When life hands you lemons, use it as blog fodder!
If you've followed my blog or subscribed to my newsletters for any length of time, you know of the continuing saga of Cable Clods. Cable Clods is the pet name I have for our cable company which takes advantage of the monopoly they enjoy by providing mildly fair to poor service at outrageous prices. Their actions communicate to each of their customers that they don't care. They don't have to. They are the only game in town!
To bring new subscribers up to speed and provide further humor, I have included a recap. Here are the highlights of the past two years:
- Dropped the line on our property requiring a full month before they could even install service which meant no phone, internet or cable TV for a month after we moved in. (Try running a business like THAT!)
- Signed us on a promotion for a year but never gave us that rate (April Fool! LOL)
- Billed us $800 but refused to tell us what for. Later we found out they had us confused with another customer in a different city.
- Repeatedly made service appointments requiring us to be available all day where their rep never showed up
- Certain TV channels periodically don't have sound and some occasionally have no picture (Aren't those two things rather important for TV?)
- Internet connection fails often and 99 times out of 100 it's because they are "upgrading" their service
- "Upgrading Service" is code for "we want to raise your rates"
- Phone service dropped in the middle of a 911 call
- Phone service drops in the middle of my internet radio show
- Phone service dropped while attempting to call Cable Clods to complain about our other services
- Cable Clods phone tree routes trouble calls incorrectly which at one point sent me to a total of 6 different people in 4 different departments during as much as a 45 minute wait after which it...dropped the call!
I have a Word Doc for Cable Clods called the Incompetence Log which is approximately 30 pages long. However, in less than three weeks we will be moving and Cable Clods will no longer have the Tabares Family to kick around anymore! (Spoken in my most Nixon-like voice) We were preparing to bid Cable Clods a fond farewell when they felt the need to sing their Swan Song!
Yesterday about half way through my podcast, Grace Talk Soup, my phone cut out leaving my guest and listeners wondering whahappen! I made a valiant attempt to call back in to the show, but the phone was unwilling to give me a dial tone. I ran upstairs to grab my cell phone dialing madly and stopping to grab the charger on the way back into my office. God smiled upon me and I was able to get back on the show.
My regular listeners are familiar with my phone troubles so they correctly assumed I lost connection and had been waiting patiently for me to find my way back to the show. I made my apologies for Cable Clods for they know not what they do.
After my show, my father called to share some news about our new house in Arizona. He wondered why the phone never rang on his end. I explained the Cable Clods credo "We get your money; you get bupkis!" It cut him off in mid laugh! I tried to call back but, as luck would have it, what I didn't have was another dial tone!
I ran back upstairs for my cell phone and tried to call him back. As I was dialing, the home phone rang. Yup! It was my dad again. He said he would talk fast so as to avoid further Cable Phonus Interuptus.
Oh the endless hours of cable MISadventure I will be missing in Arizona where Cable Clods does not have the corner on the monopoly. After we inform them we are leaving, they just might lay off Automated Audrey. After all, she'll have a lot fewer reconnection procedures to perform from now on!
