This past Monday night I was watching Sundance Channel‘s new show Rectify, about a guy who spent 19 years on death row in a Georgia prison before recent DNA evidence overturns the verdict and he’s released back into society.
The show has been pretty good so far, but for the last 15 minutes of the last episode I found it a little hard to follow.
It’s not that the plot was hard to follow. It was for those last 15 minutes of the show, instead of a picture, I only saw a black screen with a simple message from Time Warner Cable in white font: “Please wait…”
I still had full audio, but it’s a little distracting when you’re told to “Please wait…” for your $70/month cable provider (not including internet) to show a picture to appear on your TV screen. The ellipsis–those three little passive aggressive dots–are particularly obnoxious; they’re Time Warner Cable’s way of letting me know that it’s an open-ended “please wait.” They’re not telling me to wait five seconds or five minutes or five years. They’re simply telling me to wait. Please.
I’ve called Time Warner Cable’s customer support enough times to know that they were going to tell me to reboot my cable box, which is about a 15-minute process and would have meant missing the end of Rectify anyway. So I tried another approach: Twitter. I tweeted this:
They responded shortly after, asking me if I had rebooted my cable box yet. I responded:
I direct messaged TWC my account info, just to see the whole thing play out, and the representative known only as “SS” explained succinctly: “I do apologize. At this time we are experiencing an outage in the area.”
I turned off my cable box and went to bed.
This post is not necessarily meant to pick on Time Warner Cable, which recently lost in the quarterfinals of Consumerist’s Worst Company in America 2013 tournament to fellow cable provider Comcast. In truth, my customer service experiences with their phone and physical customer service center representatives haven’t been entirely unpleasant. But if a big company like TWC is going to go through the trouble to hire someone to troll Twitter for negative comments about their product only to have them apologize for circumstances beyond their control, they’re doing something wrong.
The 250 Square Foot View 
Bobby, I have Brighthouse Cable here in Fl. & the same thing happens to me. Yes it is very frustrating! XO Nana 😉
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just got Time Warner TV & internet service in York Maine yesterday where Time Warner is only service provider in Town & spent $50.00 for installation. Within 6 hrs had internet hardware failure now getting black box “Please Wait” msg on TV that won’t go away. Previously had FIOS that was wonderful so maybe Town of York needs to get a better cable provider. I will vote for that. Dump TWC & get someone who will provide better than terrible sucky service.
Why is Maine so backwards ? ONE service provider for cable? Fios is INCREDIBLE, but you CAN NOT GET IT IN MAINE. TWC is the WORST buy you don’t have any choice as it is the ONLY cable company !! A monopoly and it SUCKS!!!
Most of my TWC service has been out for the past 2 day,, which happens EVERY MONTH,,,, Time Warner Cable SUCKS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My wife and I will be looking at the channels we frequently view and will be switching to satellite, either Dish Network or Direct TV. All the BS about cable being better is an out and out LIE,,, it is so unreliable,,, rabbit ears would be better. TWC can take their service, bend over and shove it !
TWC just took over in our area. SO far, I’ve not been able to make heretofore straight international calls, my internet acts like it’s 1995, and i can’t watch netflix. the wonderful “tech support” folks don’t speak English very well, and say it’s not caused by anything on THEIR end.
I live in Dallas and the only reason I chose TWC is because it’s the only offered at my apartment complex. I absolutely detest their service. Every three months my bill seems to increase although my services remain the same. Since I’ve had them, they’ve taken away about 5 channels (that I am aware of) from standard cable. So of course this means I have to get a digital cable box to view those channels – more money paid to them. Right now, they are in the process of taking away CBS. Come on, CBS? A major broadcast network! When I move to my new house in December, there is NO WAY I will ever be a TWC customer again.
I was paying $129 dollars for cable/internet a month with TWC. I found myself not having much time to watch cable so i decided to cancel it and keep the internet.
The representative was obnoxious and after 40 minutes of her trying to pressure me into keeping my cable service (and me repeatedly telling her no) she finally cancelled it. Let’s not forget who the customer is Time Warner Cable.
After that experience I think I’ll be exploring other internet options. It’s too bad, but for that kind of money you don’t expect your provider to try to bully you around.
I am so frustrated. I really hate using TWC. The tech called to say he was heading to my house for the work order of moving the cable box across the room to a free standing wall. He told me on the phone before coming out that he could drill a hole in the floor but if I “wanted more” I would need to reschedule with some one else. Here and gone in three minutes. Told me to call an electrician or reschedule with some one else at TWC. Waste of my time. They don’t deserve my money. And this black out BS with showtime and CBS takes the cake. This is only one of multiple problems- they entered our name into their computer incorrectly and it took them 3 months to change it. BUT they could un-list it for a price. Monopolies should be broken. I am seething and will remember how much they suck for the rest of my life.
The U.S. Department of Justice should breakup TWC for having a monopoly on bad service and just being fucked up in general!
My internet is supposed to be 15 Mbps, but I get anywhere from 2 to 7 in the evenings, so WHY am I paying $63.98 per month for internet only??? TWC has so much money they fight over who’s buying who so they can all share in the excessive profits. Sick!! This country is literally going to $hit !!!
i get the same message every time i turn on the tv. It completely sucks. They are unable to tell me what it means and what I am waiting for. Thats why its commercials interrupted by programing. I can’t wait for Verizon to finish FIOS so that I can at least compare the difference. Anything has to be better than this. They also just changed all the channel numbers so all the settings that I had are worthless.
The little secret of the frequent almost unable to remove” please wait sign”
is bigger then we are. Maybe it’s the Samsung box or T/W doe’s not give
a crap if you see your program or not.
Perhaps we can all picket city hall ,if they are the folks that grant TW
the license to be in NYC.