MyServices Backend Down in Raleigh, Wilmington NC This Weekend

This is not going to be my favorite blog post that I’ve ever written, but it’s important that our North Carolina customers understand the following:

We are going to be doing some streamlining and routine maintenance on our billing systems in Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina this Friday evening at 8 PM EST. This will require us to disable the MyServices portal and all Web-based authentication systems tied to the portal.

This will result in a temporary inconvenience for our customers in Raleigh and Wilmington, who will be unable to access the MyServices portal, use our new iPad app, or use our Remote DVR Manager or VoiceZone™ applications to schedule recording from a computer or mobile device. We anticipate that the work will be completed by Sunday evening.

The most likely issue that customers should see will be failure to successfully login. Pre-registered customers (those who already have user names and passwords) will receive an error message when using MyServices, Remote DVR, or the iPad app. iPad app customers will see an admittedly confusing error message that says “the programming you have requested is available only when you are accessing this video service in your home.”

We are aware that this is the same erroneous error message that customers were receiving earlier in the week, and it’s a little confusing . We’re sorry for that, but for the time being we can’t create region-specific iPad app error messages.

Also, customers who are attempting to register for a user name and password (whether on iPad or on the MyServices portal) will be unable to do so until Sunday evening once service has been restored.

However, affected customers will still be able to view and record content on their DVRs using their cable box remote control the old-fashioned way, and shouldn’t experience any disruption in cable or DVR service. Any previously scheduled DVR recordings will complete as scheduled, so there’s nothing to worry about.

We’re really sorry for the inconvenience here, too. This is a necessary step to streamline operations and move towards more converged Web-based services so that we can deliver bigger and better stuff in the future.

Categories: Customer Care, Fact-Checking, In the Community, Outages/Service Issues