Cablevision and how they waste my time


I don’t usually rag on my cable company, but enough is enough.
First, they’ve been slowly raising the cost of the cable internet service since I signed up. Every time the rate increases, I call them up to find out why I wasn’t notified of the change in advance – if it’s not the law here in CT, which I think it is, then it’s a courtesy thing. They always say that there was a notice included with my bill to indicate the upcoming change. I look at every scrap of paper that comes with these bills, and it’s just not there.
Second, they just forced us to upgrade to digital cable. I’ll grant you that I do like the new system, but I resent being forced to upgrade. A little background: we love HBO. They have wonderful original series, and we watch them every week. I enjoy the fact that I can sometimes find a movie I want to watch and not have to endure editing for TV or commercials every 23 minutes. It’s a good thing.
Thirdly they keep trying to merge my cable internet and cable tv accounts. I have them separate for a reason, but about once a year, they manage to join them without my approval or knowledge. I then have to spend time on the phone having them fix the mistake they made.
Since we got moved to digital, we had to upgrade the cable box we were forced to rent to watch HBO. If it had been a simple “here’s the new box, we’ll take the old one,” I would have been fine with that. If it had been a simple “here’s the new one, feel free to blow up the old one,” I would have been fine. Instead, they tell us they’ll ship it out, and it doesn’t show up. Then I get a “second delivery attempt” notice from UPS. The note says that if we’re not home for the third try, they’ll hold it at the local facility for us to come get it.
Did you notice that I said “second notice” up there? I called to find out what that was about – apparently the driver went to the wrong address the first time, but it still counts as the first attempt. What really killed me was
a) they didn’t care that it was the drivers mistake
b) that I was right by the local facility that same day – if I’d known it was going to be in UPS’s hands, I would have told them to hold onto the package and gotten it myself.
Anyway, we finally got the new box – great, since I apparently needed the packaging to send back the old system, otherwise they’d be charging us for it (as I was told when I “ordered” the new box). I set the system up, go through all the configuration, and start to learn the new system. Good. I then call up to find out where to send the old system and complain about the shipping – it wasn’t addressed clearly, and they’d gone the extra step of requiring a signature – something they didn’t require of my parents a few towns away. I was then informed that I could “just throw out” the old system since they didn’t need it anymore.
WTF.
I’ve rented this system for about two years now, and will probably have the new one for at least another nine months or so. At about $5.00 a month for the box and the remote, that’s $120 for the first box, and about $60 for the new one. When I pushed one of the hapless phone monkeys about why I can’t buy the box outright, like I did with my cable modem, I was told that it was a law in Connecticut, much like people in Canada aren’t able to buy cable modems because of a similar law in Canada. Guess what? I don’t give a frell about people in Canada and whether or not they’re able to buy their cable modems – I live in Connecticut, I want to know why I can’t buy it. The phone monkey could only repeat that it was apparently illegal – he could provide no evidence to back this up. Maybe I’ll go see what’s available on eBay…. I’m not looking for some illegal box to let me get all the channels, all I want is to be able to watch HBO in another room in my house – I don’t think I should have to pay extra for the subscription to HBO, then yet another fee to be able to actually WATCH those same shows.
On the flipside of all this, since the switch to digital, we now have at least 12 different HBO channels, and dozens of other channels we didn’t have before. This is a good thing, but it’s also bad – that many more channels to watch.
The billing screw ups are one thing, but the average length of my phone calls with them to fix them are at least 30 minutes. If I have to do that once a month, then that adds up to six hours a year out of my life that I’ll never get back.
I guess what I’m saying is that I have a love/hate relationship with my cable company. I used to love them, but now it’s like they’re purposely trying to make me switch away from them – which I just don’t want to believe.