Falcon Cable Faces Fines From City

THOUSAND OAKS —  Frustrated by complaints of poor service from Falcon Cable TV subscribers, the city will impose unprecedented fines on the cable company.

“This is the first time the city of Thousand Oaks has ever had to resort to something this drastic,” said Dave Peters, a 12-year veteran of the Citizens Advisory Cable TV Issues Committee and its only Falcon subscriber.

The Malibu-based company is subject to fines ranging from $50 a day for each time that it ignored a customer complaint about faulty service to $100 a day for each time that it failed to provide a refund within 30 days of a customer’s request to cancel service, Deputy City Atty. James Friedl Jr. said.

“[The fines] could total thousands of dollars,” he said.

The city will send notice of the fine within 10 days and expects payment within 30 days of receipt of the letter, according to Caroline Milton, city media services coordinator.

She said the money would go into the city’s General Fund.

The right to levy fines is outlined in the 10-year franchise agreement Falcon signed with the city in December 1995.

City staffers have not determined the total amount of the fines. Friedl will also look into whether the City Council needs to approve them.

The city sent letters to Falcon on April 23 and July 1 warning of possible fines.

Although Falcon responded to the letters and vowed to make improvements, Milton said, “things have not changed.”

Falcon has attributed service interruptions to an ongoing project to replace brittle copper wire cable lines with fiber-optic cable that transmits a clearer signal, according to Peters.

The problem, he said, is that underground installation--which causes service interruption--is often done during daytime and early evening hours, when most customers are watching television.

“You [should] do it during hours that are going to minimize impact to the customer,” he said.

Peters added that the city’s other service providers--TCI and GTE--offer better reception of CBS Channel 2. GTE and TCI operations appear to be running smoothly, staffers and cable committee members said.

Falcon’s poor performance record has resulted in a sharp decline in its market share, Milton said. The company, which had nearly 5,000 Thousand Oaks customers at the beginning of the year, now has about 3,300.

TCI has about 28,000 customers, while GTE has about 9,500.

Falcon serves customers in the Moorpark Road, Rolling Oaks and Wildwood neighborhoods, as well as the area between The Oaks mall and Janss Marketplace.

Peters said he would like to subscribe to a different company but feels obligated to remain with Falcon so that it will have a subscriber on the cable committee. Like many Falcon customers, he has experienced problems reaching a customer service representative.

“You sit on the line for half an hour and are then disconnected,” he said.

Since March, Milton has received more than 300 written complaints and about 350 telephone calls from angry customers.

“My telephone number is on all three [cable company] bills,” she said. “If customers are not able to get through, they call me.”

Despite numerous attempts, Falcon executives could not be reached for comment. One call resulted in a 10-minute hold before the line was disconnected.

In the spring, the Federal Communications Commission granted Falcon deregulation status, meaning that the city no longer has a hand in establishing subscriber rates.

But Friedl said its new status does not eliminate Falcon’s obligation to respond to customer complaints.