My Phantom Cable Box

This evening we received our Time Warner bill which was kindly padded with 3 random DVR and HD charges and a viewing of Transformers.  After 10 minutes on hold a rep “kindly” explained that we had in fact purchased Transformers and watched 2 hours worth of it on November 30th.  the Time Warner “eyeglass” apparently allows them to see the minutia of details regarding movie on demand purchases.  This “eyeglass” allows the rep to see not only when the movie was purchased but also each pause, fast forward, rewind etcetera.  After assuring me that a. I had purchased Transformers and b. she couldn’t refund the charge I switched gears to the multiple DVR and HD tier charges.

After trying to explain that I had a guaranteed package price for another 6 or so months I finally had the rep explain to my why I was being charged for an additional half a month.  After much back and forth we finally determined that Time Warner shows a Phantom 4250 cable box in our house which was assigned in September a a free promo.  Problem is in September we had a tech out to check line strength and when he closed the case our current box was disassociated from the account rendering it useless.  Either the tech or the rep who reneabled the account added the box and a 3 month promo to our account.  If teh tech did it maybe it is sitting in his house ordering movies all day, if it was the rep then my money is on a commission or a required sell rate.  This magical box was also the box that ordered Transformers.

The rep wanted to schedule a visit so that a cable company rep could verify that we weren’t stashing a cable box in the closet.  After Amber volunteered to empty the closets so that Time Warner knew we weren’t hold’n the rep’s second supervisor saw the futility in a visit.  Thankfully they are “looking into it” and will get in touch within a week or as soon as they track down the box’s location in the Time Warner system.   Normally I’d want the issue solved on the first call but it seems out there enough that I’ll give them a week, besides I need to focus on the car dealer who owes us for the repair on a our new vehicle which was sold with a potentially fatal safety issue.