Time Warner Cable And The $12,000 Installation Fee

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Look, I understand the need to charge a fee to run cable to a house but billing someone $12,000 for installation is absolutely ridiculous. Mind you, this is an actual bill (not a typo) the company is trying to charge a homeowner in Massachusetts.

Williams' home on Fernside Street near the Tyringham town line is roughly 300 feet away from the nearest utility pole. Since the $35 installation fee covers up to 200 feet, [the customer] said he realizes he'll have to pay extra for the additional 100 feet, but he won't pay $12,000.
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That's the way it was for one of our satellite offices in Kingman, AZ. They were just outside the range of NPG cable's current service area and wanted to charge us $15,000 to extend cable internet service to the office. Par for the course, I guess.
 
$120/foot sounds about right. :rolleyes:

I would ask for an itemization and then see how much I could do/contract out myself. Sure, TWC won't accept a third-party contractor, but they sure as hell will have to justify the difference.
 
Did he know the setup cost up front? If they said, "We can only get you cable after $12,000 in installation costs, which will be billed to you" then this is his own fault.

However, if he is thinking $35 covers 200 feet, can't be THAT much more for the next 100...$12k is 350x the amount charged for regular installation. That is insane.
 
There should be a law to stop companies from charging unreasonable amounts. First Verizon, now Time Warner.
 
In the 1930's, before the electrification of rural America, my father was growing up on a farmstead in which home and barn sat nearly a mile off the unpaved road. The local WI utility informed his parents that sure, the home could be electrified but that the household would have to purchase the utility poles, the power lines, and incur the labor expense for installation. Needless to say, the homestead was not electrified until some time after the end of WWII.

Apparently, even in today's on-line world, electrification has become something of a basic right, while cableization remains but a priviliege for those convenietly located. Still living rural, my father only got off internet dial-up last month, finally, with the introduction of munibased/funded DSL in his neck of the woods.
 
I could understand (maybe) if they were running down a 1/4mile driveway or something, but 100 extra feet? This is just a case of "If you want it, you're gonna have to bend over that table first".

I think a friend of mine was quoted around $3k for ~1/4 mile run from the road to his house. Just for comparison.
 
LOL, I bet they still say with a straight face that TWC has lots of expenses for building an infrastructure.

It seems that's he's being charged mostly for running the cable 1/2 mile, where his closest neighbor has TWC, not for 300 feet from the utility pole to his home. Running wires 1/2 mile through many poles is probably expensive, but it shouldn't be charged 100% to the first subscriber.
 
It's not like they dig a big ass trench, manually lay the cable, then have 50 laborers filling the trench back up. I've seen these machines that lay cable. It's a thin thing that digs down, lays the cable from a spool, and even puts the dirt back on. It lays cable at an alarming rate.

300 feet ain't shit.
 
I would have just went halfsies with the neighbor and run some cat6 over from his router.
 
I had a similar beef with Charter Communications recently...

We were told that our address was eligible for cable TV, HD, and Charter's 60mbit service so we ordered up and waited on the installers to come out. Indeed a few days later they showed up and discovered that our home is over 300 feet away from the nearest trunk line. While we have a utility pole Charter (or whoever the original cable company was) never bothered to run the trunk to it when they were doing every other goddamned house in our neighborhood. The installers cancelled our order saying our address was unserviceable.

But then the next day they called us and told us that they would be happy to run the 500/inch trunk cable to our pole if we paid $3,500. The technician I talked to said that was what it costs them in terms of equipment (an amplifier and the additional "500" trunk line) and manpower.

I told them no thanks, I'd stick with DSL and Dish Network.
 
TechLarry said:
It's not like they dig a big ass trench, manually lay the cable, then have 50 laborers filling the trench back up. I've seen these machines that lay cable. It's a thin thing that digs down, lays the cable from a spool, and even puts the dirt back on. It lays cable at an alarming rate.

300 feet ain't shit.
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There is more to it than that. Like the guy who has to come out before the dig and mark existing utilities, and the fact that the ditch witch is over a 30k investment. Like I said around 1500-2000 would be a fair price.

I have to wonder if you laid the coax yourself would they use it. I am planning on building a house that is over 300 feet from the road and I am sure there will be something like this in my future, even though there is fiber in my brothers front yard about 1000 feet away.
 
There are 2 things going on here.

1) He's 300 feet from the pole, and $35 only covers 200 feet. He'll cover the cost for the extra 100 feet, and this isn't the issue.

2) He's 1/2 mile from the next subscriber, which means they have to run 2640 feet of cabling pole-to-pole all the way to the pole 300' from his house. That's the $12,000 in question.
 
