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Networking The Internet News

Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage 591

mariushm writes "After deciding to shelve metered broadband plans, it looks like Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers whom they deem to have used too much bandwidth. 'Austin Stop The Cap reader Ryan Howard reports that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center. "I called the number and had to leave a voice mail, and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote. Howard was then "educated" about his usage. "According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.'"
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Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage

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  • by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Saturday April 25, 2009 @10:31AM (#27712593)

    DSL.

    But then I have the lowest tier so It would take a decade to download 44 gigs.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2009 @10:39AM (#27712663)
    I wouldn't call it "circles" as much as "couches".
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2009 @11:04AM (#27712897)
    You really made me want to prank call them. Thanks.
  • by frieko ( 855745 ) on Saturday April 25, 2009 @11:10AM (#27712959)
    It's so absurd it makes more sense as a comedy sketch than an actual business practice.

    Hypothetical Will Ferrel: At TWC, we value our customers tremendously. Now, I hate to nitpick, but is there any way you could pay us money, but then, we don't give you anything in return?
  • by AigariusDebian ( 721386 ) <aigarius@ d e b i a n . org> on Saturday April 25, 2009 @11:36AM (#27713169) Homepage

    in 3D 1080p interactive porn terms, 44G is not that much in a week.

  • by halcyon1234 ( 834388 ) <halcyon1234@hotmail.com> on Saturday April 25, 2009 @01:03PM (#27713937) Journal

    You don't advertise an all-you-can-eat buffet, and then kick out a customer when they sit down and eat for three hours straight.

    Close. It's more like "You don't advertise an 'all you can eat shrimp buffet', and have ten seats available to it, and then read industry reports that say people eat twenty shrimp in an average sitting, and then only put out a hundred shrimp, and then yell at anyone who eats eleven or more shrimp, and then refuse to buy more shrimp because it'll cost you money, and then you get money from the Government Restaurant Authority to subsidize your restaurant, and then instead of buying more shrimp you spend it on more tables so you can have more customers, and then you yell at anyone who eats more than FIVE shrimp, and then you tell people that it's all you can eat, but if you want to eat all you want it'll cost you ten times as much."

    And then you get sued for a run-on sentence.

  • by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Saturday April 25, 2009 @01:48PM (#27714351)

    If you tell them the real reason you're cancelling 1) The company doesn't really care. They want to get rid of you. You're wasting your breadth. 2) If you tell them you're moving, they'll try to sell you the service where you're moving to. Unless you tell them overseas!

    So when it came time for me to cancel service many years ago, I lied. I told them "I have a severe case of CARPEL TUNNEL SYNDROME". I got no resistance. They can't really ask you any more question, or you'd have to be a real douche to. I was off the phone in about 1 minute, service cancelled and tech picked up my modem. I told them it was really hard for me to drive (truth, I do not have a car).

  • by mpe ( 36238 ) on Saturday April 25, 2009 @02:15PM (#27714625)
    People, in general, know what TV shows they watch. The amount of people browsing Hulu looking for new shows is maybe 5%, and everyone else is looking for a specific show, usually a specific episode of that show. There is no logical reason for 95% of 'streaming TV' to stream.
    A trivial solution is to just have them all up as torrent that get downloaded via rss or something.
    If the networks want to retain control over said videos, it would be easy enough to encrypt them and provide proprietary player software. And, if they do that, they can actually let people download them well before the broadcast, and then release the encryption key whenever so they can actually be watched. They could even not have 'skip' buttons on their interface, so everyone watches commercials.


    An alternative would be to have a machine which records a broadcast then can replay at a time determined by that machine's user. Though currently freely radiating RF might work better for this broadcasting than most ISP connections.
  • "Well I can't disconnect over the phone, you have to bring the equipment to your local office."

    Or you could just download 44 gigs and he'll figure it out.

  • by fredklein ( 532096 ) on Saturday April 25, 2009 @02:52PM (#27714995)

    Then broadband came along offering unlimited connect time, not data.

    That's simple wrong. I NEVER get "unlimited" connect time- I am limited to 30 x 24 x 60 minutes per month, sometimes 31 x 24 x 60. Heck, a few months ago, I only got 28 x 24 x 60 minutes.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2009 @03:30PM (#27715305)

    The United State is such an individualistic nation that even TV/movie watching is done separately.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 25, 2009 @07:18PM (#27717017)

    to ho with it

    Man, that is some nice Freudian typo, I guess. ^^

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