Efforts to create a seamless transition from Time Warner Cable to Comcast in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region ran into a few roadblocks, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Comcast representatives told the paper that "tens of thousands" of Time Warner Internet customers have been switched over to Comcast since Oct. 20 as part of a merger of the two firms’ Twin Cities operations. Several hundred of those customers had problems and most of them easily fixed with telephone instructions from a technician, spokesman Dave Nyberg said.
But some problems have lingered for more than two weeks, the paper reported. For instance, Lynn Bolnick of St. Louis Park told The Star Tribune that her service was out for two weeks.
"There was no letter in advance saying the system would be down," Bolnick said. "Every time I called, Comcast employees said they were having problems in the conversion from Time Warner, and that it would take another two days or so to fix it."
She said Comcast customer service reps suggested she call Dell and Microsoft to make sure her problems weren’t hardware or software driven. She told the paper that she did as directed and no problems were found. A Comcast technician was finally dispatched to her home and she told the Star Tribune that he determined it was a computer problem that "that had been complicated by the Comcast conversion."
Although Bolnick had been warned she would be charged for the technician's visit if the problem was unrelated to Comcast's equipment, she wasn't charged, the paper reported.
Bill Stevenson of Minneapolis said his Comcast service was interrupted without warning for six days in late October, leaving him without Internet, fax or Vonage Internet telephone service.
"I spent an hour on the phone with a technician before I even got a commitment for them to come to my house on Sunday, because apparently they're getting a lot of calls on the changeover from Time Warner," he is quoted as saying. He ended up having to replace his modem and a wireless router to work with the Comcast system, he told the paper.
"This was bad enough that I was ready to convert back to DSL Internet service from the phone company," Stevenson told the Star Tribune.
