City planning to file cable complaint with FTC
By Jeff Gallatin
Bay Village
Published Dec. 13, 2006

City officials are planning to take their dispute with Time Warner Cable to a “higher level” — including filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Mayor Debbie Sutherland said city officials are not satisfied with Time Warner’s responses to residents’ complaints about service, billing and cable Internet access problems which have plagued city residents since Time Warner took over city cable service from Comcast earlier this year.

“It’s apparent to us that we haven’t been able to get the desired results for residents from the approach we’ve taken so far,” Sutherland said. “We will apparently have to take this to a higher level and speaking to other officials in the company and filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.”

Sutherland said Bay Village Law Director Gary Ebert is already at work  researching the specifics of how the complaint should be handled. Ebert declined comment on the complaint until it is ready to be filed.

City officials have met with Gina Petredis, the director of government and media relations for Time Warner Cable in Northeast Ohio, but Sutherland said that hasn’t brought enough results.

“She’s listened to us, but from what we see there really hasn’t been much change or movement on any of the issues we’ve brought to them,” Sutherland said. “We need to get them to take some action.”

Petredis told West Life she could not comment on the city’s action because she has not been told of it by city officials.

“We believe we have had some productive discussions with the city already,” Petredis said. “We regret the fact that there have been problems because of the transition because these are our customers and we want to make the situation right.”

Time Warner will continue to work on the problem, she added.

Sutherland said many problems apparently remain with the billing, service and Internet service for many Bay Village residents.

“People have been getting their service shut off by Time Warner for allegedly not paying their bills, and they have paid them and they’ve paid them on time and they’re still shutting a number of people off wrongly,” Sutherland said. “They’re also making people go down to their offices to deal with these problems and then when they get there, someone else says, they have the payment.”

City officials remain busy fielding calls about the situation, she said.

“For the last several weeks we’re probably still getting a dozen calls a day or more about the problems,” Sutherland said.

She said Time Warner also still has to work out problems with Internet access for many people.

“It’s very important to those people,” Sutherland said. “Cable Internet access is how some of them do an at-home business and others use that for their access to the Internet.”

Sutherland said she is glad the city is continuing talks with AT&T about the utility boxes and services in the city.

“It may be very important to have that option available to us,” she said. “We realize there can be transition problems when you take over another company, but this has been the roughest service transition problem we have ever had with a company.”

City Council President Brian Cruse said he is supportive of the administration’s plans.

  “We have to do something to get their attention and get all these problems straightened out,” Cruse said. “If that means filing a complaint at the federal level and going to the big boys in the company, then that’s what we’ll do. I know I’m still hearing about the different problems.”

Cruse said he didn’t think the problem necessarily lies with Petrudis.

“She’s not the one pushing the buttons or making changes,” Cruse said. “But we do need to find some way to get all of these issues dealt with in a timely manner. Right now, we’re just not getting what the city residents pay for.”