Okay, so I know that we all have troubles with services that are provided to us by mass corporations every once in a while. I have had trouble with my current cable company from the day that we were supposed to have the service installed. I repeat, supposed to have the service installed. I am not even the current user of the service and I already feel like switching to satellite! Here is my story.
My husband got a job that required us to move to Maryland. Because we had not yet been able to set up our entire move, my husband went by himself for the time being. On my second visit – the first having been when we signed the lease for our apartment – I called the cable company to have the cable installed while my husband was at work. I was only visiting for a few days and I was trying to do this as a surprise because I was visiting for our anniversary. I called on the Monday that I arrived and was told that the earliest install date available was Wednesday. This was perfect! Wednesday was our anniversary and my husband would come home to find out that he had cable, digital with a DVR no less! Plus, I was leaving Thursday morning and there would not be another opportunity to have it installed until my husband had a Monday off. I got a surprise Wednesday morning.
I received an automated call on my cell phone that was confirming my install date for Thursday! Uh oh, that’s not good! I immediately called the cable company back. I spoke with a representative who transferred me to another call center since I was demanding restitution. I spoke with another representative who was in some kind of consumer relations department and she refused to help me. She said that it was not up to her to compensate me because she was not the one who dealt with the billing and installation. So I ended up being transferred back to the original call center. As soon as the representative answered, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor, Isaiah – who was quite nice, by the way – apologized profusely and offered to deduct the installation fee from our first bill. Okay, so our installation still wouldn’t occur until Thursday, but at least we wouldn’t have to pay the extra fee. We arranged for our friends who live in the same apartment complex to go over to the apartment when the cable guy was on his way. Well, he had the total with the installation fee on his invoice and refused to take the check that I had left for him, which was essentially just payment for the first month of service.
I called the cable company and talked to a representative who of course said she did not know why the man did that. Seeing the note on our account about the removal of the installation fee, she promptly removed the fee from the account and took my payment over the phone. Problem solved…for now.
See Trouble with the Cable Company: Part II