So a few months ago I signed up for digital cable service. Our service had deteriorated with lots of periods of staticky pictures, etc. I’m sure the cable company was responsible and was trying to make the digital service a necessity. I hated them for that, but after 6 months or so of crappy service and little help, we relented and ordered the digital service.
The digital service at the price level we currently were paying lacked two channels that, while not necessities, we liked. But I didn’t want to pay any more and was willing to do without them.
The installation was being offered at no charge.
The man came, installed the boxes, turned on the service and then left. I thanked him (before he left, not after).
As it turns out, the channels we lost plus a bunch of extra alternate channels from the same providers were turned on. I knew our service selection did not include them and even toyed briefly with the idea of calling the cable company to inform them of their error. But I did not. We have enjoyed those channels for the past 3 months.
Then comes the letter. The one informing me that those channels had been enabled in error and as of Nov 9, 2004 will be turned off.
Now, I am a naturally suspicious person and am certain that none of this was “in error”. Why Nov 9th? Why not right now? I am not paying for those channels and have no claim to them.
Those cable bastards gave us those channels like a dope dealer handing out free bags of heroin. Those pushers made us watch “The Beautician and the Beast”, “The Horse Whisperer”, “Die Hard with a Vengance”, “The Sieige” and “Curly Sue” or any number of similarly brilliant cinematic masterpieces any time we wanted day or night.
I’m trying to figure out what your problem is. Your cable works, and you get extra channels for free. Sounds nice!
Reminds me of one of the houses I lived in on Long Island. Basic cable was coming in for free. Only problem was we couldn’t add premium channels without having to pay for the whole shebang. So we didn’t.
Now we’re getting ready to switch to satellite. First we had cable from Comcast, the only company operating in our area. This is not good for customers. They can suck as much as they want, and you’re basically stuck with them. And they did. 8-hour windows for a service person to come to your house, and they had no reason to care. Prices continually going up.
But we switched to SureWest when they became available. Fiber-optic phone, Internet, and cable service. The phone and Internet are great, and you get a discount on having multiple services. The TV is not so great, taking a long time to switch channels and having some other issues. No complaints about the channel selection though. We get more than we need.
But Comcast has been reacting to the increasing number of people switching to satellite, or to SureWest in those areas where it’s available, and they are presenting a much nicer, more competitive face. Too bad. I’m not even considering them until we’ve at least tried Dish Network and DirecTV…
If it takes a long time to change channels, you might want to call the cable company and ask them to swap cable boxes. We were having the same problem with our box until we got a box with a DVR. The tuner in the DVR is much faster and we haven’t had problems since.
Good idea. I checked the SureWest web site, and they have a little video that shows some of the features of their TV system. We don’t have those features. We’re apparently stuck at the technological level that was current when we got our boxes over a year ago…
You think the Cable companies are bad… Try our phone/internet service. Qwest had to settle a class-action lawsuit for what they were doing to customers. They charged people extra on their bills without informing them, they made their customer service nearly impossible to work with. That was a year or two ago…
So we decided to try them now since we were just moving into a new house. We called them and the customer service was very friendly, gave us a quote on the price of installation and service, which we thought sounded reasonable. The phone and internet got set up very nicely… until our bill came. They had charged us with a plethora of additional fees. So we called to straighten it out, which they eventually did, but it turns out that our bill is still about 1.5 times the price they quoted in the first place.
So then our second bill arrived, and they charged us a late fee for not paying all the additional fees that were supposed to have been taken off our bill from the previous month. So we called again and went through the same hassle as last time, even though they told us that everything was figured out. We’re just waiting for next month’s bill to see what they did to us.
Shouldn’t companies offering services such as this be responsible for their actions? If it were a smaller company and treated its customers like this, they would be out of business in no time.
I work for Lucent Technologies, the telecom equipment manufacturing division that was spun off (hived off for you Brits) from AT&T in 1996. Qwest, too, was once part of AT&T. I can assure you that the monopolistic mindset that existed pre-1984, the year AT&T was broken up into AT&T (Long distance) and the baby bells (Local service) and that followed the pretty regionally monopolistic baby bells has not been completely shed despite the many years of competition.
I signed up with Verizon (formerly NYNEX and Bell Atlantic (formerly New England Bell and GTE)) for local, long distance, wireless, and DSL service. I was supposed to get all the bills combined and get discounted pricing on the wireless and DSL service. This was in January. Well it turns out that my landline service was under R Lasar and my wireless under Raphael Lasar and that caused the billing department to fail to match my accounts. Then I was late one month with my landline bill and that caused the billing department to reject the combining of the bill. Oh, and when I first signed up the customer service rep failed to input my request to have the bill combined. After 10 months I’ve yet to get the savings I was promised.
I really can’t complain about the service which has been excellent. But the billing issues have caused me quite a bit of agita.