A. Staffing. The failure of the grantee to hire sufficient staff or to properly train its staff will not justify a grantee failure to comply with any provision of this Section.
B. Office availability.
1. Each cable system operator will maintain at least one office at a convenient location within the City that will be open for walk-in traffic at least ten (10) hours per day (except legal holidays) Monday through Friday, with some evening hours, and at least four (4) hours on Saturday to allow persons to purchase, terminate or modify service, register complaints, pay bills, drop off equipment and to pick up equipment.
2. Each office must be accessible to all persons, including the elderly and persons with disabilities. Adequate parking must be provided within reasonable proximity of the office.
3. The City may temporarily waive a cable system operator's obligation to allow drop-off and pick-up of equipment if the cable system operator offers free pick-up and delivery of equipment in a manner and at times convenient to customers.
C. Service call hours. Each cable system operator will perform service calls, installations, and disconnects at least nine (9) hours per day Monday through Saturday, except legal holidays. In addition, a cable system operator must respond to service interruptions affecting two (2) or more subscribers served from the same node twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week.
D. Telephones.
1. General. Each cable system operator must have a publicly listed focal telephone number under the name by which cable system operator is doing business in the City. Customer service representatives must answer the phone twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week, for the purposes of receiving and responding to requests for service, inquiries, reports of service problems, and complaints; except that, the company may use an automated response unit or outsourced answering service during the period 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., so long as the system is set up so that the company can satisfy its obligation to respond to service interruptions.
2. Telephone answering time.
a. Telephone answering time will not exceed thirty (30) seconds; and
b. The time to transfer the call to a customer service representative (including hold time) will not exceed an additional thirty (30) seconds.
c. Under normal operating conditions, the standards set out in this division (D) of this section must be met ninety percent (90%) of the time, measured quarterly. The phrase "of the time" refers to the percentage of calls to a cable system operator during normal operating conditions, so that if 1,000 calls are received by a cable system operator during normal operating conditions, 900 of those calls must be answered within the time limits specified in this Section.
3. Under normal operating conditions, customers will receive a busy signal less than three percent (3%) of the time, measured quarterly. The phrase "of the time" refers to the percentage of calls to a cable system operator during normal operating conditions. Thus if 1,000 persons call a cable system operator, fewer than 30 callers should receive a busy signal.
E. Scheduling work.
1. A cable system operator may schedule appointments for service, installation, or disconnection for a specific time, a time block or, solely at the discretion of the person requesting service, installation or disconnection, "all day." Time blocks may not exceed four (4) consecutive hours in length. A cable system operator may also, upon request, schedule appointments outside normal business hours, for the express convenience of the customer. These options shall be clearly explained to the customer at the time of scheduling.
2. The cable system operator will attempt to call the person who scheduled the appointment between the hours of 5:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on the day prior to any appointment as a reminder of scheduled work. If the call is not answered, cable system operator shall attempt to make the reminder call the next morning, prior to the scheduled appointment time.
3. If an installer or technician anticipates that he or she will be late for an appointment, an attempt to contact the customer will be made immediately and the appointment rescheduled at a time convenient to the customer, if rescheduling is necessary.
4. A cable system operator may not reschedule or cancel a service or installation appointment with a customer after the close of business, on the business day preceding the scheduled appointment.
5. Under normal operating conditions, an operator must satisfy each of the standards set forth in § 11.21.305(D)(2)-(3) of this Chapter, at least ninety-five percent (95%) of the time, measured quarterly. The phrase "of the time" refers to the number of appointments.
6. If the cable system operator misses an appointment, it will describe and offer the customer a choice of the following:
a. The installation or service call free of charge, if the appointment was for an installation or service call for which a fee was to be charged; or one (1) month of the two most widely subscribed to service tiers free of charge for other appointments; or
b. An opportunity to elect remedies under Cal. Civil Code § 1722 as may be amended, if applicable.
F. Service standards.
1. Requests for service, repair, and maintenance must be acknowledged by a trained customer service representative within twenty-four (24) hours, or before the end of the next business day, whichever is earlier.
2. A cable system operator will respond to all other inquiries (including billing inquiries) within five (5) business days of the receipt of the inquiry or complaint.
3. Repairs and maintenance for service interruptions, system outages and/or substandard reception quality must be completed within twenty-four (24) hours after the outage or interruption becomes known to a cable system operator where the cable system operator has adequate access to facilities to which it must have access in order to remedy the problem.
4. Work to correct all other service problems must be begun by the next business day after notification of the service problem, and must be completed within five (5) business days from the date of the initial request.
5. Except as a franchise agreement may otherwise provide, service must be extended upon request to any prospective subscriber in a cable system operator's franchise area.
G. Subscribers with disabilities. With regard to subscribers with disabilities, upon subscriber request, each cable system operator will arrange for pickup and/or replacement of converters or other cable system operator equipment at the subscriber's address or by a satisfactory equivalent (such as the provision of a postage-prepaid mailer), without a special charge.
H. Disconnection and downgrades; voluntary.
1. A subscriber may terminate or downgrade service at any time.
2. A cable system operator will disconnect from the cable system operator cable system or downgrade any subscriber who so requests within seven (7) business days. No period of notice before voluntary termination or downgrade of cable service may be required of subscribers by any cable system system operator. There will be no charge for disconnection, and any downgrade charges will conform to applicable law. This Section does not apply to promotional contracts where a subscriber received an actual discount from standard service rates for a multi-month contract, so long as (i) the disconnect fee plus the amount paid by the customer is no higher than the amount the customer would have paid for service actually received before the disconnect request at the cable system operator's prevailing rates for the service; (ii) the disconnect fee was stated prominently and in writing, and provided to the customer before the customer began taking service; and (iii) the subscriber was given the option of disconnecting without a disconnect fee within the first fifteen (15) days after subscriber began receiving the discounted service.
