As Lexington council prepares to act, Time Warner Cable defends its service record

Time Warner Cable defended its customer service track record Wednesday, a day before the Urban County Council was expected to take its first vote to deny transfer of ownership of the cable company.

[Related story: City's action could kill merger of Time Warner Cable, Comcast in Lexington]

Mike Pedelty, a spokesman for Time Warner, said customer service had improved since the company took over from Insight Communications in 2012.

"Based on the metrics that we look at, every single one has shown that we have improved over the past year or past year and a half," Pedelty said. Time Warner gets high marks from customers who fill out surveys after service calls, he said.

"We are very proud of our employees in Lexington who have worked very hard," he said.

Pedelty said Time Warner still wanted to work with the city.

The Urban County Council voted at a work session Tuesday to advance two resolutions. One would deny transfer of ownership of Time Warner Cable to Comcast. The other would deny the transfer of Comcast operations to Charter, which would acquire some Comcast customers, including those in Kentucky, as part of the merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast. The merger is being reviewed by federal regulators.

City officials said denying the transfer was a result of frustrations with Time Warner Cable during negotiations with the company over its franchise agreement with the city. Time Warner has refused to assure the city that its customer service will improve. The two sides have been negotiating for several months.

Mayor Jim Gray said in a written release Wednesday that Time Warner had left the city with no choice: "The city has worked vigorously to negotiate terms of a new franchise agreement with Time Warner, and so far, the cable company has not been reasonable."

Gray has added a section to his mayoral campaign website to gather public input and comments about Time Warner.

The city has said it received "reams" of complaints about Time Warner customer service during two public hearings and during requests for comment. More than 50 people attended the public hearings about Time Warner in December. The city also received more than 350 written complaints

Pedelty countered that Time Warner had worked hard to improve service in Lexington. It has invested in infrastructure to increase Internet speeds by 50 percent and increased its overall Internet capacity by 250 percent, and "We've added 33 miles of fiber-optic cable," he said.

Despite the disagreements, Pedelty said, "We continue to have discussions with the city and hope that an agreement can be worked out."

This story was originally published October 8, 2014 at 8:30 PM with the headline "As Lexington council prepares to act, Time Warner Cable defends its service record."