Social Media Saves the Day

Well, I have some very good news. After blogging and tweeting about my experience with Time Warner Cable last week I was contacted by one of their social media representatives on Wednesday. Julie was very empathetic with the situation that I was in and assured me that someone at the local office would be made aware of what had transpired and that the problem would be addressed. She was responsive over twitter and also communicated with me via e-mail.

Late last Friday afternoon (after normal business hours) I received a call from Karen who was part of Time Warner’s collections group. She was wonderful to deal with and said that because of my experience, account auditing that uncovers equipment discrepancies after many years will be escalated and handled differently. I’m not sure how TWC is planning on changing their processes, but they agreed with me that it is unreasonable to expect a customer to keep a receipt for an equipment turn-in that happened years ago.

Whew! What a relief. I was so happy to hear that my dad’s account would not be charged. I was also very happy to hear this news before the weekend so I didn’t have to worry about it until the next business week.

This week I received written confirmation that my father’s account was in good standing and that the equipment charges would be waived. Thank you Time Warner Cable for doing the right thing.

I do worry however about those people in similar situations – not just with Time Warner – but with any vendor that provides equipment in the home. I think that most elderly people would just pay the bill because they wouldn’t have an advocate to push for them. I hope that when I’m getting old and frail that I have someone who will look out for me someday. Not having any kids makes that situation much more tenuous.