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Holmstrom96

WOW Cable Subscribers - FSD, FSD+ Issues During Wings Games

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The last few games, especially the game on the night of 1/29/13 WOW Cable cable subscribers have had video quality issues that range from "annoying" to "unwatchable" to just plain no signal at all.

Here's an example of the way WOW Cable subscribers experience Detroit Red Wings Hockey: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200521990521174

Please understand WOW customers, you ARE alone in these issues. Folks on these forums have reported NO issues with Comcast, U-verse, and DirecTV. Only WOW Cable has these repeated outages affecting FSD and FSD+ and Red Wings' game coverage.

For those of you that are sick of missing hockey games and watching as the audio cuts in and out, there are a few things we can do:

1. Report these unresolved issues to LARA (Licensing and Regulatory Affairs): http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/mpsc/video/videocomp.html

2. Light up WOW's marketing tool, their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thewowbuzz?filter=2

3. Light up their Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/TheWOWBuzz

4. Call WOW and tell them that if you don't get service, they don't get paid. Demand a partial refund. Call them at (866) 496-9669. Take option 3 (service issues) then option 1 (video service)

Light 'em folks, let them know we didn't wait this long to miss the 48 games that we do get!

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By the looks of that video it seems like they were experiencing signal loss from their satellite feed. Looking at the weather in Michigan right now, it would make sense.

People seem to not realize that severe weather can affect cable television too. It's not just miles and miles of coax all over the country interconnected. They use satellites (much bigger and more expensive ones) to receive feeds from the stations, so it's bound to happen with pretty nasty weather. Just not as often.

Edited by drumnj

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By the looks of that video it seems like they were experiencing signal loss from their satellite feed. Looking at the weather in Michigan right now, it would make sense.

People seem to not realize that severe weather can affect cable television too. It's not just miles and miles of coax all over the country interconnected. They use satellites (much bigger and more expensive ones) to receive feeds from the stations, so it's bound to happen with pretty nasty weather. Just not as often.

I don't buy that explanation. Tonight FSD and FSD+ was the only channel with issues. Bad weather that only affects two channels out of hundreds? Also, other providers did not have issues.

WOW has had many issues over these past few months with several public apologies from WOW big wigs.

Including:

(January 8th, 2013)

Dear Valued WOW! Customer:

I’m writing to apologize for recent problems with your television service in Michigan. Every day, WOW! employees dedicate themselves to delivering an exceptional customer experience, but we recently failed to follow through on that promise. Several evenings between January 1-6, part of our technical system became overloaded. That caused intermittent bandwidth problems on many of your favorite channels. The resulting video “tiling” interfered with several important football games – a major aggravation for sports fans.

Maintenance technicians began work on the problem as soon as it occurred, but because it didn’t happen consistently, it was difficult to diagnose and resolve. This led to repeated incidents, as well as higher volume at our call centers when you called in to report the problems, which compounded your frustration. To make matters worse, a utility company in Dearborn Heights cut a fiber line on January 6, causing an outage for WOW! customers there.

Our Dearborn Heights fiber is restored and we are now confident that we have fixed the tiling problem. That doesn’t change the impact on your television enjoyment over the last week. I want to apologize personally for this inconvenience and assure you that we’ve taken the necessary steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve you and your family.

Respectfully,

RobDinardo.gif

Robert DiNardo
Vice President and General Manager
WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone

And also

( November 20th, 2012)

Dear WOW! Customer,

I’m contacting you with an update and a heartfelt apology. We recently changed our billing system. Despite a tremendous amount of advance preparation, a number of issues have resulted that affect our service to you. Because the billing system is connected to every aspect of our business, you may have encountered impossibly long waits when you’ve tried to reach us, and our technicians may have been delayed in helping you.

I cannot apologize enough for our poor service over the last few weeks. I can only assure you that hundreds of WOW! employees are working day and night to resolve all the issues that affect you. We’re making progress every day, but we know it’s not fast enough. We are grateful for your patience, and completely understand your frustration. We’ll continue to update you as new information becomes available.

This is not the message we’d like to be sending you on Thanksgiving. As we work to regain your trust, we give thanks for the opportunity to serve you, and we wish you and your family a wonderful holiday.

Sincerely,

ColleenAbdoulah.gif

Colleen Abdoulah
Chief Executive Officer and Chairwoman of the Board
WOW! Internet, Cable and Phone

While the apologies have been rolling in over an absent customer service line (you just get busy signals) and days of video loss issues affecting the entire Michigan market; nothing has changed. We still have issues, and WOW isn't doing what they need to do to resolve them.

Apologies are no longer enough.

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That Jan 8th letter makes a lot of sense for the picture you are seeing, they say they are maxing out their head ends.

