Cable company...huh?

[valis2]

Those of you who read my whiny posts will remember that my apartment complex changed providers and went from Comcast (free service provided by the complex) to Broadstar (paid for by the tenants).

So I received a very strange notice on my door the other night which read:

We need access to your apartment for approximately 5 minutes on June 16th or 17th...

If you do not make an appointment, you will lose service on June 18th. Service technicians will be available through the 19th. However, if you do not make an appointment by the 19th, your service will not be restored until you make an appointment for the following week.

Then there was some weird conflicting info about how to contact them.

Well, you guys know that I must have internet service--I have eBay listings that have to go up tonight, and I have listings that have to go up tomorrow night. I can't afford an outage. So I called and scheduled an appointment.

Well, the "appointment" consisted of a teenager coming into my home, turning on my TV, watching the cable turn itself off, and then saying, "It's off," into his cell phone. Then the cable turned on, and he said, "It's on."

End of appointment.

I asked him what's up, and he said that if people don't make appointments, they're cutting them off!

Huh?! I mean, seriously, I work from home so taking off a day from work is not an issue, but what about people who can't take off work on a dime? I mean, we only got the note on Friday night. Sheesh.

Comments

[artystone.livejournal.com]

WTF?

I have to have a city inspector come and check off the permit for my new water heater. They inspect between 9 and 4 and no, "we can't tell you when they'll be there but someone over the age of 18 needs to be at the house."
Yeah right. I taped the permit to the garage door and left it open. My son, who will be "over 18" on Friday may or may not be out of bed when they show up.

There's no F'ing way I'm taking a day off work to hang around.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Isn't that crazy? I mean, I understand that they don't want to work evenings, but some advance notice is really necessary, don't you think?

And what the hell? Why was this so important? It took less than a minute.

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

I am always amazed at the careless way these companies schedule my time. There is the chimney sweep (twice a year), the central heating service, the guy reading the water meter, the cable guy... I mean, am I supposed to schedule my year's vacation for their jobs?
Sheeesh...

[valis2.livejournal.com]

This is so weird--it was 5 minutes that could have been done BY ME!! They could have just called me. "Is it on?" "Is it off?" Those are questions that I could easily have answered!

[wiccarowan.livejournal.com]

I had such a bad experience with ntl over here. Their customer service sucked donkey cocks.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Cable companies can be such bastards. I mean, so far I've noticed that they're slower than Comcast--I really think their service is satellite-fueled--but on the plus side, they answer the phone and are very helpful.

I am still suspicious about how they didn't send me any bills and I had to CALL to get them to tell me how to pay them--and the fact that they've already changed the billing cycle once, and I am now PREPAYING them for next month's cable at this point. Grr.