Neighbor cut through our cable line while cutting the grass

[torinsmom]

We left for a party yesterday around 2 and the last thing we did was turn the tv off. Got home at 9 and had no internet or tv. Called the cable company(TWC) thinking there was an outage, but they said no, and scheduled an appt for tomorrow afternoon. This morning I went out where our cable is attached and goes underground and 2 lines are cut right in half. Neighbor's grass is freshly mown. I am hoping TWC does not charge for the new line, because if so, I am going to have to talk to my neighbor about it. She is a single mom as well, and I'm sure she doesn't have money to spare, but the line is in her yard and whoever cut the grass did the damage to it. We are in withdrawal today, but I am "borrowing" someone else's wireless on my porch

 

[disykat]

IMO, this would not be the neighbor's fault but the cable companies fault. Our cable company didn't bury our line properly (It's actually on the nieghbor's property) and I worry all the time it will get mowed over. It's been 5 years and we've got it pretty well buried now, but if it gets mowed over it won't be our fault!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Why isn't the cable buried?

We have gone round and round with that issue in a couple of different homes.

First house, neighbor roto tilled it up. He was a jerk so cable wrote it off.

House in TX they refused to acutally bury the cables for a YEAR. It was a circus of people coming out and telling me they would send someone to work on it.

They had the cables on the ground and stringing along the fence lines.

We would call them and they would insist it was fixed. The level of pass the buck was atrocious.

 

[Ceila]

We left for a party yesterday around 2 and the last thing we did was turn the tv off. Got home at 9 and had no internet or tv. Called the cable company(TWC) thinking there was an outage, but they said no, and scheduled an appt for tomorrow afternoon. This morning I went out where our cable is attached and goes underground and 2 lines are cut right in half. Neighbor's grass is freshly mown. I am hoping TWC does not charge for the new line, because if so, I am going to have to talk to my neighbor about it. She is a single mom as well, and I'm sure she doesn't have money to spare, but the line is in her yard and whoever cut the grass did the damage to it. We are in withdrawal today, but I am "borrowing" someone else's wireless on my porch

I'm having a really hard time picturing how your cable line could have been cut by a lawn mower. Ours attaches to our house, so a neighbor couldn't possibly cut the line while mowing unless they came on to our property. How is yours set up?

ETA: Nevermind, the previous posters explained it. I've never had that kind of problem - I thought the lines were always buried.

 

[msjprincess]

imo, this would not be the neighbor's fault but the cable companies fault. Our cable company didn't bury our line properly (it's actually on the nieghbor's property) and i worry all the time it will get mowed over. It's been 5 years and we've got it pretty well buried now, but if it gets mowed over it won't be our fault!

ita

 

[dawson5]

My husband has weed-whacked ours a few times now. They usually just replace it, no charge. What they have finally done is to put a metal pipe around it, so it can no longer be hit with the weed-whacker. (They feed the line through and it goes into the ground.) We have Comcast, not sure if TWC would do the same.

 

[torinsmom]

Ours runs from a box beside the electric pole. The lines come out of there and are buried starting maybe a foot over. So there is maybe a foot of cable before each cable is underground. There are three cables and two are cut. The third has the metal wires showing where the plastic covering was shaved off.The pole is on my neighbor's property, so I never cut there. I may ask her after this if I can be responsible for the area around the pole. Even if the cable company pays it is a hassle. I don't know how they'll fix it without having to dig up the whole area where it is buried, up to my house. Maybe they can splice it together somehow? I really don't know how they got close enough to that pole to cut the wires. I wasn't here, so maybe it was someone they hired who was using a weed whacker.

 

[dawson5]

You don't want it spliced. What they've done is re-run the line from the house to the junction box and a few days later bring out the trencher with the line attachment and bury it. (We have had it sit on top of the grass for six months. I finally had to call them about it. They replaced the line in winter once, we kept dropping signal on the internet and they traced it to a nick on the line of the coaxial cable.)

If you have VoiP, a spliced line could introduce static on the line. It might be a hassle, but from a quality of service perspective, it's best they replace the line. They've also replaced all our lines with the larger coaxial cables.

ETA: One of the reasons our cables aren't properly in the junction box, is because of the thicker coax cable. They don't bend the way the older lines did, along with being larger/thicker.

 

[torinsmom]

Well, TWC called and they are coming today. I didn't even know they worked on Sundays, but I'm not complaining! This will be much better than tomorrow, when I would have had to leave school early to come meet them here.

