ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605100016
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: JEANNINE AVERSA ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's the cable industry's worst nightmare come true.
No, federal regulators are not going to order cable companies to lower their rates. But an upcoming movie, ``The Cable Guy,'' in which actor Jim Carrey plays a bungling cable TV installer, is prompting nervous handwringing in the cable industry.
The comedy from Columbia Pictures touches on the industry's Achille's heel: customer service. ``It's the last thing the industry needs right now,'' said one cable executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Through federally mandated customer service requirements and steps of its own, such as paying customers $20 for missed or late service appointments, the industry has considerably improved customer service.
Still, bad memories over shoddy customer service are hard to shed.
``We've been whipped by that,'' said Ted Turner, chief of Turner Broadcasting System Inc. ``I guess 100 years from now we'll still be carrying that.''
As a pre-emptive strike against ``The Cable Guy,'' The National Cable Television Association, the industry's main trade group, offered reporters its own cable guy.
This Continental Cablevision installer, NCTA spokesman Rich D'Amato said, not only showed up early for his appointment in Whitman, Mass., but ended up reconnecting an elderly woman to a portable oxygen tank.
``Customer service is an area where there has been a credibility gap and we will close it,'' D'Amato said.
AP-DS-04-28-96 1418E
LENGTH: Short : 43 linesby CNB