Score One for Cable Clients

Raise your remote control in grateful salute to Thousand Oaks, where a citizens committee is imposing cash fines on a cable TV company that gives lousy service and then ignores customers’ complaints about it.

The city’s Citizens Cable TV Issues Committee announced last week it will bill Falcon Cable TV $50 a day for each time it ignores a complaint about faulty service and $100 a day for each time it fails to provide a refund within 30 days.

It’s a satisfying, if symbolic, blow for every consumer who has ever crashed into a utility’s “we don’t care, we don’t have to” attitude.

The right to levy fines is outlined in the 10-year franchise agreement Falcon signed with Thousand Oaks in December 1995. The money would go into the city’s general fund.

Falcon is the smallest of the city’s three cable providers, serving only 3,300 Thousand Oaks subscribers. Operations seem to be running much more smoothly at GTE (with about 9,500 local subscribers) and TCI (with 28,000).

The Malibu-based firm attributes frequent service interruptions to ongoing work to upgrade its lines. But what has really infuriated hundreds of customers is the difficulty of reaching someone to complain to.

“You sit on the line for a half an hour and are then disconnected,” said Dave Peters, a 12-year veteran of the citizens committee and its only Falcon subscriber.

Sure enough, a Times reporter who called Falcon headquarters for official comment on the fines was placed on hold for 10 minutes.

And then cut off.