Time Warner Cable Inc. forced out its chief cable guy in Southern California on Wednesday, but you may not want to throw that help number away just yet.
Roger Keating, head of Time Warner's regional office since 2003, was done in by an avalanche of complaints about Internet and e-mail outages, TV channel lineup changes and pressure to sign up for digital service. Customers were most annoyed by maddeningly long -- and sometimes futile -- waits to reach a human by phone.
Keating and his bosses "agreed it was a good time" for him to exit, according to a memo to top managers from Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs. Keating will be replaced by two Time Warner executives who Hobbs said had "a different set of leadership skills."
They have a tall order ahead in repairing strained relations with customers and winning back the more than 10,000 people who have canceled their subscriptions since October.
"I've given up calling them," said John Toal of Culver City, who owns a photo business that went 10 days without Internet service last month. "I can't stand staying on hold for an hour and a half."
Once a small player in Southern California, Time Warner Cable ran into big trouble when it began integrating its TV and Internet service operations with properties it acquired last summer from Comcast Corp. and bankrupt Adelphia Communications Inc.
After teaming up with Comcast to buy Adelphia's assets and then swapping some with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, which is a subsidiary of New York-based media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., became the leading cable provider in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area with 1.9 million customers.
Keating was in charge of combining technologies, billing systems, computer servers, programming and Internet and e-mail services.
"It has not gone smoothly," said Aryeh Bourkoff, an analyst with UBS Securities.
Some would say that is putting it lightly. Often-furious subscribers overwhelmed Time Warner's five local call centers and swamped city halls throughout the region.
"Their systems got overloaded and people were not able to get through to the company, and we got a lot of complaints," said Marc Jaffee, executive director of a cable authority for Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Westminster and Stanton.
Complaints about cable service in Los Angeles nearly trebled since October to 1,732 from the same period a year earlier, according to figures compiled by the city. Oxnard, Moreno Valley and other cities reported similar huge jumps.
