Cable woes

[AquaGirl]

I have cable service with the only provider around. It starts wit C and ends with r. They are awful here. I can't even tell you how messed up the bills have been, not to mention the guy who came to bury the new cable line and somehow severed it and ran-I watched him-to his car. On Easter weekend. Yeah we were without for awhile because they don't work Easter Sat. Or Sun. But no one told us that until the 5th time we called about our service call that was between 8 and 12. Ugh! Anyway. DH and I got a cable box for the bedroom when we replaced the 37 inch tv with a 55 and we now have a tv upstairs. After 2 box swaps and 2 service calls we got an honest tech who said it was a wiring issue with the townhouse and it would be a bit pricey to fix. Landlord wont do it and we're not going to so we get a bluray player with Netflix access and decide to forget it. I go to cable co to return the box. There are 2 people ahead of me in line. It takes 45 minutes. The lady who takes my return is silent and sullen and half ignores me except to say "Did you know this was your DVR?" I responded "Yes it is one of them; we had 2. We're giving this one back." I think nothing of it until I went to watch the latest recording of some real housewives ( don't judge me!) And discover that she cancelled my DVR service.

Sigh

No, it is not. a huge deal. They reinstated it easily and I didn't miss anything they wont rerun. Its just the idea that I specifically said I STILL had another DVR. I said I was giving ONE of the back and she couldn't bother to verify whether I still wanted the service? Ugh.

Bonus:

When I livetin neighboring town the landlord paid for DirecTv. He then decided to switch to cable and got us analog "Gulfstream" cable. It was not comparable and we complained based on the fact that the lease promised a certain satellite package. His solution was a break on the rent if we got our own cable boxes. That was all we were responsible for and roomie and I did it because we wanted to order some PPV and not watch everything with fuzzy on the screen. It was done sort of haphazardly; cable man goes door to door with paperwork and cable boxes for interested residents. All good.

2 years go by. Roommate (male btw) is a wrestling fan. At least 4 PPV are ordered a year. He calls in one day to place an order and the woman (she was on speakerphone since he was on hold for 10 years) asks for the account number and then says "oh, we don't have your SSN. What is it?" Now I understand that credit checks are standard for some companies but the fact is we'd had service-and paid promptly-for 2 years. So a SSN that they failed to request in the first place is really not necessary. Or my roomie thought so anyway. And he said so. So...she cancelled our service. And hung up on him. Considering that the landlord paid for the cable and we only paid for the cable box this was pretty upsetting. Fortunately a supervisor saw it our way but I have to say we were both pretty angry and I was very glad to get out of their service area.

[blas]

If this is the cable company whose name rhymes with "martyr", I totally agree with you. They are pretty damn awful.

Unfortunately, the only choice around here, save for Dish, which is not reliable any time it rains or is windy.

[Raveni]

Most cable services around here operate under franchise and access agreements. so, although you will see ads for Brighthouse, Comcast, whatever, you can only get whichever provider made the deal with the devloper who build your neighborhood years ago.

So, I got U-Verse.

[AquaGirl]

If this is the cable company whose name rhymes with "martyr", I totally agree with you. They are pretty damn awful.

Unfortunately, the only choice around here, save for Dish, which is not reliable any time it rains or is windy.

That would be the one and its all we can get too. There is nothing other than dishes which we aren't supposed to have. At&t doesn't come out this way yet.

[fma_fanatic]

I know exactly who you're talking about. I would say their name but I don't want to incur the wrath of the might cable gods.

We had them for quite some time, from about the time I moved to Missouri up until 2006 when we bought our house. We had them come out and they screwed up the moving of service to make it an install. Had to get that straightened out before the tech would do anything. We also had billing problems, but after the husband's talking to customer service (and he doesn't do that very often, so you know there's a problem when even I can't resolve it), we were fine for a while.

Then they "lost" our package. See it was a 2 year plan at a fixed rate, reserved for those who had satellite and wanted to move back to cable. But I had managed to negotiate it for us, despite not having satellite to leave. If we cancelled it, we'd have to pay an early termination fee (unless we cancelled because we were moving to an area that wasn't served by them).

So when we got our bill in the new house, everything was at full price. Nearly $200 worth of service. I was livid and went to the office to get it sorted out. The lady who helped me acted like she was doing me a favor by "finding" a better deal for me. In all honesty it wasn't any better than their current offer, but she managed to get an extra $10 knocked off because of the hassle.

That lasted all of 3 months before the bill was messed up again, so I called this time, thinking I could get it fixed.

They lost us as a customer when the sales person I was talking to said "Well if you hadn't moved, you wouldn't have these problems."

I had DirecTV out that same week (despite the nearly crippling ice storm we had blow through) and installed. DSL provided by AT&T. Good bye forever evol cable company. I'd rather cut off my arm than deal with their crap ever again.

[blas]

My biggest issue with them is the changing of their prices with no notice to you, and the fact that they keep one by one taking channels and putting them on more premium channels so you have to pay more to get them. Eventually, there won't be any channels beyond local ones if Charter has their way.

That and they push push push, upgrade upgrade, even if you call to downgrade. Because you're broke and can barely pay as it is. And their reps "But Ma'ame, for only $10 more a month, you can get upgraded to faster internet!" No, you fucking moron, I said DOWNGRADE. "But Ma'ame, this is a really great deal!"...."I called to DOWNGRADE!", so then they try to sucker you in by offering you "free" upgrades or x many months of a lower price deal.....only to have it NEVER be free, within months your bill is jacked way up, or you never do get the promised price, and when you call to complain, all their reps do is still push you to buy more services or upgrade! Funny thing is, if you call at certain times, you get the main office that is local, and those people are just wonderful and are willing to help you and make things right.

[PepperElf]

If this is the cable company whose name rhymes with "martyr", I totally agree with you. They are pretty damn awful.

I forgot about them. I was thinking of "dirty water" myself.

[Teysa]

We deal with these people too. We went with their bundle service last year when SO got fed up with AT&T. It was a comedy of errors just getting everything installed. Tech wanted to charge us extra to fish a cable through the wall even though all he had to do was move the couch two inches. Heck I was able to move the couch that far and I'm not strong by any stretch of the imagination.

We finally got everything hooked up only to find out we had no phone service. A couple calls from the SO on my cell phone later, we got that fixed.

All I can say is, I really hope Uverse has made it this way when our contract ends next year.

[Hyndis]

Ugh. Verizon is also absolutely horrible.

It seriously took the local police getting involved before Verizon did anything and actually fixed the phone lines.

Problem was that static on the lines could cause a phone connection to randomly dial. Well, it was just a matter of time before the police were alerted due to random dialings...

I have never seen Verizon move so fast.

This was reported at 3am, after I had been awoken by police knocking on the door. They were not happy about this and I was not happy about this. The Verizon repair guy was there at 8am.