3. Any security deposit and/or other funds, including interest, due a subscriber that disconnects or downgrades service will be returned to the subscriber within thirty (30) days from the date disconnection or downgrade was requested except in cases where the subscriber does not permit the cable system operator to recover its equipment, in which case the amounts owed will be paid to subscribers within thirty (30) days of the date the equipment was recovered.
I. Involuntary disconnection for non-payment.
1. A cable system operator may not disconnect a subscriber's cable service for non-payment unless:
a. The subscriber is delinquent in payment for cable service for more than sixty (60) days.
b. A separate, written notice of impending disconnection, postage prepaid, has been sent to the subscriber at least twenty (20) days before the date on which service may be disconnected, at the premises where the subscriber requests billing, which notice must identify the names and address of the subscriber whose account is delinquent, state the date by which disconnection may occur if payment is not made, and the amount the subscriber must pay to avoid disconnection, and a telephone number of a representative of the cable system operator who can provide additional information concerning and handle complaints or initiate an investigation concerning the services and charges in question.
c. The subscriber fails to pay the amounts owed to avoid disconnection by the date of disconnection.
d. No pending inquiry exists regarding the bill to which the cable system operator has not responded in writing.
2. If the subscriber pays all amounts due, including late charges and the City's utility users tax, before the time scheduled for disconnection, the cable system operator shall not disconnect service. Service may only be terminated on days in which the customer can reach a representative of the cable system operator either in person or by telephone.
3. After disconnection (except as noted below), upon payment by the subscriber in full of all proper fees or charges, including the payment of the reconnection charge and the City's utility users tax, if any, the cable system operator will promptly reinstate service.
J. Immediate disconnection.
1. A cable system operator may immediately disconnect a subscriber if:
a. The subscriber is damaging, destroying, or unlawfully tampering with or has damaged or destroyed or unlawfully tampered with the cable system operator's cable system;
b. The subscriber is not authorized to receive a service and is receiving it and/or is facilitating, aiding or abetting the unauthorized receipt of service by others; or
c. Subscriber-installed or attached equipment is resulting in signal leakage that is in violation of FCC rules.
2. After disconnection, the cable system operator will restore service after the subscriber provides adequate assurance that it has ceased the practices that led to disconnection, and paid all proper fees and charges, including any reconnect fees and all amounts owed the cable system operator for damage to its cable system. Provided that, no reconnection fee may be imposed on a subscriber disconnected pursuant to this Section if the disconnect was the result of the cable system operator's acts or omissions; or in any case unless the cable system operator notifies the subscriber of the leakage at least three (3) business days in advance of disconnection, and the subscriber has failed to correct the leakage within that time.
K. Each cable system operator must have sufficient trucks, tools, testing equipment, monitoring devices and other equipment and facilities and the trained and skilled personnel required so that cable system operator complies with each and every requirement of applicable law, including applicable customer service requirements, technical standards, maintenance standards and requirements for responding to system outages. This includes the facilities, equipment and staff required to:
1. Properly test the system and conduct an ongoing and active program of preventive maintenance and quality control;
2. Quickly respond to customer complaints and resolve system problems.
L. Each cable system operator must install and maintain equipment necessary to measure its performance with applicable customer services standards that the City may adopt from time to time after providing cable system operator opportunity to comment; except that cable system operator may obtain relief temporarily from this requirement if it shows that (i) it has a high level of subscriber satisfaction; (ii) there are alternative, adequate ways to review its performance; or (iii) for other good cause shown.
M. Knowledgeable, qualified representatives shall be available to respond to customer telephone inquiries, including multi-lingual representatives, during the hours the office is required to be open. Any automated answering equipment will provide multi-lingual alternatives. After hours, if the cable system operator uses persons to answer the phone, it will use its best efforts to provide multi-lingual alternatives. When service calls are scheduled by a non-English speaking customer, cable system operator shall offer to have the service call made by a multi-lingual representative.
N. The term "normal operating conditions" shall have the meaning specified in FCC rules provided that, in the event that a cable system operator provides customer service via a center that serves multiple communities, and an events, such as an outage, occurs in the other communities but not in the City, conditions will be deemed to be "normal operating conditions" for purposes of determining compliance with this ordinance. It is the cable system operator burden to prove that a period was not one where "normal operating conditions" existed. Absent proof satisfactory to the City, each period will be deemed to be a period where "normal operating conditions" apply. Each cable system operator must maintain records sufficient to show that a particular period was not a period where "normal operating conditions" existed in the City.
O. The term "service interruption" means the loss of picture or sound or any other significant part of a signal on one or more cable channels.
P. Changes in service. Except as otherwise provided by federal law, subscribers shall not be required to pay any additional fee or charge, other than the regular service fee, in order to receive the services selected (such as upgrade or downgrade charges). No charge may be imposed for any service or product that the subscriber has not affirmatively selected. Payment of the regular monthly bill shall not by itself constitute an affirmative selection by a subscriber.
Q. Deposits. The grantee may require a reasonable, nondiscriminatory deposit on equipment provided to subscribers. Such deposits must be placed on an interest-bearing account. The interest earned may not be less than that paid for commercial saving accounts. The deposit must be returned, with interest earned to the date of repayment, within thirty (30) days after the equipment is returned to the grantee, or the subscriber's next regular billing cycle, whichever is sooner.
R. Parental control option. The grantee must provide parental control devices to all subscribers who desire to block the video or audio portion of any programming that the subscriber finds objectionable. Such devices will be provided at no charge to the subscriber, unless otherwise required by federal law or unless a converter box is required to be installed for the purpose of providing the parental control device. If a converter box is required, only a deposit fee and installation fee may be charged.
(Ord. No. 2001-014 § 2)