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Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > April > 15 > Entry
The case of Time Warner Cable and the mysterious Web posting
On Monday, I reported on a Google search cached page that seemed to suggest that at some point on Time Warner Cable’s Web site, there was text posted about a possible “incremental fee” that would apply to Price Lock Guarantee customers when tiered, consumption-based Internet service pricing goes into effect later this year.
Immediately after the post went up, Time Warner Cable contacted me to say that this fee did not exist and that the company was unaware where that text originated.
I asked my contact at Time Warner, Melissa Sorola, to doublecheck the information to make sure it wasn’t part of an earlier draft of a statement or had somehow inadvertently been posted to the Time Warner Web page that Google’s cached page seemed to point toward.
In the meantime, I tracked down the original blog post where that mystery section of text first came to my attention. It appeared on a New York-based blog called The Albany Report. The post, dated April 10, was written by Robert Harding, a 2008 Netroots Nation scholarship winner.
I contacted Harding by e-mail, asking where he found the text that was posted on his blog last week. He wrote, “I got that TWC statement straight from their website. Here’s the link. You will notice that TWC is referring to this as ‘consumption based billing.’ In fact, that was the title of their statement. If you Google ‘Consumption based billing’ you will find a result that will take you to the link I provided you. You can also look at the cached version, which provides the information that was included in their statement before they revised it and replaced it with an FAQ section… I copy and pasted the whole statement and that’s what I saw posted on their website as of April 10.”
Unfortunately, the Google cache was updated sometime between last night and this morning and now shows a version of the page as it existed as of April 13. The text about “incremental fees” no longer is displayed in this newly cached version.
When I, and others, viewed the Google cache page on Monday and yesterday, it clearly showed a cached page that was marked as existing on April 10, the date Harding says he copy/pasted the text. This cached version did include the “Answers to Your Questions” section and did include language about possible incremental fees for Price Lock Guarantee customers.
Google’s cache stores snapshots of Web pages as they existed at a certain point of time, but that snapshot can change to a different date as Google re-indexes the Web pages it accesses for searches.
I put in another e-mail to Time Warner yesterday asking whether it was possible the original Web page was hacked to include that text or whether it was possible that an incorrect draft of the TWC statement might have been posted inadvertently from their end.
The answer I got back was, “Again, not ours and no idea who created it.”
I tried one more time to make sure: I sent Time Warner a link to Harding’s original blog post and passed on the information that he says he cut and pasted that information directly from the Time Warner Web site on Friday.
The response: “we don’t know where this came from but these are not FAQs that came from us.”
It’s very clear that Time Warner has said it has no plans for an extra fee for Price Lock customers. The content of the text in question refers to something that is, in the end, a nonissue. But it remains a mystery where the text originated, how it ended up on a Google cache page pointing directly to Time Warner’s Web site and how Harding was able to find it online.
Edited to add, 10 a.m. Friday: Here’s a screengrab of what was in Google’s cache previously. This was sent in by a reader, but was exactly what I saw when I searched for the item myself on Monday:
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet
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By Omar Gallaga
April 17, 2009 10:22 AM | Link to this
It has been added to the bottom of the post.
By justin
April 17, 2009 8:28 AM | Link to this
Post the screen shot...they are not telling the truth...I saw it to before they changed it.
By Jackie Pogue
April 16, 2009 2:55 PM | Link to this
Omar,
Pay as you go internet usage in general may be an eventuality. Not liking it! Thanks for keeping watch.
PS 'Milk, Vampires, Oscars and Umpires' was the subject line for Public Radio Market email I received today. I thought of you!
By bikersmom
April 15, 2009 7:19 PM | Link to this
Curious about the phantom post.
Apparently the local phone company in Rochester, NY has opted to NOT got to tiered pricing after TWC made their announcement.
See msn.com Tech/Science:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30232112/
If AT&T opts to do the same, they will make a killing.
By Robert Harding
April 15, 2009 6:29 PM | Link to this
Carrie,
I would like a copy too. I think I have a snapshot of it somewhere, but just to make sure, pass it along.
You can e-mail me at robert.harding22@gmail.com.
By Carrie
April 15, 2009 4:52 PM | Link to this
I made a screenshot of this cached google page, if you would like to have a copy of it, I can email it on to you. I had a feeling this would disappear at some point and I wanted a copy :)