The Malcontent is back.
He makes the smart* things I say look like the congealed leavings of a retarded monkey.
*If you count me talking about pooping my pants a “smart” thing, then we’re on the same page.
Archive for August 19th, 2005
We’ve had our problems with cable.
First, we called Comcast and they were offering some sweet deals. We called Millennium with said sweetness, and Millennium matched the deal. Comcast offered a free install upon hearing this, and I told them to go at it.
Then Comcast couldn’t find my house. They were asking me questions like, “Are you living there? Do you know the house is actually there? Is the house built yet?” and I kept telling them things like, “Hey, stupid. Shut-up. Of course I live there you idiots. What? WHAT? Are you all this dumb or did they send you to a special Dumb school for dumbening?”. Finally after 2 weeks they said they’d have to send someone out to my house to verify that it was where ANY FUCKING MAP WOULD CLEARLY SHOW THEM IT WAS, and I told them not to bother.
Millennium, the other cable company, sent someone out right away and he had that sweet sweet electronic heroin tube running from the wall to the TV set in no time. The only problem was that there was still no signal. He went out and checked the connections for a whole bunch of stuff and determined that the fence between my yard and my neighbor’s yard had severed the cable when it had been constructed. Apparently the woman was to lazy to notify the cable company so she just signed up for satellite instead.
(If you feel like you’ve read this before, you have. I’m just too lazy to link to the old blog post, and there’s more story to tell, and it’s easier with the story all together.)
So the cable guy called Miss Utility, a service in Maryland that has to be called before anyone can do any construction so they miss (get it) buried utilities like power lines, gas, or cable. I guess my neighbor didn’t call before she put the fence in. So Miss Utility came out, gave the okay, and the next day the cable company came and buried the cable that had been running over our deck and across our yard. But no one installed our internet. So now we had TV and no internet and His Noodleness knows how badly I need the internet for my pornography research (I plan to download every piece of online smut I can find. It’s not for the weak-hearted. The Smurf porn put me off all blue food for months. I still can’t look at blueberries without vomiting a little in my mouth.).
Just about that time we get a bill for the cable, and internet, and the install fee. So I calls up Millennium and I says to Millennium, I says, “You guys are charging me an install fee for an installation that hasn’t been completed, and internet that is non-existent.” So the guy dropped everything on our bill except the pro-rated basic cable so that our first month’s bill came to about 8 bucks as opposed to 60. Then he scheduled a time for the internet to be hooked up. I was happy. I actually didn’t mind that I’d been on and off of hold as he fixed the problem for 35 minutes.
The cable internet guy showed up at about 9:30am (his window was 8 to 11) and got started. He had just about everything going in no time considering that his work order showed a lot less work than he actually had to do. Prepare for huge aside…
ASIDE!!
(I was speaking to the cable internet guy and he informed me of why they use such a large window of time for installations.
Miscommunication.
The customer on the phone can’t articulate what they want to the service rep, the service rep frequently enters the wrong info for the cable guy, and the cable guy has do all the fixing on the back end when he gets there. As was the situation here. You’ll see.
He told me that basically, he shows up and never expects to do an install like he sees it on the work order. That’s why the window is so large. He was explaining why he had gotten to our place at 9:30, and not 9 or 8:30.
The dispatcher/service reps schedule calls based on their difficulty based on the work order. So the dispatcher tries to put in simple calls in the space between difficult calls in order to service (he he) as many people as possible.
The woman before me had a work order to install 1 digital box and 1 basic hookup. Turns out she wanted 4 digital boxes. The cable guy told me that he told her that he could do it but she would have to re-schedule. In the meantime he offered to install the one digital box he had. Apparently she flipped out (”crazier than a shithouse rat,” I believe were his exact words) and berated him for 25 minutes. He tried to smooth it over as best he could, even calling dispatch to see if they could get someone out that day. As he was on the phone with dispatch the woman apparently told him to get out and that she didn’t want anything.
So he shows up at my place for a simple install of a modem, and when he gets there… Oh, I should probably get out of the aside and go back to the story for this.)
There, that’s better. Anyway, the guy gets to my place and thinks that all he has to do is install the cable modem. Well, little does he know that there’s a block on the cable that terminates at the pole so he thinks there’s a problem with the modem he’s installing. He tries everything he can with the first modem, and then a second modem, and then a third. Finally, it’s 11:30 (he’s 30 minutes into his next customer’s window) and he has no idea what’s going on so he schedules a specialist to come to our house the next day. Sunday. (Just let the idea that someone would do an installation on Sunday that was scheduled on the last minute roll around in your head. Freakin’ sweet!)
The guy shows up, gets the internet going in about an hour with 5 or 6 trips up the pole in the backyard, and then takes off.
It took us over 2 months to get fully hooked up in our house. And you know what? I couldn’t be happier with the service we’ve gotten from Millennium. They’ve been courteous, friendly, and honest the entire time. They never made any excuses, they just scheduled someone else to move the huge Bermuda Triangle of cable installation that is my house to it’s next step. After enough steps we have internet, and we have TV, and it only cost us 8 dollars for the first month.
Millennium might be available in YOUR state. Give Comcast the finger.
*Which is nothing like Michelle Malkin’s book, “Racism is Tasty” or something like that.
Man, this day has just flown by so far. I beat the Viridian Room after it frustrated the shit out of me for about, oh, 2 hours. I cheated a little bit, but I don’t think it makes sense to make a game that you can completely eff up without being able to fix it and try again without starting over. Bastards.
ACWF called me to ask my permission to get Chinese food for lunch. See, we’re poor now that we have a roof over our heads, so luxuries like Chinese food we only permit ourselves rarely. I still find it funny that she called to ask my permission. There was no way I could say “no” though. She’s painted the living room (3 coats) all by herself while I’ve been at work.
This is probably the point in the day where everything will become boring and come crashing to a halt. I look forward to people’s feedback about my Harry Potter questions (below. I’m too lazy to link) and I’m dying to find out if the days will be just packed, or if I won’t have to bother with it after all.
I’ve been thinking on a small time business plan recently, and I need some feedback from Harry Potter readers. If you’ve read Harry Potter I’d appreciate it if you’d send me an email to see if my little scheme would work or not.
On a different note, here’s the next room.
