Time Warner Cable Reimburses Customers

When last month's ice storm knocked out power, it also meant Time Warner's 440,000 customers in the Triangle couldn't watch cable television.

To make up for the cable outage, Time Warner Cable provided reimbursements in last month's cable bills.

"The Time Warner Cable corporation decided to offer some free services for them. They were offered to the customers within the first or second billing cycles starting immediately after the storm," said Andi Curtis, spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable.

"So all of the reimbursements should have been taken care of by now."

Time Warner customers received reimbursements ranging from about $2 to more than $20.

While the winter storm's damage mostly impacted power companies, it also hurt Time Warner.

"This was a devastating experience for us," Curtis said.

"It took us about two weeks with everybody up and running, and millions of dollars were spent," Curtis added.

"In the past, Hurricane Fran caused such damages, but the ice storm caused much more harm than the hurricane," she said.

"There was damage on a cable plant and fiber cuts over the areas of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Henderson," said Virginia Yopp, public affairs manager for Time Warner Cable.

Cleaning up all of the damage caused by the storm required more people than the company had.

"To fix everything, we had to pull about 300 more crews from the Eastern seaboard area," Curtis said.

The company is taking precautions to minimize impacts of future disasters. "We cannot really do anything against the disasters like this, with Mother Nature," Yopp said. "But we do have a crisis communication plan, and we plan to follow that."

In order to facilitate recovery from natural disasters and to keep customers informed, the crisis communication plan has been in the company for about four years.

"The plan is in place for us to communicate with the police and the media more efficiently, and any good company should have one," Curtis said.

Foxcroft Apartments, which is located on U.S. 15-501 Bypass in Chapel Hill, is one of many apartment complexes receiving Time Warner Cable service.

"We were out of electricity and cable, but we got them back in about two days," said Ashley Cagle, the assistant manager for the complex.

"The residents had to call the Time Warner Cable individually, but I'm pretty sure that they got credits for the days they were without the cable."

The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.