If you haven't seen anything like this in your mailbox, consider yourself lucky:

From Mueller_comm

If you can't see the image, it's a bill from our wonderful HOA manager Alliance showing a $1000 balance on my account. Nice, huh!

You can get one of these in your mailbox too, and it takes very little effort on your part. All you have to do is cancel your service, turn in the equipment, and pay the remainder of your HOA bill on time every month, and just sit back and watch your overdue balance grow! I don't think you even need to bother with the 40-50 phone calls and emails; you can probably get a bill like this for much less effort than I expended.

You see, we're approaching the 20-month anniversary of ditching the $50/mth Time-Warner cable/internet deal. Cable-free, hooray!

Alas, there's no celebrating this anniversary, as we have yet to witness even the first anniversary of no longer being billed for this service. Boo!

Thus the $1000 balance.

If anyone has any ideas how I can get these SOBs to stop billing me (peacefully), I'd appreciate the advice.

In the meantime, I have a couple of suggestions for how to save the rest of you from this fate. We need to:

1. Fire Alliance. Re-bid the HOA management contract.

2. Fire Time-Warner Cable. Give other companies like AT&T and Grande a chance to bid on this neighborhood exclusive deal.

Seriously, I know there are some of you who like the $50 cable/internet deal. And to you I say congratulations! I just hope you like it forever, because that's how long you're going to be paying for it.

Thank you for listening.
Daniel

Choice. Now that's a nice word. Let the providers compete for our patronage.

Companies are notoriously bad at disconnects. DirecTV wanted to charge me $250 for breaking a contract I never entered. Customer Service Agents just don't seem to care enough, or maybe they take pleasure at our pain. There's a job for everyone.

-steve

I did all of these things and I too have a bill like yours Daniel, for $650. I just met with the HOA, and according to them they have brought in a third party to negotiate with TWC, who is arguing that unless 1) TWC comes out to your house and physically turns off the service or 2) you call and tell them explicitly that you "opt out" of the service, the service continues to stream into your house -- even if you've turned in your equipment and called to cancel your account, as I did last August.

I've been assured by the HOA that they will not send this bill to a collection agency but it still makes me extremely uncomfortable to be charged each month for something I'm not using. I think I know what to do going forward, but I'm at the mercy of the HOA to get this unjustified accumulation of back charges cleared.

Susan

My vote would be to end - - - no, TORCH - - - the contract with Associa. It appears to me that the problem is that you have to deal with them to deal with the actual service providers, and in my experience they are totally incompetent. I haven't experienced your particular hell, but our bill is never right, even the listing online that should technically be up to date.

My thoughts:

1. Request a copy of the contract between Alliance and Time Warner. I'm not sure if private entities are required to provide these types of items or not. But it's worth checking into.

2. If enough of you are affected, file a consumer class action lawsuit. If not many of you are affected, then do it individually. There are attorneys who will take things like this on contingency. Especially if one of the defendants is Time Warner.

3. Look at the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The practices of the HOA are definitely in question because they obviously aren't protecting our interests. Depending on the contract between the HOA and Time Warner, TW may have faulty practices as well.

4.I'm with the others who suggest obtaining another HOA provider. I've been here almost three years and they still don't have it together; I know they've been around even longer than that. They are slow to respond to almost everything...except maybe the pool closures.

I also have the $50 deal, which is more like $85 after being charged separately for the box, dvr service, and taxes...which isn't a bad deal money wise. But, when you look at the fact that my Internet and cable service has issues on a weekly basis, it makes it a "not worth it deal." it's frustrating to have to constantly call Time Warner to have them fix something that should be functioning properly at least a majority of the time. I've also been considering canceling and going with a different provider. After reading this, I'd better have all my ducks in a row armed with threats if I do decide to cancel; it obviously doesn't seem like are willing to show any mercy.

I hope it works out soon for those of you that were affected. I'm sorry you have to endure this nightmare. Good luck!

Danyale

I switched to AT&T U-Verse and had my Time-Warner service disconnected about six months ago. After a couple of months of wrong billing, I managed to get Alliance to stop billing me for the $50 every month by: (1) requesting a letter from Time Warner explicitly stating that cable service was terminated and on what date; and (2) emailing a scanned copy of this letter to Shirley Childress, staff accountant for Alliance, at schildress@allianceonline.net. Ms. Childress responded to my email, my account was credited for the improper charges, and Alliance stopped the monthly $50 billing. Maybe you all made similar efforts -- this worked for me, for whatever reason.

Gouri

I've no comment on the POA billing issues, as it hasn't affected me.

I had TW cable and internet hooked up when I moved in almost 3 years ago, and I just have to interject that I've been really really pleased with the service. The cable modem is tucked away in the On-Q box, and I've never looked at it in those three years. Service availability has been 100%, all day and all night, 24/7 for three years, at higher than advertised download speed, serving 4 ethernet connections and a WiFi net. Ditto for cable TV.

Just my $0.02.

hoa = f

http://gawker.com/5830257/the-horror-of-homeowners-associations

Let's hope these kinds of things don't happen here! In the mean time does anyone else have experience or advice with this specific Time Warner/HOA issue?