Many of you who read rAVe regularly work for what’s typically referred to as a “value-added” reseller. And you live by those words.

You may just re-sell AV gear, but the value you add is immense. This includes everything from advice on how a piece of AV gear can solve a work-flow problem to building complete room systems by using your intellectual expertise on how to make things work together to make a seamless classroom or meeting room, one that anyone can walk-in and use.

And, some of you even integrate products into turn-key system solutions that are purpose-built; for example, building a portable AV system for a hospital that can process patients, can be used to educate them on a drug or disease and can be used as a video-on-demand-like entertainment system — all the while capable of being portable and pushed from room to room as needed.

Or, maybe you take a commodity, like a projector, and use it as the backbone of a museum display, a planetarium system or integrate them into classroom on a college campus and make them capable of being connected to via anyone — an instructor or even a student.

You see, adding value can be as simple as knowing how to make things work together, providing a solution — or it can be as complex as taking hundreds of AV components and putting them together to build a room system. Even something as simple as answering a question on a product specifications or features can be considered as adding value. Sometimes, that’s all a customer really needs — to know that something can be used the way they want to or how to make something work.

In fact, adding value doesn’t have to be complex. For example, you could argue that Amazon.com adds value by letting you see customer comments on products they sell, eBay adds value by letting you see seller reviews and even Netflix adds value by using the information about what movies or TV shows you’ve watched and enjoyed to recommend some you may not have heard of that you might like.

But, hopefully, none of you reading this work for Time Warner Cable, which is the definition of non-value-added company (hereby dubbed N-VARs).

Why do I say this?

Well, let’s take an in-depth look and we’ll even explore a personal experience:

The service of providing me with the ability to watch TV isn’t of value to me. That’s something I can get from everyone from Netflix to DirecTV to AT&T U-Verse to Hulu. Back when I was in high school, it was of value to me as there was only one option to watch TV — the antennae. But now, there’s more to choose from.

So, when Time Warner considers itself a value-added service company because they provide you with a cable box, it is woefully misguided. In fact, all it is doing is giving you access to its network of TV stations — and even decided, for you, what’s the best way to watch them. For example, it decided who gets channel 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and even channel 100.

But, really, what is TWC doing? Is this really of service to me? And, even if it is, is there some inherent “value” in Time Warner providing me TV shows to watch over Hulu, Netflix of DirecTV? I think not. I think, in fact, they are doing me a great dis-service by deciding, for me, what channels go where. You really want to provide me a service? Let me decide what goes where.

But, I am getting ahead of myself — because all this is assuming it works flawlessly.

So let’s back up.

If you’ve ever made an appointment to get Time Warner to install something, my condolences. Clearly it’s already jacked up the install price the $20 it will, no doubt, credit you for when the technicians show up late (if they show up at all). TWC will assign you two- to four-hour windows for installing the “service,” but they will be late. So, count on it. If you’re like me, you’ll experience an even sadder scenario where they not only come late, but, they won’t bother to call you to let you know what’s going on — or when they will in fact show up.

In my ridiculously example, they not only didn’t show up, didn’t call, but waited until I had called them three times the day after the scheduled install time to “apologize” for not showing up and assigning an all-new, four-hour install window. That, too, was missed (yes, they did miss two different scheduled install times and days) and, you guessed it, no phone call.

So, I started Tweeting at them. But, this was not successful either — the folks monitoring Twitter couldn’t do anything for me as they were trained only to respond to sales-oriented tweets from people asking questions about Dish Network or DirecTV (and why they should or should not choose Time Warner instead.

Answer for future reference: NEVER, EVER, EVER choose Time Warner if you can help it.

On day 3, Time Warner’s installer (let’s call him Mr. Grumpy) showed up and told me it wasn’t his fault he was late (oh, did I mention Mr. Grumpy showed up after his four-hour window too??) as the rain hampered his last install and his cell phone wasn’t working for him to call and give me the “I’m going to be late because…” courtesy call.

Mr. Grumpy did end up getting my high-speed internet installed (Oh, you thought I was using Time Warner for TV? No, I use DirecTV, the definition of value-added TV.) and after telling me my brand-new Apple Airport Extreme was going to provide a funnel for bandwidth (meaning, would slow down the ‘quality of service’ that Time Warner delivers – no, the irony of the word “quality” was not lost on me) and that I should call the Time Warner office and schedule them to come out and replace my cable modem with one “designed to work with the high-speed network that Time Warner has,” thus, provide me with a better pipe than Apple’s Airport Extreme.

Uh, no thanks.

Time Warner, you suck. Everything about you sucks. Your customer service (or, maybe it should rightfully be called disservice), your on-time guarantee, your in-field service and the quality of service you deliver (consistency) all suck. You are on the verge of becoming irrelevant with the way TV can be delivered via everything from the AppleTV to the new Google Chromecast and all the other IPTV devices coming along. And, I, for one, can’t wait until the day you go away.

You are only surviving thanks to the thousands of monopolistic cities you “own” and bully into making sure no one else has the ability to provide high-speed internet service. But, that, too, will end. Like the assault on TV from the likes of Netflix, Apple, Google and soon, Amazon and Facebook, high-speed Internet will turn to a free and open market and you will, eventually, see the same fate as Western Union and Morse Code.

So, more power to the value-added service providers like, well, any company in America except Time Warner Cable.