An 18" trencher rents for under a $100 a day.

Ran into that a lot in cellular. AT&T ran out of T1's at the pole and wanted $10K to upgrade it. The next week it was only $5K. By the time the site was nearing completion the price was down to $2500.
 
I work in telecom, and there are three rules to follow to get things like this corrected:

1) escalate
2) escalate
3) escalate

Start by calling the billing department and let them know it's being disputed. Then ask for a manager - if they won't fix it, ask for their manager... and so on and so on. Eventually if it's not resolved you'll be firing off an email or phone call to the President of TWC,

This may sound like a joke, but it's their only recourse. Someone up the chain will eventually get it and try to help.
 
You know what they say: don't take no from someone who can't tell you yes.
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xorbe said:
There are 2 things going on here.

1) He's 300 feet from the pole, and $35 only covers 200 feet. He'll cover the cost for the extra 100 feet, and this isn't the issue.

2) He's 1/2 mile from the next subscriber, which means they have to run 2640 feet of cabling pole-to-pole all the way to the pole 300' from his house. That's the $12,000 in question.
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I'm sure that's what they're charging him for. But if his house had been within 200 feet of the pole, it would have only cost him the $35.
 
I'm wondering if I'm the only one who read the article. :p

It's not $12,000 for 300 feet. TWC had to run cable for 1/2 mile over utilitity poles. I wrote above that it's unfair to charge the customer 100%.
 
if i ever win the lottery i'm going to look into options for 100/100 internet in a remote area (since thats where i'll build my home). it will be contracted out, not through the company ;)

maybe i can build it near a backbone thats in the middle of nowhere?
 
pxc said:
I'm wondering if I'm the only one who read the article. :p

It's not $12,000 for 300 feet. TWC had to run cable for 1/2 mile over utilitity poles. I wrote above that it's unfair to charge the customer 100%.
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Well it sounds like he owns the line. Running the cable on the polls is the cost of TWC doing business. If TWC is unwilling to cover the cost of having the additional subscriber, which they would recover after 30 years :) then they should not do business with that customer.

However, TWC has special right of ways which to me means they should sacrifice the right to charge a customer the infrastructure cost -- it should be amortized over the entire subscriber base.
 
Its all his fault for being ignorant. This is what I learned from the $8000 cell phone bill thread.
 
NahBrah said:
Its all his fault for being ignorant. This is what I learned from the $8000 cell phone bill thread.
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This is what they want to charge the man in order to have it done. The local govt. has a contract with TWC stating TWC will provide cable to anyone who wants to subscribe and also has utilities to their house. There's some small print that says they only have to do this if someone is within 200 feet of a pole, and the local govt. is crying foul.

So he has not gotten a 12k bill, that's just what TWC wants him to pay before they run the line. Thus the OP is a bit unclear.
 
I had to pay Comcast about $6,000 (total cost around 15,000 and had to sign 3 year commitment) to run cable about 1/8th mile to my business. Had to go under two streets and around an underground fiberoptic cable. These type of costs add up very fast.
 
Ironically the same town that is going after TWC for this would do the same thing to the home owner if he wanted to hook into a water or sewer line that was the same distance, although it would cost a LOT more.

Locally I am about 300 feet from the local sewer line, but if I want a sewer hookup I have to hire an approved contractor to install the pipe the town requires, and have it all inspected and approved and then turn over the rights to it to the town before they would connect it to the sewer system. Total cost, as of 10 years ago was $54,000, oh and did I mention that once connected that I would be required to not only pay the standard sewage fee but an extra $400 a year to help defray the costs of the initial installation of the town sewage system?

Can you guess what I told them? LOL!
 
matrix563 said:
if i ever win the lottery i'm going to look into options for 100/100 internet in a remote area (since thats where i'll build my home). it will be contracted out, not through the company ;)

maybe i can build it near a backbone thats in the middle of nowhere?
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I've actually had the same thoughts. High speed internets is a huge reason why I still live within city limits.
 
Comcast quoted me like $30k to $40k to connect our business to their lines. So this is not suprising to me. The difference here is that they told me before hand. So if the guy complained after he was told this then its his own fault. However, if the popped this on him without prior notification then its something completely different. Curious to know the particulars.
 
srangara said:
I'm sure that's what they're charging him for. But if his house had been within 200 feet of the pole, it would have only cost him the $35.
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Then he should have the city install a utility pole within 200 feet of his house.
 