 

[golfgal]

I would certainly hope that your cable company doesn't charge anyone for this. This set up sounds like they are asking for trouble. . It's just goofy.

If it isn't on your property I don't know how they could really charge you anyway. I know here any lines outside of the house are the responsibility of the cable company to maintain. Back when we had cable and were having issues one of their "solutions" was to trench a new line, digging up our driveway part of our lawn to do so. We would not have had to pay for that or the repair work to the driveway, etc.

 

[torinsmom]

I would certainly hope that your cable company doesn't charge anyone for this. This set up sounds like they are asking for trouble. . It's just goofy.

If it isn't on your property I don't know how they could really charge you anyway. I know here any lines outside of the house are the responsibility of the cable company to maintain. Back when we had cable and were having issues one of their "solutions" was to trench a new line, digging up our driveway part of our lawn to do so. We would not have had to pay for that or the repair work to the driveway, etc.

This must happen fairly often, b/c the first thing the guy asked me after he confirmed there were no outages was if I had just mowed the grass. It was 9pm, so obviously not, but when I saw my neighbor's grass was short this morning, I knew before I even checked. I am a little upset that they didn't come and tell us it happened. I don't think the mower sliced through three lines without them hearing or seeing. These are the big coaxial lines.

 

[golfgal]

This must happen fairly often, b/c the first thing the guy asked me after he confirmed there were no outages was if I had just mowed the grass. It was 9pm, so obviously not, but when I saw my neighbor's grass was short this morning, I knew before I even checked. I am a little upset that they didn't come and tell us it happened. I don't think the mower sliced through three lines without them hearing or seeing. These are the big coaxial lines.

I could see it possibly happening if the grass was long and covered the cables, especially if you were not paying close attention. Those mower blades can slice off a foot if you aren't careful, some cable lines aren't going to bother a mower.

 

[LuvsDragonflies]

Wait...they just leave the line laying across the yard???

 

[tvguy]

Wait...they just leave the line laying across the yard???

When I got Comcast, 1 installer came and hooked up everything in the house, and from the spigot at the street to the house, but the wire was left on the ground.
A second crew came several days later and buried the wire, and severed my sprinkler lines in the process . If they had a V shaped tool that they put in the ground, spread the ground, put the wire in, and stomped on it with their boots to close the opening up.

That was the first of many instances where I got Comcasted, which is why I have had Dish Network for the past 11 years.

 

[LuvsDragonflies]

Ah, more quality. Kinda makes me glad mine still swing in the breeze.

 

[Magic Mom]

How is she supposed to mow if your cable line is laying in her yards?

 

[kaytieeldr]

It's not laying in the neighbor's yard. The cable sounds like it comes down the pole but instead of going straight down into the ground, about a foot is angled out before being buried. The lawnmower sliced two of the three cables and nicked the third one - in just the foot or so of exposed cable.

 

[torinsmom]

How is she supposed to mow if your cable line is laying in her yards?

It's always been like that. Hers is there too, but I guess she only cut mine, because we could see her tv through the window. The cables come straight down the electric pole and then are buried about a foot from the pole. That's probably the closest they could get with the equipment when they buried the cable. If it was me, I wouldn't mow there, I'd spray the grass with weed killer or pull the little bit of grass that grows by hand. The pole is on the right of way, so technically it is not on either of our properties. It is over the line, so I assumed it is her property, but the cable guy told me it is on the right of way. There is one cable laying there, probably 3 feet of it unburied, but the cable guy didn't know which neighbor it belonged to. That one was shaved off some, but noone has reported lost cable, so I guess it is still functional.

I am just happy they guy came out on a Sunday. My neighbor and I were actually on a splitter, which was very old. He took that off and hooked us both directly to the main box. Now I have a better signal than ever, and she should too. I just need to remember to talk to my neighbor, and make sure she knows what happened, so we can make a plan to prevent it happening again. Like I said, I don't mind taking care of that area at all.

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

Glad you got it fixed!
If it is actually not on your neighbor's property, but on a right-of-way, then I would definitely be spraying all around it with Round Up to make sure it stays visible in the future.

 

[golfgal]

Glad you got it fixed!
If it is actually not on your neighbor's property, but on a right-of-way, then I would definitely be spraying all around it with Round Up to make sure it stays visible in the future.

Or putting in some pavers or landscaping that looks nice if it is in your front yard where everyone will see it.