However, you should most likely be noticing issues on other channels as well, not just isolated on FSD. Which is why I was thinking it had to do with however they are receiving the feed from FSD,

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Speak with your wallet. Change service.

Some areas are forced with certain providers. When I moved into my house, we were told that comcast was the only cable provider that would get our area. Ofcourse we could go satellite but my parents have had it in the past and I absolutely HATED it when they had it. They had gotten rid of theirs after 2 years of service and moved to comcast. So when I had moved into my own house, I was like whatever, comcast it is. Unfortunately, in Howell, we don't get some HD channels that the rest of the state gets, including FSN-D+. So everytime a wings game is on FSN-D+ I have to watch fuzzy snowmen running around. I have gamecenter live but unfortunately i'm not that good at proxying so I could watch the local feed via my xbox (I can't watch wings games via computer, I need my surround sound and big screen boys, (I get INTO the games, straight cellying after every goal)). I had a friend that has WoW and he's always been experiencing one thing or another.

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Some areas are forced with certain providers. When I moved into my house, we were told that comcast was the only cable provider that would get our area. Ofcourse we could go satellite but my parents have had it in the past and I absolutely HATED it when they had it. They had gotten rid of theirs after 2 years of service and moved to comcast. So when I had moved into my own house, I was like whatever, comcast it is. Unfortunately, in Howell, we don't get some HD channels that the rest of the state gets, including FSN-D+. So everytime a wings game is on FSN-D+ I have to watch fuzzy snowmen running around. I have gamecenter live but unfortunately i'm not that good at proxying so I could watch the local feed via my xbox (I can't watch wings games via computer, I need my surround sound and big screen boys, (I get INTO the games, straight cellying after every goal)). I had a friend that has WoW and he's always been experiencing one thing or another.

Switch to Direct. You'll thank me later. Best decision I ever made, especially for hockey coverage. You just need their basic package if you are local. I have to buy all kinds of packages to be able to just watch the wings, much less get FSD every time.

What did you hate about satellite before? The only downside is you don't get Internet through satellite, but they are now bundling with local providers to fix that. I don't like their options, so I have satellite and a different provider for Internet though. Sounds like it can't be as bad as WoW though.

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Switch to Direct. You'll thank me later. Best decision I ever made, especially for hockey coverage. You just need their basic package if you are local. I have to buy all kinds of packages to be able to just watch the wings, much less get FSD every time.

What did you hate about satellite before? The only downside is you don't get Internet through satellite, but they are now bundling with local providers to fix that. I don't like their options, so I have satellite and a different provider for Internet though. Sounds like it can't be as bad as WoW though.

When my parents had it was the storms, wind, etc that just caused service interruptions all the time. Not even heavy storms would kick the service out for awhile. They would magically lose service if a cloud got into the way. Now, this was back in the late 90's-early 2000's when they had it and they had dish network. I gotta think that the technology has grown over the years and they've advanced some things, but in the same sense my neighbors tell me that their dish gets cut out during storms still. I'm just alittle hesitant to change service back to sat, especially when I roll cable and internet through comcast. Although, my experience with comcast since the start has been less than pleasant.

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When my parents had it was the storms, wind, etc that just caused service interruptions all the time. Not even heavy storms would kick the service out for awhile. They would magically lose service if a cloud got into the way. Now, this was back in the late 90's-early 2000's when they had it and they had dish network. I gotta think that the technology has grown over the years and they've advanced some things, but in the same sense my neighbors tell me that their dish gets cut out during storms still. I'm just alittle hesitant to change service back to sat, especially when I roll cable and internet through comcast. Although, my experience with comcast since the start has been less than pleasant.

Yeah, things are pretty stable, but if you get a good storm move in you will lose signal. Maybe happened 2-3x in the last 2 years for me. If that happens, I go find a stream. I don't watch much TV other than hockey. I have no experience with dish, but directv is hands down amazing.

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When my parents had it was the storms, wind, etc that just caused service interruptions all the time. Not even heavy storms would kick the service out for awhile. They would magically lose service if a cloud got into the way. Now, this was back in the late 90's-early 2000's when they had it and they had dish network. I gotta think that the technology has grown over the years and they've advanced some things, but in the same sense my neighbors tell me that their dish gets cut out during storms still. I'm just alittle hesitant to change service back to sat, especially when I roll cable and internet through comcast. Although, my experience with comcast since the start has been less than pleasant.

I've had DirecTV for 3+ years now, and I rarely lose service. Most interuptions last only a few seconds. It's more reliable than the Brighthouse cable I'd had previously.

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Even though I haven't watched any games, I called WOW to discuss their service lately; they upgraded my service, gave me a hefty credit, a free DVR and free movie coupons. The key is to be nice. They made it downright impossible to switch to Direct TV just yet.

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