New NEW Mission: Get Time Warner To Suck It!

I just got off the phone with my husband who had to call me from his cell phone because our phone is out. Why? Because Time Warner decided to cut us off because we owe them $49. We paid them twice last month to get caught up (putting us in the poorhouse to the tune of $399), but because we were past due by that amount, they cut us off without warning (the letter we got in the mail was for the incorrect amount because it was printed in the half a day between when we said we would pay them the bulk of the bill and when it was actually paid). We had no official due date, and we are trying to get current with all of our bills, and this new cut-you-off-immediately policy is new. What's pissing me off is that this was the same tactic used by AT&T when I switched from them to Time Warner. I got a cut-off notice every month for two years before I finally got sick of their tactics. We would make arrangements to pay the bill and then the operator would (usually nastily) ask me when the next amount would be paid, since the bill was due in four days. I always had the same answer: I don't know, and the cycle would begin all over again.

Look, I'm not trying to say I don't owe people money. My bill for Time Warner is approximately $140 a month for phone, internet, and standard cable. We're all but caught up on the bill when they decided to turn into AT&T and strong-arm us into paying our bill now when we don't have the money to put gas in the car for me to get to work tomorrow (the money sent to us never got here), so they can just go to hell.

If we had to, we could probably find a way to get by on cheaper internet (at least until school starts), but I don't see how cutting someone's main phone off is a good idea when they can't call you to pay the fucking bill. I don't know why they stopped their old policy of just making your internet e-mail not work (which was a great tactic in helping me find out that a payment I thought I had made in the past did not go through), but if this keeps up, I don't know what we'll do.