Time Warner Cable sent a message this morning reminding me that it, too, offers call forwarding to victims of the latest Orange County fires (See Verizon and AT&T’s similar service). The feature, which forwards calls to the home phone to a cell phone or another number, is already included with the Time Warner phone service.

If a customer never set this up, Time Warner will do it for you. Affected customers can call 888-TWCable to have a cable representative set up the service.

Time Warner will also put billing on hold for fire victims. Fred Stefany, president of O.C.’s Time Warner operation, said that this is typical procedure during a disaster since the cable  bill is the last thing a customer whose house burned down wants to think about. 

Stefany also asked me for a list of houses that were affected, which we publish HERE. To prevent post-fire frustration, Time Warner is also proactively wiping out the data on the cable boxes in those homes. The average customer has two cable boxes — or about $500 worth of equipment. If Time Warner didn’t erase the data, the customer would be charged for the unreturned box. 

“So we want to do this up front so we don’t harass them in six months when the fires are not as fresh in our mind,” Stefany said. 

“We, of course, would like to get insurance re-imbursement if possible as we have to be fiscally responsible, but where we see the home is a total loss, we try to be understanding,” he added.

For those wondering, the fires have not affected customers in Cox Communications territory.

Earlier: 

• AT&T offers several phone services free to O.C. fire victims
• Verizon offers free call forwarding to victims of O.C. fires

COMPLETE FIRE COVERAGE HERE »

• UPDATE: Live 2008 O.C. fires coverage
• TOPICS: Damage | Location/Resources | Heroes/Your Stories
• SAFETY: Traffic | Closures | Evacuations | Shelters
• MORE: Fire map | O.C. fire-related Twitter messages

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.