No one had anything good to say about Time-Warner at a hearing on the cable TV, internet, and phone provider Monday in Cobleskill.
Speaker after speaker criticized poor service, empty promises, and ridiculous rates at a hearing held as part of franchise contract negotiations.
Schoharie County municipalities' 10-year contract with Time-Warner is expiring and a committee of local volunteers and FSI Municipal Consultants hopes to use the complaints gathered at hearings like Monday's to get a better deal in the next contract.
Kathleen Johnson called getting her mother's Time-Warner service transferred from one home to another after she moved a nightmare.
Over the course of nine days, she said, she made 22 phone calls-many of them to get her 85-year-old mother's email service back.
"Every time I called, I talked to a different person," Ms. Johnson said. "Every time I called, I got a different story-22 different stories."
Ms. Johnson, a village trustee, has also been working on Time-Warner services for the village and the Town of Cobleskill, both of which switched to Time-Warner in January.
Ms. Johnson said she's been unsuccessful in getting billing issues resolved, in part because every time she calls, Cobleskill has a new account representative.
And though the latest one promised there would be no issues with getting rid of an old account set up under a previous administration, when Ms. Johnson told Time-Warner to go ahead and do it, the town lost its internet.
"Since Thursday, they've just been stopped dead," she said.
Ms. Johnson also said that though the village has asked Time-Warner to look into extending service out to Dow Street, both for residents and for the water plant-which is still on dial-up-that's yet to happen.
Ed Hillenbrand, who lives in the Village of Richmondville and is the captain of the Richmondville Volunteer Emergency Squad, criticized what he called Times-Warner's monopoly, poor choice of channels, and the fact that equipment is often used.
"They can do better for the money they're getting," he said.
As far as RVES, he said they were promised a dedicated phone line and when they asked to have it turned on, they were told it was no longer available.
"We're on Route 7," he said. "Yet we had to pay almost $1,000 to get service to our building."
One resident said Time-Warner deliberately keeps internet download times slow so you have to buy more expensive packages, and Betsy Burt said her service had gotten so expensive, they've switched to other options.
"I don't want to pay $170, $200 a month to watch two hours of TV a night," she said.
Town Clerk Tina Shuart suggested asking Time-Warner to find a local business willing to handle returns on broken equipment so people don't have to travel all the way to Albany to do it.
The negotiating team, which includes Mike VanDow and Ken Hotopp, will take these concerns with them when they sit down with Time-Warner.