Television service for some students who live in AU’s block of the Berkshire Apartments will be restored in the next day or two after some students were left without service for weeks.
The problem started when AU asked the provider of cable TV in the Berks, MDU Communications Inc., for group billing when AU blocked a group of rooms to use as housing for students this year, said Chris Moody, executive director of Housing and Dining Programs.
Instead of providing Housing and Dining with one invoice for all the rooms, bills from a collection agency were sent to individual rooms. Since cable TV was included with the fees AU charged students to live in the Berks, the students did not pay the bills. As a result, television service started to be disconnected, Moody said.
MDU provides DirecTV service to apartment buildings like the Berks. A message left with the company Wednesday was not returned by press time.
Attempts by Housing and Dining to reach MDU have been similarly unsuccessful, Moody said.
By Monday, Housing and Dining contacted DirecTV and was informed that MDU acted against company policy by not giving a 30-day notice that service was to be disconnected.
“DirecTV is upset with MDU as well,” Moody said.
By Wednesday afternoon, the department began paying each bill on a university credit card, one-by-one, through DirecTV. Moody said TV service has been returning to the rooms as soon as each bill has been paid, and the process should be completed soon.
At that point, he said, Housing and Dining will resolve their outstanding billing issues with MDU.
Because the billing period begins when each room was connected to the MDU service, the disconnections have been gradual. Additionally, some students have not lost service, Moody said.
Students at the Berks have been informed and kept updated of the situation in multiple e-mails, Moody said.
Students have also approached the two community coordinators, Jake Meek and Imani Kane, whose jobs are similar to resident directors.
Alexis Pazmino, a junior in the School of Public Affairs, said she has been without TV service since Sept. 30.
“I called [Meek] — one of the Berks Community Coordinators — immediately when I realized my TV service was disconnected,” she wrote in an e-mail. “He seemed unnecessarily pithy with me on the phone when I brought my service outage to his attention.”
“I have missed some serious season premieres because of this outage,” she added.
Because there is no common space at the Berks, like hall lounges, students have had to either find an alternate location to watch television or have been forced to watch their favorite shows on Web sites like hulu.com, Moody said.
Even though Moody felt the situation is MDU’s fault, he hopes to make it up to those who were affected.
“Once we get cable back, we want to see if there’s anything we can do to compensate,” he said.
Pazmino said compensation like an enhanced cable package would be a good start, but also feels Housing and Dining needs to apologize for other problems that residents at the Berks have had.
“I think enhancing our package would be part of an appropriate apology,” she wrote. “The other part should come from Housing and Dining in a formal letter of apology in the way they have treated residents in the Berks.”
You can reach this staff writer at eklapper@theeagleonline.com.
