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Holy crap. We need some fence work done. Home Depot wants three thousand fucking dollars for two gates, six feet of vinyl fencing and 42 feet of chain link fencing. Three thousand dollars! We’re having central air put in for not that much more than that! Home Depot installers are bastards.
Bastards I say.
I got a call from Cablevision, my soon to be cable/phone/internet provider saying that Charter Communications wasn’t allowing them to port my phone number because I had called Charter to cancel my service. Charter had to get in one last sucker punch on me before I kick their sorry asses to the curb.
What? I can’t change my phone number because I’m switching services?
If this was girlfriends, the rules would work the following way:
If you break up with your old girl friend, then you can not get a new one. You can not break it off with your old girl friend until you are into a new relationship. Hey, wait a second, that’s how I found my wife…
On the other side of things, I’d give customer service another F for lack of communication within the organization. The woman I spoke to asked me why anyone else I had spoken to didn’t tell me about the canceled service thing before I got up the chain of command to her. She was the first person I’d spoken to about my issue. No wonder Charter Communication has a poor record with the Better Businesss Bureau and newspaper articles claim it’s the company St. Louis Loves to Hate. I hate them too, but for another two weeks I have to put up with their crap.
Apparently lots of people hate Charter, and it’s wel known. A St. Louis Today column includes an interview with an ex-employee which says that Charter lies to their customers, which isn’t surprising at all.
Today I will call and cancel my service with Charter Communications. This has been a long time coming. I’ve held out because the other cable provider in town is Cablevision, and while I want their service, I’ve been boycotting it because of how the Dolan family has destroyed the New York Knicks franchise. But I just can’t argue anything when it comes to their HD channels. Charter didn’t even have ABC in HD, let along Discovery, my9, CW, ESPN, ESPN2, and National Geographic.
My fights with Charter have been well documented on the blog. At the end of the month, these fights end. I’m dome calling their crappy customer service and dealing with their incompetent idiots on the other end of the line. Not to say that Cablevision is gonna be great, but I’m going to revel in the fact that it’s not Charter.
At 12:58, I’m beginning to cancel…
First, some back story.
So when we moved into the house, I went batshit crazy trying to get Charter Communications to install my cable. It took almost two weeks longer than they said it would. They sent multiple differen trucks, each one telling us that they couldn’t install our cable because they needed a bucket truck/cherry picker in order to properly install the cable to the house.
We called a competitor and scheduled an appointment. Our house is on a town line and we have the opportunity to go with a different company. I don’t like Cablevision and I don’t want to contribute any money to the Dolan family, nor do I want to support their demolition of the New York Knicks franchise. I let Charter know that I called Cablevision and scheduled an appointment. If they missed the next appointment, I’d be going with Cablevision and that was that.
They eventually did send someone who was willing to break the law to install our cable. It’s a long story, but it involves the Bridgeport police who are stationed right across the street from us unwilling to cross the street into Trumbull to help us out for five minutes. The guy got up on a ladder on a utility pole and installed it anyway. I could have kissed him.
So what happened this time?
So an asshole plowed through our fence on Saturday. Only hit our corner, but he knocked down the utility pole, taking our electricity, phone, cable and internet with it. Electricity was back within 7 hours of the pole getting knocked down. They put a brand new pole up and hooked up our house with no problems. I waited until Sunday morning to cal about the cable, knowing that it was going to be a painful process. They assured me that they would have our services restored within 24 hours. If it’s more than 24 hours, they will lower my bill for the month. At 5:17 today, my bill is lowered this month.
At 9:37 I got a cal this morning that we were next in line to get our service re-installed. Sweet. Amber’s home today and when you HAVE to be home, it feels like you’re trapped. especially when you’ve got no cable or internet. With this in ind I called at 11:30 to mke sure that someone was coming to the house and Amber hasn’t been sitting around all day for nothing. Apparently they were delayed (but never called) and they still hadn’t began to leave for the house. After a 31:52 conversation, I found out a few things.
The woman I spoke with (Sheryl at the Help Desk) is smarter than their technicians. after reading my issue witht he pole being knocked over, she had two things to say. One was “that must have been quite an accident.” the sceond was “It’s obvious that they would need a bucket truck in order to get to the pole. They had to know that and the technician will be driving one.”
I opted to wait on the line until she found out. Sheryl is smarter than the technicians or whoever set up the appointment because they didn’t send a bucket truck this morning. They sent a guy in a van. She called and made sure that someone will come with a bucket truck.
So we’ll see. This is the third time I have had a major problem with Charter Communications. I hate that company.
I Hate Charter Communications. By the way, if you read that, they upgraded all service to 5Mbps anyway.
