A couple of weeks after Time-Warner moved NBC 17 to a new channel in late November, the emails had died down so I figured everyone had resolved the issue of missing the NBC 17 digital channels by rescanning. The emails started back up recently, as well as calls to our digital hotline and keyword searches on this blog.
If you are still missing WNCN digitals on your basic cable, simply re-scan the channels or in the add/delete channels menu, you can manually add channel 93-2 and the TV will revert to displaying it as 17-1, 2 & 3.
We have also received some wild reports of their customer service reps advising more expensive options, etc. Even as far as saying they do not supply “dash channels”.
I have contacted and spoken to their Director of Customer Care Center for our area, and he has made sure they are giving out the correct information that just a simple re-scan will bring things back to normal.
(We had a long talk this afternoon.)
Today, a viewer sent us a very distressing email from a TWC rep, that made several wrong statements, and naturally I forwarded it to TWC to investigate. While I am no expert on cable systems, or call centers for that matter, I assumed we had covered all the bases having a dialog with the local call center. It turns out that TWC also offers email support and real-time chat options, that are handled by other divisions and subbed to vendors, so they did not get the message. In periods of high call volume, they can even roll some calls over to Wilmington or Charlotte’s call centers.
They are aggressively trying to get all the centers coordinated to give out the correct information. The customers affected are basic or broadcast cable subscribers and those that are connected directly to cable without a set top box from the cable company.
There is no requirement or mandate that forces them to provide digital service on this tier, but TWC has allowed the local channels on this package as an added value to their customers with digital cable ready sets. That is, sets with the cable QAM enabled tuner can decode the local station’s digital signals at no extra charge connected to basic cable.
Not all cable systems do this, nor would even allow this, but our local systems saw it as a good idea 10 years ago, and I have to agree it has been an excellent gesture by them. It’s an unadvertised feature, but once you connect your TV to it, it finds the local digital signals for you, and displays the stations by their over the air channel number identification. Many viewers may not even know it did it, until it goes missing.
Cable started off as pure analog signals, and has added channels and new technologies. They are just trying to shuffle the channels around so that the different blocks of services are grouped together to help make it more manageable. Certainly, having an all digital cable system is desirable, but there’s still a huge number of analog sets out there, so the system is still hybrid analog and digital, and may continue that way for many more years, so now is a good time for them to get their channels organized as new services are rolling out.
I read on the local avs forum that some viewers are missing WLFL’s digital. This is probably an easy fix by swapping out the filter at the home. From what I have read, they are very close to the filter’s cut-off point, and if the filter is a little sloppy, it may be knocking them out also. Call them to have a tech check into it, as all the local channels should be free, open, and clear on the local TWC systems equally.
As a final thought, keep in mind you are paying them for service. It’s your right to call them when something is not right. I have a few contacts with them and the satellite systems, but you have the right to receive the service you are paying for, so you should call them when things aren’t quite right. Don’t be bashful! They tell me they receive around 10,000 calls a day and double that many at times. Keep after them until your issue is resolved. That’s part of what you are paying for!
