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My family and I bought a house in 2010. As the house needed renovations, we moved to a temporary apartment for 5 months. My wife and I both require internet for our jobs so we transferred over our Time Warner service, which up to then, we had been very happy with. When we were ready to move into our new house, we called Time Warner to move our service to over to our new residence. I imagine that people have done this before (moved).
Time Warner came out and installed our new service and everything has been just fine for the last year, or so we thought...Three weeks ago I received a call from a bill collector from NCO collections, stating that we had been sent to collections by Time Warner. I said that there must be some mistake as we pay our bills on time and are insanely protective of our credit rating, having just financed a new mortgage. I knew that I didn't owe any money so I refused to pay over the phone which they weren't too happy about. I then called Time Warner, who confirmed that my account was up to date and no balance was due. I explained that I just received a call from a collections company on behalf of Time Warner and (as if it’s happened before) the customer care rep said that he'd better check to make sure my name didn't appear on any other accounts. Much later, he came back and asked me if I had ever lived in an apartment on Wilshire Blvd. (our temp apartment housing). I said yes but that TW had moved our service to our new residence. It turns out that instead of moving our account as anyone would normally expect, Time Warner opened a new account for us and had been sending an outstanding bill to our old apartment address. This apartment building is mostly temporary housing for new executives and mail does not get forwarded, so of course we had no idea that there was any type of balance outstanding (part of the bill was for a internet box that I'd swear I gave to the cable installer, but after over one year's time, do you really expect me to remember?). Furthermore, in our new house everything seemed to be just fine. We have a Time Warner phone number, Time Warner internet addresses, and Time Warner cable , yet we never received one single notification that we had any kind of outstanding bill circulating in your system. My wife and I are understanding people, choose our battles carefully, and most probably would have been happy to give you the benefit of the doubt and paid whatever you claimed was outstanding. It wasn't even that much money, but to send someone to collections without even contacting them when you have current contact information in your system? Well the saga continues...My wife has paid what TW told her to (right or wrong) in an attempt to put this credit damaging issue to rest, but of course the credit calls continue every day (it's been over three weeks since she made her payment with Time Warner). Last week I spent over an hour after work every night trying to get a hold of the credit company. I sit on hold and then eventually have to put my kids to bed, so I hang up. Next day comes, there's another voice mail waiting for me from NCO collections, and so on. Calls to TW haven't been much help. Rudy last week, was very nice, apologized, confirmed that there was no balance due and that he "would take care of it". He didn't take care of it. We spoke with many other pleasant TW reps, but nobody seemed to have the tools to make our nightmare stop. Most recently however my wife spoke to Marlene, a supervisor in TW Credit Management. Marlene was focused on the fact that the initial internet box was still unaccounted for. My wife kept attempting to explain to her that as far as she knew it was returned, and that she even paid for it three weeks ago. Marlene was the worst. My wife attempted to reason with her. "What happens when a cable box gets lost or destroyed? According to Marlene, there is no procedure for that scenario i.e. the calls can never stop! The best example here is if you've ever experienced (or seen someone experience) the look that a parking lot attendant gives you when you've lost your parking ticket; as if you're the first person in the history of the world to have done it. That's Marlene. So, NO RESOLUTION YET. I get calls from NCO Collections every day. My parents were visiting last week and my Dad happened to pick up the phone for that day's call. I was so embarrassed! What am I supposed to do? Hire a publicist to publicly publish my story? Change internet providers? Accept the fact my credit history has been damaged? Leave the country? All of the above? The experience that I've documented doesn't even begin to describe the time, anger and frustration that Time Warner and NCO collections have caused me. I've tried to keep things as informational as possible without ranting too much. This has been the worst customer experience I’ve ever encountered.

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