We’re the cable company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.

I like watching HDTV. Too bad I have to deal with Time Warner Cable in order to do it.

During Sunday’s broadcast of Game 7 of the ALCS, the feed to TBS HD stopped working. So I called Time Warner’s “24-hour” customer service. I was rewarded with a series of machine voices leading to a chance to speak to a representative.

Instead of getting an actual person on the line, I got voicemail and a cryptic message saying something along the lines of, “Leave a message, but the person you are trying to reach does not subscribe to this service.” Um, what?

So, instead, I sent an e-mail to Time Warner’s customer service department, explaining that the channel I was watching stopped working. The response they sent read,

“Please try channel 1014 for the HD version of TBS. If there are technical difficulties with it then we will correct them. I apologize that you had problems accessing the game.”

Let’s analyze this statement. First, there is the assumption that I was on the wrong channel when my feed suddenly stopped working. The second sentence implies that there were not technical difficulties. It says, “If there are technical difficulties, then we will correct them.” As in it’s a possible future problem, whereas it was a definite problem Sunday night. The third sentence, and this is a little more subtle but is taught to those of us who have taken classers in communications, includes the word “you.” In this context, it implies once more that the problem is on my end – it is almost an accusatory sentence. This is not the neutral “I apologize that there were problems accessing the game.”

So, in summation, it’s my fault my cable doesn’t work and I’m an idiot. Time Warner is not at fault.

 

Update: Just as I posted this on my blog, I turned to see that my DVR is not working. Sometimes it forgets to record. And by sometimes, I mean quite frequently.

A few months ago, Time Warner replaced all of its DVRs with a new “upgraded” model, the Explorer 8300 HDC. The big difference is that the Explorer has a new piece of software that, I believe, allows Time Warner to better track what it is that I’m watching. The drawback is that it is inferior in every other possible way to the old box.

For instance, on my old DVR, I like to adjust my screen between “Normal” (for widescreen broadcasts) and “Wide” (so I don’t burn an image on the sides of my screen). On the old DVR, I pressed a  button on my remote to flip between aspect ratios. The new DVR, quite simply, I press “guide,” then "access menu,” then, “settings,” then I scroll over to “display,” then I scroll up to “aspect ratio.” Then I can choose the desired ratio. Sounds easy, right?