&xld=180

[Guillermo]

Fine with me, it's THEIR decision alone.

[DJ88]

And you don't have to. So this is over.

[DJ88]

So, as you can see, AOL/Time Warner obviously realized their mistake (and I don't buy it for a minute that the "executive response team" existed before Wednesday) and changed their tune.

Good move on their part.

[The Iceman Cometh]

"Just one more reason to remain a loyal DirecTV subscriber."

So if the wind knocks down my DSS dish the company will replace it for free?

Boy, that would have to be a hell of a wind to knock down the satellite dish. I've installed my dish before and if the wind would have knocked it off, my roof was going with it. Installing a dish is VERY easy.