Unfortunately, job number two for Time Warner Cable may be sucking ass. That blog post gave me the most intense sensation of real-life deja vu I’ve ever felt. Not only have I had this exact experience with Time Warner (at least three distinct times: two moves and then the transition to HDTV), but I have heard this story almost word-for-word from virtually every one of my friends and relatives who uses the service. The only commonality I can come up with is that it take anywhere from one to three years to get initial service stabilized at a given address, and then once every one to three years thereafter you will experience some kind of massive failure that starts the cycle over again. Multiple calls to support, multiple visits from technicians, and multiple equipment swap-outs inevitably ensue. Eventually you get back to some level of stability (or is it simply fatigue?).

I can confirm, as this blogger says TWC told him, that the responsiveness, at least, is significantly better on Business Class. You still have the problems, but a technician shows up in hours instead of days, and for the most part you skip tier-one support. In at least one case I was involved with, TWC rewired half a South Austin neighborhood to provision the bandwidth for 20 static IP addresses to someone’s residential garage (it’s Austin, do you even need to ask?). Still, they’re a little too quick with that “if you want better service, upgrade to Business Class” line. When you’re one person working from home it sounds a lot like “screw the average customer.”