First things first, when moving, find out who services your building. Don’t automatically call TWC or Cablevision or Verizon, because they’ll come and they’ll be stupid and waste a month and a half of your life before discovering that “there’s no cable running to your building”), which is usually a lie – there’s cable, but it’s not theirs.

1-800-OK-CABLE (TWC and Cablevision). Verizon Residential Internet.

They all take forever to come, so try and schedule them as far in advance of your actual move-in date as possible, so you can get them in your new apartment as quickly as possible. Calling a month in advance, or the day after you sign your new lease, is generally a good idea.

Cablevision’s Queens and Brooklyn infrastructure is superior to Time Warner’s. It’s part of their Long Island network, which is actually some of the best fiber in the country. Manhattan suffers with copper, in comparison. Both have relatively mediocre techs, overall, and you need to watch them like a hawk before they completely disfigure your apartment! Don’t accept any BS excuses; make them do it right.

Note that they all expect you to return your cable box by yourself when you move out. They will not schedule a pick up unless you get creative, like Josh Stodola above.

TWC box instability was the cause of a good story though. I had allowed my son (3 or 4 at the time) to queue up something from one of the child-based “OnDemand” channels, only to hear an annoyed shout of “Dad! The TV crashed!”. I knew exactly what he meant though.

Two weeks later a different guy comes out, gets into my neighbor’s backyard to access the box and after 10 minutes says he can’t split the line because it’s not the right box. Instead he has to run a new line from a box that is on a pole in someone else’s yard (in a different back yard). He says he can’t go over there without their permission either so he leaves and tells me to call customer service and they’ll get it fixed.

THREE WEEKS LATER (five weeks total of no internet) a third guy comes out, goes into my backyard after hearing my first two horror stories, sees that same dangling cable the first guy said didn’t work hanging off my building and says “that’s the line.” He drills some holes, installs some metal brackets, drills another hole into my wall and snakes the cable through from the outside and 20 minutes later I have internet.

At least this incompetence isn’t just relegated to the Brooklyn area — I guess I can take some solace in that.

If you think that’s bad, try the same experience in Bushwick. Two visits for the cable modem, three for the cable box, and it STILL doesn’t work. Had a tech out for a sixth visit to replace our cable box, and the guy stood there for five minutes, flipped around the channels, and told us that everything was fine, even though a) about half the time, when the box switches between the HD and regular def feed, it just turns off and b) the DVR will frequently miss programs we have set to record, or sometimes record programs arbitrarily.

When I asked the tech why this was happening, and why switching out the box wouldn’t help, he told me that there’s a software bug in the boxes they use “in Brooklyn” (suggesting that rich Manhattanites get the goods while we get stuck with the junk) and that he himself has the same problems with his box.

Insult to injury, we too were charged for services we didn’t order, and during peak usage the cable modem slows to a crawl and once in a while our HD feed drops out. It’s totally unacceptable service, but, predictably, Time Warner rolls deep in my area, and it doesn’t look like my building will be getting FIOS any time soon. But I agree with one of the previous commenters — if you can get FIOS, you probably should switch. Good luck man, this city can be hell for work-from-home tech folks.

I had one phone answerer actually tell me that he unplugs and reboots his cable box every Sunday night before he goes to bed so that it will have the entire night to reset itself and claimed the boxes are like desktop computers. If my MacBook or G5 need to reboot overnight once a week, I’d throw it out the window and go get a new computer.

I have absolutely nothing good to say about TWC, not about their hardware, their service, not even their support staff.

On top of that their never ending rate hikes, and diminishing quality of service is intolerable. I just wish we had alternative options in NYC. I can’t believe we have to put up with this.

@Bob Easton, that makes no sense. Republicans drove deregulation. Don’t confuse facts with whatever ironic statement magically appears between your ears after smoking way too much bad street meth, or however you acquire such unaccountably bizarre thoughts. Not to be rude, sir, but that is a tragically prime example of cognitive dissonance if ever there was one.

If Republicans really had deregulated the cable industry, there would be more competition. The current franchise system would have been opened up to allow more than one provider for a geographical area. If Jeremy had done some research, he would have found the current Cable franchise rules documented in a1996 “Cable Act” passed by a Democrat congress while a Democrat FCC commissioner was in charge. Those franchise rules still stand, allowing the political assignment of monopolies.

The one thing Jeremy has right is how to behave as many liberals do. When hearing something he doesn’t agree with, the typical liberal’s response is to attack the speaker.

He then came inside to install an Ethernet jack to replace the phone jack in the wall. He tried to convince us that he could only install the Ethernet at the phone jack in our hall closet. Of course, there was no phone jack in the closet.

About 20 minutes of looking around in the empty closet later, he came to a realization (“there is no spoon”) and he decided to install an Ethernet jack in our home office (where we originally asked him to)! I guess he didn’t want to have get under our desk to work on it (completely uncluttered actually, I neatly arrange and tie off all cables with those plastic zip ties to take my setup to a new level of OCD goodness).

Jeffrey, your posting about the NYC technicians makes mine seem like a Nobel Laureate. We’ve since moved into our first house and I opted for a self-installation kit. It wasn’t the fancy fiber optic infrastructure but we were up and running in 5 minutes and have no downtime so far two years later (knock on wood).

that had been the story around here 2 years ago. and still is with some providers (eg former national Telephone company)

but cable (in major cities only) takes usually 1-2 days to install. and you can have Optic Fibre in most places

Three weeks passed with various promises to install and call, and each time more failures and no calls at all. Turns out customer service representatives can’t call outside the area, despite my not having anything but a cell phone.

Verizon doesn’t serve my part of the neighborhood, or else I would have done what so many others seem to do: put a satellite dish on the roof and get DSL.

Each time a technician would come out, they would bring the wrong things. I have a TiVo (to not have to deal with the atrocious cable box software); the technician would have a cable box (or, inexplicably, the wrong kind of CableCARD). They ran the line; the outside box still wasn’t hooked up.

Finally, the situation was resolved, until I found out the pre-pay I had done at the original chat in August wasn’t actually done. And after checking my bills, it was true. It turns out the prepay only lowers the first month’s bill. And when the customer service representative wanted to know if I need any other help, I explained the last month and a half.

To that, she responded, “There’s nothing I can do but forward on your complaint. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

In other words, I’m glad I’m not alone.