Customers Call For Refund From Time Warner Over Super Bowl Outage

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Some customers of Time Warner Cable were calling Monday for the company to credit their account after a service interruption prevented them from watching part of Super Bowl XLVIII.

KNX 1070's Margaret Carrero reports the company has apologized for the outage, which affected standard definition (SD) viewers spanning from Los Angeles to Ventura County to Riverside County.

The issue was first reported on the Twitter page for Time Warner Cable SoCal shortly after 5 p.m., when the company reported an issue with its FOX/KTTV-LA analog feed.

About an hour later, Time Warner announced the technical issue had been "resolved" and issued a formal apology.

Company officials blamed the malfunction on a piece of equipment used to process video signals and said that only its standard definition channel was affected.

Still, the outage had already drawn angry responses on Twitter from Time Warner customers who missed at least part of the Seattle Seahawks 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos.

Twitter user GOP Fashionista wrote: "I don't have HD. I better get a months credit on my bill. NOT COOL."

"Our Super Bowl party is ruined. Thank you for the reliable service," Katie Hebert said.

While high definition (HD) customers were not expected to receive any credit since the outage did not affect the cable company's HD service, a Time Warner Cable customer service representative said any typical adjustment would be about 53 cents, according to Carrero.

UPDATE 5:52 p.m.: Time Warner Cable announced late Monday that all of its Los Angeles area subscribers will automatically receive a gift of appreciation after Sunday's Super Bowl outage. Digital TV customers will receive a credit for the cost of an "On Demand" movie while analog customers will receive a $5 gift card.

"We didn't live up to our standards for a quality customer experience. We know there's no way to undo the inconvenience of last night's outage, and we want them to know how truly sorry we are for this issue," Deborah Picciolo, senior vice president of operations at Time Warner Cable, said in a statement.