Saturday, January 19, 2008

Two steps forward, one step back...

First let me say that the dentist was a fantastic success and Elizabeth was regaled as The Best Three Year Old Patient We Have Ever Seen!
Officially. There was a ceremony and everything...

Moving on...
The truck windshield was replaced. Huzzah!
What is the over/under on how many days before it gets another cinder ding? I think 45 is nice and safe. I'll start saving my money for another deductible payment now.

Moving further on to the abysmal part of the day...
I just spent 40 minutes on the phone with the cable company because it is populated with morons and mouth breathers.
Seriously.
Is it a requirement that you have to have dropped out of the sixth grade to get a job there answering phones? Or is it just appreciated?
I had to call the numbskulls because today (a Saturday) they sent a technician out to disconnect our cable (dumping us down to just the network channels) because apparently for the entire time we've lived here we've only been paying for those 10 channels and not the 40+ that we had until about noon today.
Three and a half YEARS.
Never mind that they didn't call us say yesterday and point out that they made an error in billing or whathaveyou (we certainly didn't shimmy up the cable pole to steal Lifetime) they just sent someone out to lock our cable line.
Fine. Whatever. Proceeeedure.

I figured I'd take the opportunity to switch our phone over to the cable service too, since it would end up actually SAVING us (even with the fancy cable) at least $40 a month AND we could then pay the cable, phone and internet bills all in person, the way we like to.

You'd think it'd be relatively simple, right...
You'd be so freaking wrong!
Remember, 40 minutes on the phone.

First off, I got the cable operator from hell. She kept breathing hard into the phone and hurting my ear. I swear, I thought I was gonna catch something!
Then when it got down to setting up the dates for everything to get flicked on...ugh...
This is where it HELPS the cable company to hire SMART people.

The woman on the line told me that because we had to get the cable hooked back up and acquire the phone number from our old phone company (which apparently is a 14 day hassle), we'd have to do it all in one appointment TWO WEEKS FROM NOW.
No way can my kids live without Spongebob and Lazlo for two weeks.
So I said, can't they just come out and flick the cable back on and THEN come out once the phone number is settled and flick that on too.

No.

Apparently, it's not proceeeeeeedure.
Or I could pay $30 for a service call and then it is proceeeeeeeedure.
After what seemed like 300 years of trying to explain that they were JUST here and now I've signed up to pay for the cable they JUST took away, can't they come RIGHT BACK and put it BACK THE FREAK ON?!?!?

No.
That's not the proceeeeeeeeeedure.
Actually, what she said was "We can't send the technician out there, just because you WANT him there."
Huh?
Did they forget who pays what for what? I'm the customer. You give ME the service. I no likey, I go elsewhere...you dig?

Anyway...
Then she said she couldn't even set up an appointment for the technician to come out because I'd have to call the local office. Which incidentally, I had, they re-routed me to the giant call center...stupid giant call center...

Another 100 years of her stupidity and I finally asked to talk to someone else because she was totally confusing me.
Her plan was we cancel the switch of the phone service and THEN she COULD magically schedule me a cable hook up appointment and THEN I would have to call AGAIN to get the phone hooked up after that.
Stupid.

The new girl wasn't much smarter. She tried to tell me that the other girl was giving me "options"

"No she was not! She was not making any sense and if you THINK that she was making sense than you don't understand me either. I want to get my cable turned on ASAP then you come back and switch the phone whenever."

Then cable girl no. 2 tried to tell me that is exactly what cable girl no. 1 said she was going to do...
Uh, what?

"No. That's exactly what she said I could NOT do, but whatever. That's what I want, if that's what you're going to do, then great."

"Do you have any other questions?" cable girl no. 2 asked me.

"Uh, no. You don't even understand what I'm saying now, but it's fine."

Then they transferred me to the automated switcheroo your phone service machine and that was that...

Now...I wonder if anything will go as planned....
Or, at least as I THINK it was planned.
I'm not sure.
Those two dumb bitches sure confused the shit out of me.

5 comments:

Bern said...

Procedures it seems. Bleh. More like uncommon sense.

I hate talking to stupid people on the phone because they like to turn the tables around and make you feel like the stupid one.

Good luck and hope it goes smoothly for you.

Jason said...

This is why I really enjoyed firing Time Warner the other day.

eaf said...

We had a guy come into the library and try to convince me to enter his resume into an online application for him. He wanted me to do this because he "has a disability" that "keeps him from being able to type." He then told me he was applying for a job at a major cable company. Let's just call them "Tune Warmer" shall we?

Anyhoo, I asked him if he couldn't just go there and apply in person, as Federal Laws protect people with disabilities from being discriminated against, blah blah blah. He said no, they wouldn't let him. So I called them.

When I FINALLY got through to someone in HR, she assured me that they do not, in fact, take applications in person. I explained that this gentleman has a disability and cannot type, but he feels he meets the job requirements. She asked me what job he was applying for. I told her. She said that job required 40 WPM because he would have to file reports on a laptop.

When I passed this info on to him, he said, "Well, I can TYPE if I have to..."

Then he had the good grace to blush, stammer, and walk out of the building.

Personally, I think he would have fit right in at ole TW, don't you?

Joan said...

Jessey, before you switch to cable phone... We had a big power outage here 2 weeks ago, and the news paper had an article talking about how people with cable phone service couldn't use their phones when the power was out. (the cable line needs power to work...)So unless you have cell service where you live, the cable phone line might be a bad deal...

Jessica said...

I thought of that...and we do have cell service so it shouldn't be a big deal.
Frankly we don't get or make many phone calls to begin with and we were thinking of doing away with the landline phone altogether.
Which may STILL be an option on the table.
Really, the only reason we're keeping it for now is that Bob has had many side jobs where the only number the person has to get in touch with him is our home phone. Otherwise...I'm not even sure we'd keep it.
Ah technology!