Time Warner is a pretty funny bunch. Parents had an addition added onto their house and decided they wanted all the utilities to run through the back yard and underground because they had problems for years with outages with the current wires and setup....due to people hitting them in their yards and what not.

So, dig their own ditch so they got everything in one location in the backyard so there's no confusion as to where everything is ran in. Dug it deep so there'd be space between the various services, enough to fill in dirt to cut down interference.

When it came time for Time Warner to put the cable in the ground, they balked at the idea of putting in a ditch they hadn't dug. And they balked at the idea that they had to extend the ditch about half a foot off the property maybe 1-2 feet deep at the deepest edge of it and rapidly raise it to the box located on the neighboring property. Dad decided to leave that untouched so he didn't hit any wires they may have there and because it wasn't his property to dig on.

And after they ran the wire he suggested that maybe they'd like to put a second wire in the same ditch just in case something happened to the first because it'd be easier to hook up the secondary than dig in the same spot and hope you didn't hit anything.....and they balked at that as well.

The wire died about 2 years later, they used the wrong wire (have had a lot of experience with TW's genius business practices of pissing off the customer at every turn by lack of giving a shit)....the wire was overhead wire instead of ground wire (the thick orange colored kind that's like 4x the size). And when the contractor came out to install the replacement wire, he was awesome......put it in by just using a little thin shovel dug under the grass maybe 6-8 inches flipped it to the side laid the wire, went back flipped the grass back in place and stepped on it to lay it back down. Done it no time, found a problem with one of the ends and fixed it before he packed up and left.

The contractual monopoly stuff is getting old, simply because the companies suck 100% of the time unless their monopoly is in danger of being changed to someone else due to complaints and issues. Which only become a problem when service for someone "who can do something about it" is in question.
 
I'd build a bird house about 150 ft from the pole and install a wireless router and power to it, and tell them that you're getting it installed for the birds and have a nice day.
 
srangara said:
$120/foot sounds about right. :rolleyes:

I would ask for an itemization and then see how much I could do/contract out myself. Sure, TWC won't accept a third-party contractor, but they sure as hell will have to justify the difference.
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Maybe it was for a repeater/amplifier? How much is a functional junction box anyway?
 
I hate timewarner. Although their service is stable, they are behind in every aspect of cable television and internet. Comcast is alsomt all docsis 3.0 and smaller companies aroung my area are docsis 3.0 and timewarner is still dragging along their old docsis 2.0 system with no sign of upgrades in my area. Although I live in a decent southern califonia area, but timewarner has a monoply in the area. I hate verizon too, they have fios in houses less then quarter mile away but cross one block and we don't have it, pathetic.
 
Of course. The Miss Utility stuff is a given, but it's also free.

I bet they would come up with some excuse for not using a self-laid cable.

bacon said:
There is more to it than that. Like the guy who has to come out before the dig and mark existing utilities, and the fact that the ditch witch is over a 30k investment. Like I said around 1500-2000 would be a fair price.

I have to wonder if you laid the coax yourself would they use it. I am planning on building a house that is over 300 feet from the road and I am sure there will be something like this in my future, even though there is fiber in my brothers front yard about 1000 feet away.
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Ok, I've been thinking about this...

Why not just put some sort of wireless transmitter on the pole, put a receiver on the top of the guys house, and point the damned things at each other.

From what I understand even 802.11 can go a hell of a long ways line-of-sight using nothing more than Coffee Cans for Antennae's.

Surely a billion $$$ a year cable company can resolve 'the last mile' some how.
 
Ok, first off, no one here that commented knows the plant that is in this guys neck of the woods. A lot of times you can not just stick an amp/line extender on there and call it good. When you amplify a cable signal you also amplify the noise, after too many amps the noise level becomes too great. If this guys was at the end of such a run then TWC would have had to run fiber closer to where he is, put in a new node, then run new coax or tie into existing trunk lines and then build the plant out closer to him to give him service. And to do all that they are just getting one customer. The profit they would make off his services would never pay back the amount of investment they made so he could be a customer. So why should they put themselves into the hole just for this one guy? Businesses are not charities, they are in it to make a profit. If something wont make them a profit (with the exception of good PR with charities), then they won't do it. To try and force a company to do something like this is ludicrous. So what, they have to give him access to their service? What if they paid out all that money to build the plant closer to his house then he cancels his service.

I know big businesses are not always the good guys, but they are not always the bad guys either. And no, I do not work for TWC, if you check my location you'll notice that TWC isn't in my area. I do work in the cable industry, and I hate ignorant stories like this and the tide of ignorant posts that follow. Do some research before you condemn a company.
 
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