Quitting Cable: What do you mean there's a 45 day waiting period?

I’ve had plenty of problems with Time Warner’s customer service over the years. And granted, I am trying to do something they don’t want you to do. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that three different representatives gave me three different answers about how I would be able to sign back up after canceling my account, but none of them mentioned the 45 day waiting period before I was even allowed to have a new account.

The policy is designed to prevent existing customers from getting new customer deals by canceling and immediately signing back up. It makes sense, and if I had known about it, I would have dealt with the hassle of talking to Earthlink to cancel my service with them, then getting back in touch with Time Warner to switch my service to RoadRunner. 

But on Friday, when I called up to deal with yet another “hold” on my new order, the representative mentioned the 45 day waiting period casually: “Oh that might be the problem.” He was actually very nice, and attempted to subvert their systems to get me what I wanted, but in the end, all he could do was “escalate the issue.”

Then, on Sunday, I spoke with another representative. This woman talked over me, refused to listen to my problem, and transferred me to a different department while I was asking her a question. Classic Time Warner customer service.

So, I hung up and called Verizon.