The Hired Help

2009-06-12 : whining

Now that I’m no longer dealing with customer service at Cablevision, my experience is rapidly improving. Don’t get me wrong, my line is still completely useless at times; I have zero upstream bandwidth and exceptional amounts of packet loss. But, I’m discovering that the line office supervisor is actually human, and actually wants to get the issue fixed.

Even better, I don’t need to keep explaining myself and proving that the issue isn’t in my apartment. They know who I am, and they believe that there’s an issue. I’m even thanked for contacting them with information when there’s a problem. The supervisor said I can just call him straight if the issue persists after they work on it today, or if anything weird happens ever in the future. Neat. It’s a new experience, believe me.

It took five visits (missing work four times and blowing an entire holiday weekend) and two months to get to this point. By any reasonable metric, this continues to be an absurd experience. I would not be a Cablevision customer were there any other viable Internet option in my complex (the best option I can find for DSL is 6M/768K with a 1-year contract and a $200 install fee; after that it’s $380/month for a T1). But it’s nice to finally be connecting with somebody competent, rather than the hired help.

1. This is the point I got to with my Comcast connection. Eventually I contacted the comcastcares twitter account and they sent the local offices “cable god” out to check things out. I’ve now got his cellphone if I ever have more issues.

   
   — Opie    13 June 2009    #