The people who take the reports rarely/never have any idea of how the services their company sells work. So a report from that person of “line down on your property” is meaningless.
Cable companies rely on reports from customers about lost of cable TV. However they have monitoring equipment that sends a “notification” to them when customer’s lose internet service.
Undoubtedly, when their crew repaired the outage they accidentally blew a different piece of their equipment that controls your cable TV. This happens often. Or what caused the major outage will blow additional smaller pieces of equipment (on poles or underground) and the company will not know about the cable TV pic loss until the customer reports it.
However I recommend you try playing a DVD so you know for certain your TV pic is Ok to avoid a possible charge for the call.
I am a former employee of a cable TV/internet company. I worked for years analyzing the trouble calls and monitoring data to determine what/where the broken equipment was and roll a team to fix it.
Thanks. The TV definitely works. I’ve been watching DVDs and pre-recorded TiVo recordings.
I’ve tried hooking the cable that runs to the TV up directly to the cable modem and it works, so my piece of coax cable isn’t defective in some way.
The problem is that they are claiming there are no other outages and that it HAS to be a cable down on my property. This is the same thing they claimed last Wednesday, and miraculously my internet started working again on Friday.
So if they’re convinced it’s a line down, are they going to keep looking for a problem elsewhere or are they going to show up at my house, discover that everything is fine and then… what? Friday will be almost two weeks of this. I’m getting frustrated.
The people who take the trouble reports are lovely people; but they do not know what is causing the problem and need to get you off the phone as quickly as possible with an answer you will accept. They are graded on how long they spend on each call.
Depending on what type of weather you have in your area the actual repair workers may be swamped. The clean up work after a large outage can go on for a couple of days. However the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So you may want to call again and insist on speaking with a supervisor. They have the time to actually research and send an email to the repair department to let them know a customer is STILL affected by the outage.
I have an appointment on Friday. They are requiring that I be here. Is there any chance they will actually be able to accomplish anything at this appointment? I mean, is there any chance at all that this is actually a problem inside my house?
Note that generally speaking, your cable Internet and cable TV are two different things when it comes to “working.” My parents have both from TWC and they rarely are both out at the same time. You seem to be under the impression that if one works the other should work, and it’s totally weird that you’re having this problem with one but not the other…but it’s not weird at all. So don’t freak
Also, my folks have problem with their TWC DVR box all the time, and with the connections just outside their house. Especially when there is any weather other than “dry and sunny with no wind.” So you definitely could have a problem that is just with your house, somewhere between the pole outside and the metal connector on your TV.
Really, though, the weird thing to me is they both went out at exactly the same time, one is back, the other isn’t, but they’re saying the one that isn’t is because it’s a problem at my house while the one that is back was somewhere else. Doesn’t that seem weird? I am prone to freaking out, though.
Oh, and I can’t even tell you the last time my cable was out.
Even though you do not have a cable box directly connected to your TV inside; you undoubtedly have an equipment box mounted either on the outside of your house, in the garage or in the basement. The coax/fiber coming from the pole (or underground) connects to that box. Even if the box is on the outside you do need to be home to keep the appointment. As ridiculous as it may sound the repair person needs to come in and “see for themselves” that you do not have a picture. Rare is the customer who does the troubleshooting you did:
Also if you are not home; the repairman will not wait or check anything. He will go right on to the next job.
Any piece of equipment, on the house, on the pole or under the ground can break and only affect you. Every other house on your “run” might not have cable or have dish. For example my closest neighbor never loses power when I do because they are on a different run from the power company than I am.
I miss troubleshooting.
Yes.
They are on different frequencies and controlled by different types of equipment on the cable company’s side. They will go down together if a pole comes down or something like that.
No. The cable has a TW-installed splitter in the basement. One cable connects to the cable modem. The other connects to the TV. I tested the one that connects to the TV and found that the cable modem works fine when hooked up to it, and the one that connects to the cable modem does not work when connected to the TV. In other words, both cables have internet connectivity. Neither has TV connectivity.
That’s not necessarily true. The TV signal and the internet signal, while being carried through the same cable, operate at different frequencies than one another. So it is entirely possible that a cable is partially damaged somewhere either at a node or underground, and the OP is still getting an internet signal but not a “strong” enough cable signal.
I had a similar issue not too long ago where an underground cable was damaged up the street from me and I would get some, but not all cable channels (and most of those where plagued with fuzz and ghosting) and my internet would work intermittently. My phone however, was completely dead.
It turned out that they needed to bore under a neighbor’s driveway up the street to run a new length of cable, and in doing so, the cable company’s contractor struck and damaged our street’s water main, which was also under this guy’s driveway. So then they had to fix the water main ASAP and they had to tear up the first third of the guy’s concrete driveway to do so.
The neighbor was really upset about all that. They finally got everything in working order (and replaced dude’s driveway, but it doesn’t look the same as the new section looks “newer” than the rest) but I was partially down for a couple weeks before they found, diagnosed and repaired the issue, because I am the only customer on my side of the street that has cable…the neighbor with the driveway lives on the other side of the street. All of that trouble for little old me.
Make sure you request a credit on your bill for all those days the various services have/are out. It won’t be a lot, but it’s a small bit of comfort for the inconvenience.
Yes, there is some way at the pole to send internet and not TV. I have internet, but not TV. Most of my neighbors have TV, so there is some way to shut me off before my cable modem.
I decided to cut to the chase and just canceled cable today. Magically, they can come out right away to cut off the service at the pole and I don’t need to be here for that.
Although you cut the cable, it probably was a problem with the pole line. In January, my cable went out. I had no picture and customer service couldn’t find my boxes. Yet, I was getting TV listings when changing channels. It turned out the problem was down the street where they made a repair on the line using a bad part.
