Early Adopter Airport Extreme Adventure - Time Warner Support Royally Sucks
Well, I could hardly call myself an early adopter of the new Airport Extreme as it debuted in June. That said, Time Warner obviously is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum and have zero clue that their Motorola SB6141 has serious issues handling the router. Bottom line is that the two do not like one another and Time Warner is in the dark about it.
What was utterly frustrating is that Time Warner insisted it was a problem on my end. Their tier 1 and 2 tech reps in the Philippines were entirely useless reading from a script, who did nothing more than ask me to power cycle the devices. Tier 3 was a bit more helpful, but when I attempted to connect a modem (Netgear CMD31T), that reportedly works with the Airport Extreme and Time Warner, it failed to connect.
The latency with the Motorola SB6141 was pathetic to say the least and I was stunned by the utter idiocy of the entire Time Warner tech support system that insisted it was a problem with with my Airport Extreme. Through it all (5 days of the #1 worst customer service experience in my life) I replaced the Airport Extreme and CMD31T (Apple and Best Buy were nothing but helpful), endured 3 service calls (one of which the tech never showed up), and ended up calling the office of the president at Time Warner as insanity had reached the highest level in my life. Its was truly awful. What a waste of resources.
Well, after contacting the office of the President, I got a call back from a tier 3 tech in Canton, Ohio (330-361-4295) who finally gave me some confidence that they would get to the bottom of my problems. He admitted there had to be a network configuration problem that was not allowing the Netgear CMD31T to register with their network. The rep said he pretty much had to figure out the problem as they list the modem on their site as being compatible.
A tech rep came out the next day and split the line so two modems could be online and monitored. He thankfully hooked me up with a Ubee modem, which is 100% solid having no latency when connected to an Airport Extreme. It definitely proves their is a problem with the Motorola SB6141; TWC tier 1, 2 and 3 tech reps need to get up to speed on this.
Time Warner, this was the absolute worst customer experience ever. You have really good people in the ranks but the bozocity in leadership is obviously a problem. Please get your act together and work more closely with the leaders in technology (i.e. Apple) to prevent a recurrence of such profound frustration….
I will not need the CMD31T and at this point and am just out to help those poor early adopter souls who are sure to confront the bureaucratic abyss that is Time Warner.
UPDATE
Time Warner has confirmed that that the firmware for the Netgear CMD31T will not work with IPv6. If you are in an area where IPv6 has been rolled out, you are out of luck as Netgear has no plans to update the firmware at this time and I was told that the modem will eventually will be delisted as a Time Warner compatible device. Get an Ubee. Very solid.