Safety issue with Shaw cable.?

Question

I have a huge cable line running from the box outside my house through my front yard over my fence, through my back yard, over my shed, and then through the next doors lawn. We have called shaw beacuse this is a huge pain in the butt to mow my lawn, plus my kids can hang themselves or trip on it while playing outside. They have said they will call us back and still nothing. We have been waiting seince June of last year for other issues we have. And we do call them alot but we always get the same story, "we will call you back". Anyone else I can call? Or what should I do about this? If I cut the line I am I liable for damages?

Answer 1

That is outrageous , You should march down to your shaw office and speak to the manager as well as take pictures with you if thats what it takes. Safety first.

Answer 2

I would think that if you own your property and they have their cable laying across your property in a dangerous way you can disconnect it and move it to another area away from your house. I once had a similar problem on my property, I had called the cable company ( not Shaw) and got the same response, the  cable line was an old one," disconnected" They said they would send someone out, they didn't, so I cut the line off at the telegraph pole and that was that, to this day no one from the cable company did anything about it and that was over 8 years ago. good luck!

Answer 3

This seems to be outrageous, especially if it has been there for a long time.

If it was only there over the winter it could be that they are waiting for the ground to thaw enough and then they will bury the cable.

I had a poor experience with Shaw,  but there was less cable, and it did not go over a shed, but there was the identical concern about safety that Shaw kept ignoring, despite me and my wife calling them many times, and their ignoring us.

.

I don't recall how much time passed while they ignored us, but they finally paid attention.

I called them on the phone at 9AM one day and asked for the manager. I gave no indication of anger at all, but said I was offering a special service that would improve the safety of residents in the area.

I explained the safety hazards on my property that were similar to what you just described, and said if they would care to come by my house after 5PM that day they could take away a free sample of neighbourhood safety improvement, which would be in the form of a more than a hundred feet of coiled cable that I was going to collect from my property.

They tried to tell me about liability if I damaged their cable and I told them that this was not even a nominal concern as the inconvenience for a few people to not be able to watch TV was irrelevant when compared with the very real legal liability that I faced, because if anyone were to trip on the cable while it was running across the surface of my property and be injured then I faced the possibility of a huge lawsuit for personal damage that could run into many thousands of dollars.  

That was  a totally true statement, because I am responsible for anything hazardous that is on my property.  I told them the potential of personal damage was very real because it could literally happen anytime and the amount of liability facing me far outweighed a temporary inconvenience to cable customers or the insignificant  cost it would take for Shaw to do any repairs,  In any event, I was offering to hand the cable back to them and they could use it anywhere else they chose for the cost of about $1.00 in cable connectors

They suggested they could re-connect it so I added that if I cut the cable off and Shaw tried to put it back then I would ask the police to intervene and Shaw would be forbidden access to my property to run the hazardous cable back over it and I would even ask a local newspaper to cover it.

A Shaw supervisor came to my house within two hours and asked me to please be patient as they had to schedule a crew to do the work. The cable crew arrived the next day.

I think that sometimes you just have to take a stand for what you believe is truly right.

And while you have to be polite in saying what you need to say, you have to really mean what you say.