Want to know the worst thing about being a Time Warner customer? It isn’t the flakey service, or their inability to resolve problems, but their inability to do anything effectively, including operate a sales department.

On Friday I set out on a simple mission, to upgrade the account to be Road Runner Turbo (10Mbps) and add 2 DVR boxes, by upgrading from the normal “bundle” to a new contract package. The package is something I had received promotional materials for, so not exactly something that sales had not been briefed on. The process was supposed to be simple, fill out a form online and then it would be done. I went to pick up new boxes on Saturday, and was told the order placed on Friday did not take effect. This morning I received an email stating that the order could not be processed and that I needed to contact support. I contacted support online and was told to call them. Upon trying to call them I got a very friendly man who was perfectly willing to help, except for the fact that his department (sales) could not help me. Apparently I need a special “account retention” group. I was transferred to account retention and I was told to hold then asked what service I wished to downgrade. I was apparently sent to “downgrades and disconnections” and not “account retention”. I became frustrated after being placed on hold again and then waited a little while and called back, this time speaking to sales again and being again relayed to “retention”, this time everything that needed to be done was possible, but apparently the agent that referred me to retention had left the account open and since he was not in the same department, the agent could not signal the other agent to exit. I was told to call back in about an hour. I was worried I would forget to finish up, so after about 20 minutes I decided to check with online sales to see if the account had been released. It had, and “Mark” was trying to be helpful and tried to add the package I needed, only to discover that his department could not actually add the package, so he offered me a similar, but more expensive package (with less features). He did not volunteer the fact that I was being offered the other package because he couldn’t add the one I wanted until I corrected one of the terms of the package he tried to state (he implied I couldn’t add the package because I already had the services). I ended my online session, and Mark was nice enough to enter what I needed into a comment on the account. I called back again and the agent answered, announced she was in sales, I asked for “retention group”  before she could even do the account validation (which I had done about 9 times already by that point). She was nice enough to stay on the line until I was connected to a representative (she even placed me manually into the shortest queue). Upon reaching account retention, I barely had to give anything except for the account validation information, everything else had been entered by “Mark”. The retention agent processed my package change and got everything finalized. One small error on this agent’s part, she failed to recognize that I was calling from one of the phone lines on the account, and therefore, when the account changes were made, she forced my modem to reset and the call was lost. I called one final time, and “John” asked what I needed, I explained what had happened and he reverified the account, apparently everything was successful, he transferred me one last time, to an automated system for verifying the contract.

Such an exhausting day, but I now have two digital cable connections with DVR on both, as well as my digital phone and my Road Runner connection is now Turbo (and TWC owes me a wireless router).