Wolf versus The Cable Company

[wolf]

Finally, the story that you have all been waiting for.

You have been waiting for it, right?

Even if you haven't, here it is.

As many of you know, I relocated Chez Wolf back in November, not because I wanted to, but because the apartment in which I had lived for 13 or so years suddenly became a Condominium. Condominium, as wel all know, is Latin for "Small, expensive space."

So, I located a new set of digs, and went out of my way to make sure that the place was served by the same Cable Provider from which I had been receiving excellent service for many years.

Two weeks prior to moving, I tried to use the online moving tools to setup service for the new apartment.

It wouldn't accept my information. I didn't think much of this, but figured that I'd call the next day and make the necessary appointments for the switchover.

Yeah, sure.

I called, spoke to a lovely young lady calling herself something like Tia323 (For a moment I thought I was dealing with someone in YahooChat, but apparently that's how they do their customer service IDs.)

Tia said some words that I eventually learned to despise, "That address is not in the database."

"What do you mean, that address is not in the database?"

After another 15 minutes of conversation, in which it was established that all of the neighboring apartments to mine appeared to be in the databse, as were all of the apartments in the second building (which has a different physical street address from mine), and the Clubhouse for the complex. Tia323 finally offers ... "We can do a survey to see if you can have service. We'll call you when it's completed."

Now, I'm smart, see. I gave my cellphone number, so there wouldn't be any problem in contacting me because of a change in phone numbers from the move.

In case you were wondering, as of today, March 21, 2008, I have not received a call to inform me of the survey results.

The flurry of activity that is entailed in any move occurs, and so I didn't get a chance to call the cable company back right away.

But I did discover something.

The new apartment had a hunk of coax sticking out of the living room wall. Once my television was ensconced in the place on honor in front of the hunk of coax, I figured, what the heck. I screwed the sucker in, and guess what? Cable. This was a good start. Not only was there cable, but it was the cable signal offered by the above-named provider. Channel lineup was identical to my old apt, and the proprietary information and sports channels were there too.

hmmm.

By the time I got around to calling again, it was December. This time I talked to a nice lady by the name of Elise2A7.

It was kind of like hearing an echo that was displaced in time ... "That address is not in the database. We can do a survey to see if you can have service. We'll call you when it's completed."

But lady, I have a hunk of cable coming out of the wall that's carrying your signal. Of course I can have service! And besides, there was already a survey initiated. I haven't been called with the results. Here's the survey code number ..."

etc.

January, Jennae U2Z, "That address is not in the database. We can do a survey to see if you can have service. We'll call you when it's completed."


February, "That address is not in the database." At that point I stopped LaTisha N7B. I started telling her about my survey that I hadn't gotten a result on yet, and she stopped me, "Oh, you don't have to complete a survey for that, we just have to add your apartment number into the database since the rest of the complex is in the system. Call back in 24 to 48 hours and make an appointment for installation."

LaTisha N7B, if only you had answered the phone back in November.