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CB Satellite and Cable TV Review of Cablevision System Corp.
Cablevision System Corp.

Cablevision System Corp. review: billing and customer service

A
Author of the review
3:08 pm EDT

April 6, 2018 - Angela M. Thomas - Account # [protected], I originally signed up for Cable TV, Phone and Internet Service in March of 1989 in Piscataway NJ where I resided for over 26 years - I moved from Piscataway down to Cliffwood NJ in February March 2016 time frame and of course I requested to move my cable services from Middlesex County to Monmouth county - Additionally I am a permanently disabled senior citizen who often becomes bedridden for 4 up to 15 days at a time, regularly, due to problems with diabetes, asthma, ruptured discs in both my neck and back further complicated by nerve damage in all 4 extremities combined with chronic intractable pain. I have explained multiple times to Cablevision customer service that in all of these years since 1989 I have never missed any payment - never bounced a check and yet if I am ill the week the bill arrives, within 2 weeks of the bill becoming due, I receive a past due notice with a threat of possible service interruption. Seriously? Then I was told that because I moved, my old account was cancelled so my 26 plus years of history of always paying my bills is no longer available to customer service and is irrelevant. Irrelevant how can 26 years of never missing a payment be irrelevant?

What is even more troubling is that the current bill for future cable services billing period april 1 thru april 30, when today's date is the 6th of april and the past due notice has a due date of april 17th and my regular cable bill shows a payment due date of april 15th - why am I receiving a threat of possible service interruption?

Cablevision also does not apologize or do anything to compensate for all of the cable TV viewing problems - Prime example the other night I was watching Moonstruck - half way through the movie the screen went totally black, then after 2 or 3 minutes, several minutes of commercials were aired on the MGMHD Channel - Commercials and then when the movie finally did return to the screen, the voice was out of sync with the picture then pictures of stuck pixels kept appearing on the screen while the picture was half frozen - there were many interruptions for the next 10 minutes off and on before the movie returned to normal viewing - These types of interruptions are quite frequent - there are days when the last 10 to 15 minutes of the movie are just not shown - the movie ends prematurely, especially when using the On Demand features.

There is no reason for past due notices to be sent out before the 2nd bill cycle - especially when billing for future service. This is immoral and not good business and to actively and purposely delete my 26 plus year history and to not have any records available for the customer service department to review, regarding my 26 plus years of never having missed a payment is equally unprofessional and also not good business practice.

Most businesses keep track of their good paying customers and I do not think it is unreasonable to wait until the second regular billing cycle has passed before threatening to interrupt service. Also, Just to add insult to injury - I went to make the payment through my phone, both my home phone and my cell phone, which has service through Verizon and the Cablevision system was not recognizing the buttons that need to be depressed to provide billing information to submit the payment.

Repeatedly, even when Cablevision systems make an error the company and their customer service representatives never accept responsibility for their error or any of the inconvenience they cause while they additionally treat customers rudely and with disrespect. Why?

Why does Cablevision refuse to put back common sense and compassion and good customer service back into their billing system? Why are you so quick to threaten interruption of service, especially when billing for future services and why is no special consideration given to long term customers who have paid every month with no issues, no collections, no bounced checks, no problems. Waiting for 2 full billing cycles to completed before threatening any interruption of service would go a long way toward healing the open wounds and complaints filed against Cablevision as well as adding a note into the file of long term customers who have paid their bill religiously for more than 15 years - instead of a threatening post card why not make a phone call to inquire if everything is all right - "has something happened since you are usually so good with submitting your payments, it is unusual for your payment to not be received so we are calling to find out if anything is wrong and to inquire as to when we can expect to receive your payment". I realize businesses need to turn a profit, but they should also be a real part of the community that they serve -

Cablevision loses nothing by implementing these 2 changes to the current procedures and they could gain considerable favorable press, especially if they made an official announcement explaining these changes. This is a situation with minimal cost delivering maximum benefit. There is a swelling tide of angry and frustrated customers who are investigating alternative methods to obtain the internet and cable tv programs they want without subscribing to cable and unless Cablevision makes the suggested changes or similar changes, they may end up losing most of their current customer base. Customers do not like being treated as a number with absolutely no compassion. I am not advocating allowing all of your customers to make late payments - however I am saying that your customer service teams and your entire upper management team need to make much more user friendly programs when an invoice is either not paid or paid late by a long standing customer with a long history of Never Missing a Payment. Your payment history is important and an excellent indicator of your intentions to continue paying your bill, One more thought - you should also come up with some programs to help long standing customers who are experiencing a short term issues - a terminal illness, a family death, loss of income, facing foreclosure - there could be many possible reasons for an invoice to be paid late, I believe Cablevision will stand a much better chance of getting paid if they will be proactive with assisting the customer with some assistance during their greatest time of need, even if all they provide is a friendly ear and some referrals - how difficult it is to provide some URL's related to the customer's problem - Cablevision could create predefined issues for example death or unemployment and then prepare a list of referral information that the customer service team could then share with the clients. For a customer problem that is not listed in the procedure - provide a form that can be submitted to upper management to either find and select some referral sources and always add a note to the customers file. There is no need to threaten good customers with possible interruption of service so soon especially when billing for future dates. This is what I mean by Cablevision becoming an active participant in the communities they serve - several different referral booklets could be created distributed by County in NJ - Each state would have their own booklet of referral categories.

I am going to try to pay the bill once again using the phone payment application and if that is not working again today, I will then try to utilize the online payment option and I f that does not work, then I will drive to a Cablevision store up in Piscataway to make the payment in person.

Please consider my suggestions before you end up losing enough of your client base to cause you to plan for layoffs.

A very sad disabled senior citizen.

Angela M. Thomas
186 Van Cleaf Lane
Cliffwood, NJ 07721
Cable Account # [protected]

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