Thread: CA-LA sues Time Warner, claims shoddy service

LA sues Time Warner, claims shoddy service

Jun 5, 7:21 PM EDT

By ROBERT JABLON
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The city attorney on Thursday accused Time Warner Cable Inc. of lying to subscribers and providing shoddy customer service in a lawsuit that seeks potentially tens of millions of dollars in fines against its main provider of cable television.

"The company has broken multiple laws, and harmed countless Los Angeles consumers," City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo said in a statement. The suit was filed as a civil law enforcement action and names the people of California as plaintiffs.

The 25-page court filing accuses Time Warner Cable and its parent, Time Warner Inc., of fraudulent acts and business practices. It asks the Superior Court to permanently bar the company from engaging in "unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business acts and practices and deceptive advertising."

The suit also seeks $2,500 in penalties for each violation - and that would be doubled to $5,000 for each violation involving a senior citizen or disabled person, city attorney's spokesman Nick Velasquez said.

The total fine being sought would "conservatively" be in the tens of millions of dollars, he said.

"We would argue that each customer adversely affected could be considered a violation," he said.

The suit covers the period from August 2006 to the spring of 2007, after Time Warner acquired about a 95 percent share of the city's cable television and cable Internet service. The company and Comcast Corp. purchased bankrupt Adelphia Communications in 2006. Time Warner then swapped cable systems with Comcast. The deals added 480,000 subscribers to the 120,000 Time Warner already had and made it the dominant provider in Southern California.

But the takeover also prompted a slew of complaints from customers who claimed they got bad service or were billed for services they did not receive.

Time Warner Cable disagrees that it "misled customers in any way," spokesman Alex Dudley said from New York. The company had startup service problems, but they have eased, he added.

"Our initial customer services issues are well-documented and we have worked incredibly hard to turn those around," he said. "We're now at the point where we receive fewer customer service calls per month with our nearly 2 million subscribers than we did before the transaction."

The company now has an estimated 1.9 million customers in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The suit contends Time Warner created ads and brochures guaranteeing that customer prices would not be increased but instead removed some channels, such as Animal Planet and Turner Classic Movies, from its basic subscription package, effectively forcing subscribers to pay more if they wanted to receive their same channels.

The company also billed subscribers for service "that was so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all," the suit claimed.

In addition, Time Warner violated city standards by keeping consumers waiting hours for telephone help and even then some representatives were "unknowledgeable and rude," the suit contended.

Time Warner also violated the city's 24-hour limit for repairing reported problems, according to the suit, which claims technicians "consistently" arrived late or failed to show at all.

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The city attorney on Thursday accused Time Warner Cable Inc. of lying to subscribers and providing shoddy customer service in a lawsuit that seeks potentially tens of millions of dollars in fines against its main provider of cable television.

The 25-page court filing accuses Time Warner Cable and its parent, Time Warner Inc., of fraudulent acts and business practices. It asks the Superior Court to permanently bar the company from engaging in "unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business acts and practices and deceptive advertising."

Los Angeles is pro-illegal immigrant.

Time Warner Cable Inc. is part of Time Warner, Inc. Doesn't Time Warner own CNN and broadcasts Lou Dobbs? Timing is interesting.

Is there a connection between this lawsuit and the Hispanic Institutes CNN boycott?

'The Hispanic Institute Proposes CNN Boycott; Cites Lou Dobbs’ “Anti-Immigrationâ€

Time Warner cable is guilty of shoddy service, down time and advertising at one price when actually it always costs a lot more. It was that way with Adelphia. The surprising thing to me is the filing of a suit against them when I never heard of that kind of action taken against Adelphia. Los Angeles never was interested in this before. Los Angeles never took this kind of action before. It must indicate a change in the thinking of the city. I wonder if its a spin off from all the other suits taking place around the country. Somebody is always suing somebody for something or anything all the time. The pro illegal people are a well oiled suing machine. Personally, I just canceled my service with Time Warner for the above mentioned reasons. It never occurred to me that there was a reason to sue here.