Another Cable Company Rant

In the beginning of the year I posted a thread about how awful it was dealing with my mother's old cable company: https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101386

Things are no better with the new one, Verizon FIOS. The main reason she has cable is for this package of foreign language channels for which I pay an extra $35/month. After a few weeks one of the channels stopped working. Some time later we went through all the diagnostics it has you go through, nothing worked. My brother called them to set up an appointment and the tech never showed up.

My mother is not one to complain about things so she didn't bring it up and we forgot this channel of hers wasn't working. Until she mentioned it to me this weekend, over Mothers Day no less so I had to get right on it! Again went through all the diagnostics, nothing worked. Got on the phone with them for over an hour, he had me doing all the same diagnostics as well as random stuff like going outside and disconnecting the wires and tapping on them. Nothing worked. So he said he'll send a tech and there's no charge if its an equipment problem but they will charge us if its a problem with the wiring or something else. I said no, I'm not paying for that. Their tech installed everything, presumably tested everything including the wires he used, and it hasn't been working properly since almost the beginning.

He said he can't agree to waive any charges but if the tech says there will be a charge to just talk to him or a supervisor who will probably waive it. Fine.

We set up an appointment for 8-10am this morning, they said its ok if only my mother is there. After setting up the appointment they text me TWICE over the next 36 hours to confirm I still want the appointment. I had to text back "YES" otherwise it gets cancelled. Friggin retarded. Then this morning at 8:23am they call my cell, its just a recording that didn't start playing until a good 10-15 seconds after I was yelling hello into the phone. And of course, the recording says they can't make the 8-10am and want me to confirm if they can come from 1pm-7pm otherwise the appointment will be cancelled.

Its so sneaky and I now think the first time they never showed up was because they probably sent these dumb texts to my brother who probably ignored them (they look like spam in preview mode) or they called him with this automated system that he probably hung up on since it doesn't start until well after you pick up the phone, like so many other telemarketing calls. Its like they are trying everything to make it easy for me to unknowingly cancel the appointment.

I really hope their industry becomes completely irrelevant some day.

 

As do I!!
I'm with Time Warner. I'm now on my 3rd, refurbished POS DVR in 7 weeks. Three in home, service calls and each tech finds the "problem". "It should be OK now."

Each time it is a different problem.

At least the service calls are free and they do call before they are coming. We're in the country, so the only other TV option is Satellite. They would be cheaper the first year, but I would still have to pay someone for internet and phone.

 

Ugh. Dont get me started on cable companies. I have been fighting with Comcast for almost 3 months. Tried to bundle phone/internet/cable with them. Phone never did work. I kept explaining to them that my 84 year old mother was now home alone, in a house, without a phone. 4 technicians and 15+ hours on the phone, and I finally got it working. Now I get a bill for almost $600. I have been to their customer service office 3 times, and each time they assure me the bill will be taken care of, and that it should only be around $50. Then I get another disconnect notice. They did so many things wrong it was almost comical. They had her address incorrect, so they kept telling me that "Peggy" now had her phone working. I said great, now maybe you can work on Cleones. They sent out 3 cable modems, billing me for each. 2 of them went to the wrong address, but I was able to retrieve them.

They are impossible to deal with.

 

Setting aside the foreign channels, I cannot find a positive feel good reason to hand money to anyone associated in the broadcasting industry (content providers or cable/Direct TV), and I haven't missed it since the free cable in my 90s apartment was shut down.

One year cable bill = Nice Las Vegas Vacation! No decision.

[YOUTUBE]tCY9jbqIBgY[/YOUTUBE]

 

Can I add my rant. We got a new HD TV, and wanted to upgrade our cable to high def. Picked up the new box from Comcast and 3 phone calls later, we still don't have the HD channels. The last person said we would have to have an "installation" done. Didn't bother to tell me this would be a $32 charge.

Guy shows up, we tell him the problem, and of course he tells us there is nothing he can do for us - that they have to do this back at their location. He makes one phone call - and suddenly we've got HD channels. Of course, it took several phone calls for them to remove the completely unnecessary $32 installation charge.

The upside. The cable guy needed a TV for his father in a nursing home and we talked him into taking our 36" very heavy tube style TV.

 

ESPN & Comedy Central.
I need my sports fix and Daily Show, plus Colbert.

 

Cable and satellite TV are irrelevant in the 21st century. I have a Roku on one TV and my other TV is a Smart TV so I just watch Netflix and Hulu and streaming sports packages. I miss nothing that I had with cable and now I don't pay $100+ a month or deal with their customer service. Roku has a lot of foreign language channels too. You should give it a look. You save a lot of money to put toward gambling.

 

I feel your pain. To skip the long version, a Comcast tech HAD to come out here to hook up their new modem with Internet phone service so we could get the considerably cheaper bundle rate then we already had with HDTV and Internet. That's even though we told them we didn't need a new modem and didn't want their phone service. The poor tech spent at least 3 hours on the phone talking to "base camp," as the cable TV boxes we actually have did not match up with the boxes they thought we had. They kept telling him that we had something else, while he was looking at the actual installed equipment!

We've also been retrieving calls from the answer machine about once a month that we needed to upgrade to a Docsis 3.0 modem to get the higher speed. That's after we did a self-install on their website for a new Docsis 3 modem months ago. The new equipment was identified during the installation. We've since disconnected their modem, but evidently can't get a credit if it's returned!

It's no wonder cable companies (probably all of them) are reported as providing the worst customer service of all industries. Just getting through to an intelligent life form over the phone is more painful than going to the dentist!

 

Sounds good, but where are you getting your Internet?

 

Panera, like everyone else, judging from what I saw there this morning. Office space, too.

Samsung DVR's used by Time-Warner are temperamental. Some of them need to reboot once or twice a week. They freeze all the time. So if you get a good one, keep it. There are much better ones available but TWC won't pay to upgrade. And the subscription fee system makes it pointless to own a good DVR. Their modems are pretty junky, too. I bought my own to get better service and avoid the $4 monthly charge.

The latest Time-Warner innovation is a new search system that takes an extra step past advertising to get to the keypad. The new system also does not return results for adult programming. I miss the stupid titles that popped up when I was looking for something innocuous. Probably too many unsupervised kids were ordering stuff.

 

My two favorite channels as well.
I am already experiencing Colbert withdrawal symptoms.

Not looking forward to losing his magic.

 

The Daily Show and Colbert are available for streaming on Hulu for free, maybe on some other services as well. The new John Oliver show on HBO is really funny too, its basically another Daily Show.

 

I've dealt with TWC, Comcast, and Verizon... the worst company by far is Comcast.

 

I moved into a new house last year and never connected cable. I was going to but it took a few months before I realized I did not have it. We have a local internet provider for all the houses in my borough. I have an HD antenna on the roof and the installers who put my televisions in connected it to that wire when I moved in so I have been getting all the main channels and I use Netflix for everything else. Unless someone points it out I do not even remember that I dont have cable.

 

Sounds like you need a new dentist.

 

Actually, my dentist is extremely good about NOT causing pain. I exaggerated trying to make a point about dealing with Comcast, which is not an exaggeration! Any company that outsources most of their customer service to foreign countries where the reps recite non-helpful suggestions from a script … well, it IS painful.