Proposal
The primary goal is to provide a central location for users to sign up for a petition, which intended purpose is two fold. First, is to show, in numbers, the count of users that are against Time Warners implementation of caps. The second, and this is the real meat of it, is users to who are prepared to pledge their support and implement the cancellation of their Time Warner service at such time as Time Warner implements said caps.Time Warner is giving us lies and deceptive marketing as to the reason behind these motivations. They feed us false information as justification to raise prices in areas where they are basically the only game in town, thus monopolizing the market. They will deny that this is an attempt to control the Internet usage of its customers, which is specificly, at this time, believed to be targeted at file sharers (both legal and illegal), high media content users, such as users of such services as Netflix, YouTube, and other services that compete with their sub-standard cable offerings, and users who are unintentionally providing internet service through unsecured mechanisms such as firewalls. While group three is obviously a problem, it is well outside the scope of Time Warners legal abilities to police the activities, both illicit and legal, of groups 1 and 2.
The idea behind this is simple. We, the customers, will stand together and force them to realize that while they believe they can make more money by implementing caps, by uniting and canceling our services when the caps are implemented, that we will cost them a great deal more money. For users like me, this represents a breach of contract on the part of Time Warner cable in their 2-year Price Lock Guarantee, and is representative of the bad faith that they show torwards their customers. They can point to the fine print all they like, fact of the matter is, they are changing the terms, and not in good faith, and without proper prior notification.
The problem is, if people cancel intermittently, or as they hear about the issue without a single, unified point of time, the cancellation just blends in with the normal flow of business. To them, its "just another cancellation", and the reason for cancellation isn't apparent.
With that said, there will be two types of sign ups. One is for users who are just showing support. The second will be for users who will be notified by email when the time is right to cancel their service.
There is a reason I have decided to make this protest available in two types of participation. The reality is that while petitions are a good way to show solidarity, they are basically the proverbial "bark with no bite". Large companies, when implementing policies as such, have an "acceptable level of loss", and consider those customers who leave unwanted and undesirable. The cost increased passed on to the remaining customers will more than make up for the ones who leave. Therefore, in order to make this work, we need to have more people than is acceptable to Time Warner.
The problem is, not everyone will want to participate on that level, for various reasons. Either they are distrusting and do not want to expose their email addresses due to privacy concerns, which is understandable, or they are not willing to go stay the course and cancel when called upon. They may want to show support, but not actually participate in the final cancellation.
This is the reason why I have provided two types of signatures, those who want to "opt-in" for the boycott, and those who just want to show support. By signing the petition, you show support. By opting in for the boycott, you are doing something about it. If enough people do something about it, we can squash this effort.