Ramblings - The personal website of Joshua David Hall

Every time i look at my $75 a month cable bill, I wonder why I pay it. I was so happy without cable, and if I lived alone, there would be no cable. I don't understand why I have to pay so much money for something that gives me commercials. This opens another topic about why the television was created and marketed the way it was, which really has some interesting literature and documentaries apropos, but this rant is not about that. It's just about my recent encounter with comcast.

So I've been a comcast customer for over 6 years now in one form or another. full blown digital subscriber, just basic tv, then to the standard package where I sit now. All the time, I've been enrolled in automatic bill payments with no paper bills mailed to me. Bliss. It's a never changing bill, so i don't need to look at it, i just expect that much to taken out each month. So for years this goes on fine. Back in december, I logged in to change my credit card information. Still, all works fine, until May, apparently. In June, I get a "past due" notice in the mail. WTF? So i call the number and try to see what's up. The representative was utterly useless. She kept stating the obvious, "No payment was made in May." And I say, "umm...I know, otherwise I wouldn't have received a past due notice. What I need you to do is fix it so it doesn't happen again." It's absolutely ridiculous how inept this person is, and coming from a helpdesk background, I know how things should go here, and this is terrible. So I ask her to take off the late fee, and she says she doesn't have the ability to do that. She doesn't seem to have the ability to do anything I need her to do, so I ask to speak to her manager, or at least someone with the access to remove late fees. She says only supervisors can, and they can call me back within a 24 hour period. So it's going to be one of those deals, aye? Whatever. I leave instructions to call my cell phone and not my home number.

So I log into comcast's website, and I see that my credit card information shows a credit card that expired in 2006. WTF? That's not my fault. To me, sounds like someone had a system crash and reverted to a backup with old information. The last time I changed my info was in december, and it's been working since then. I update the information and wait for my call back to get that late fee removed.

Of course, it never comes. I'm livid. I do automatic bill payment so i don't have to deal with crap, now they're making me take time out of my day to deal with crap that is their fault. I call them back today, and get some lady who again has this crazy knack for saying things that are utterly useless. I say that my information was reverted to old information, and I didn't do anything, so something changed on their end. She said she doesn't even have the access to do that, as if I meant SHE did it. She's totally defensive at anything I'm saying, and I can see that I will never get retribution for my time wasted with these people. She was able to remove the late fee pretty easily. She says that they did try to call me, but they used my home number even though I had left instructions not to use that number. She said that she could have someone call me back within 24 hours so that I can ask a supervisor why my payments didn't go through, but honestly, I don't feel like investing my time, nay, my VACATION, in finding and fixing the flaws in their system. This is what helpdesk tickets are for. I open a problem ticket, you fix it. Don't call me back until it's fixed.

So all to appropriately, I don't expect any calls from Comcast any time soon.


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