You know, it's bad enough when someone cancels on you. Even worse when they don't bother to tell you about it. Worse than that is when they don't have a reason for canceling on you. Recently, I was canceled on. Not by my girlfriend, a friend or co-worker. I was canceled on by my cable company.
We all know that cable companies already have a bad reputation when it comes to customer service and once again they came through like clockwork. Early in June I noticed my high speed, top of the line Internet connection was running just about as fast as dial-up. Surely, in this day and age of everything "now" I could not stand for my Internet to be so slow. So on June 19th after several calls to customer service, I finally found a rep who wanted to fix my problem instead of telling me to "just wait and your problem might fix on its own." Key word there being might.
So after finding a rep to work with me and several minutes of troubleshooting, they found the only way to fix the problem was by sending a tech out to my house to decipher it. Fine, sounds great! Then the even better news comes. They can get a tech out to my house on Friday, June 27th. Well, after a quick thought and second look at my calender, I realized that June 27th fell on a Wed, not a Fri. The c.s. rep disagreed for a few moments and then realized his mistake and finally agreed with me that June 27th was on a Wed and the Friday he was talking about was in July. So clearly he just had his months mixed up, right? Wrong! The first available date for a technician to come to my house was on Friday, July 27th. That means I would be waiting for 38 days, 38 DAYS, for someone to come and look at my Internet connection. Ridiculous but what can I do? I live in a town (Plattsmouth) that's only big enough for one cable company. A total monopoly with no were else to go for high speed Internet. So I wait it out. Oh, and did I mention since cable companies are known for punctuality, I should expect them sometime between 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. that day? Given the fact that I do overnights it wouldn't matter what time they would show up, it would still throw a wrench into some quality sleeping time.
So there I was last Friday morning. Getting the house clean, drinking Red Bull, listening to music, doing whatever I could to stay awake. Slowly but surely the minutes went by. The help of a few friends on Myspace didn't hurt either. And so the hours started to go by and still no sign of the cable guy. By 12:15 I wasn't even about to try and wait any longer. I had been up since 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon and the tiredness was too overwhelming.
For some reason in the days leading up to last Friday I just had a feeling that they weren't going to show. After all I scheduled the appointment over a month ago! So I have all my info ready and the c.s. rep I get is very nice from the start. I asked him where the tech was, what time I called in June, etc. After verifying what I told him (he chuckled with disbelief on how long I had to wait for a tech) he found something very interesting. My appointment was made on June 19th (like I told him) and then it got canceled. Just like that. I asked him how? When? Who canceled my appointment? There were no notes attached to it (supposedly) and it was just canceled a couple of days before without any rhyme or reason. It was just canceled. Given that the c.s. rep was nice to me and I hadn't the energy to yell and scream I had to accept yet another appointment. The c.s. rep could get someone out to my house later that day, that Saturday or that following Tuesday. I wasn't about to stay up any longer and wouldn't you know it, those other days were pretty much the only days I wasn't available in the coming week. So I had to settle for the following Thursday.
So, later on today I will be playing the waiting game once again with CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS. I will be up for countless hours losing sleep and probably my mind in the process. Hoping, wishing, praying this time it doesn't get canceled. If it does, you can bet I won't be as courteous this time around. And if I sound tired tomorrow night for the overnights and am a little grumpy, don't blame me, blame CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS! Thanks Charter!
Maybe next time you will think twice before canceling on someone.
Thanks For Listening
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