Earlier this month, James Dolan's Madison Square Garden Company drew fire when we revealed it was demanding all its New York City-area employees, many of whom were still suffering the damages of Hurricane Sandy, to either report to work or use their vacation time. Today, Dolan's other company, Cablevision, is taking a similar tack when it comes to having sympathy for Sandy's victims.

According to the New York Daily News, Cablevision is "sticking with its longstanding policy that requires customers to call and specifically detail when they lost service in order to qualify for a refund." In other words, while nearly 60,000 New Yorkers are still living without electricity, and thus nothing to power their cellphones or landlines, Cablevision expects everyone to call them and tell them the exact length of their cable outage, or else get charged.

By contrast, Time Warner Cable has agreed to automatically provide credits to its customers in the areas where the power, internet, and cable were knocked out by the storm. Says John Quibley, Time Warner's regional vice president of operations in New York, "By posting credits automatically to customers' accounts in the hardest hit parts of our service area, we hope these affected residents and businesses will have one less call to make as they recover from the storm."

Time Warner Cable: Pretty bad, but not total monsters.

Update: Cablevision spokesperson Jim Maiella reached out to me with the following statement:

Our policy is designed to ensure that our customers receive the full credit they are entitled to, including any period of time when our services were not available because electrical power was out. Customers can call or visit www.optimum.net/credit to quickly process their credit.

[Image via AP]