A Tale of Two Fuckups

Gotta get these two off of my chest.

Fuckup The First. Wherein Cox Communications Phoenix Angers an Angry Drunk:

This is a rel­a­tively straight­for­ward one.  I’m cur­rently lay­ing new tile in my liv­ing room; which neces­si­tated the dis­con­nec­tion and removal of my tele­vi­sion and cable box.  Mind you, this is stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion dig­i­tal cable.  Nothing overly com­pli­cated.  Last night, I finally reached the point where I can recon­nect every­thing and plug the cable box back in.  I do so, and after the box boots I’m greeted with an error stat­ing that “Advanced Services are Unavailable.”  Heaving a great sign of weari­ness I fig­ure, “well the box was unplugged for a week and a half.  I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it de-authorized itself.  So I call tech support.

Now, a lit­tle back­ground for those who don’t know me.  I spent almost a decade in phone tech­ni­cal sup­port.  I was a front-line sup­port rep for three dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies for over 4 years.  I was in call cen­ter qual­ity assur­ance report­ing for almost 6 years.  I know all the tricks; and I view every call to tech­ni­cal sup­port with utter dread.

After the req­ui­site phone tree fol­lies and hold time I finally reach a tech.  I explain the sit­u­a­tion, hop­ing beyond hope that we can skip the “check all the con­nec­tions” crap and jump to them send­ing a re-authorization sig­nal to the box.  Instead I get, “power the box on and off six times.”  Really?  You don’t think that the eight days that this thing sat unpow­ered would have cleared the NVRAM suf­fi­ciently?  No mat­ter, I per­form like a good mon­key, hop­ing that the script that the retard on the other end is read­ing will lead to some­thing approach­ing actual trou­bleshoot­ing.  Of course, the voodoo fix fails.  

At which point I get the ver­dict, “my tools show that you have a low sig­nal on the 3 boxes you have.” Really, does that include the one run­ning off of a sep­a­rate cir­cuit?  The one that took 3 field techs to set up cor­rectly so that I could get a good enough sig­nal to power my cable inter­net.  The one that I already pulled up the diag­nos­tics for and am see­ing a per­fectly accept­able sig­nal strength.  “We’ll have to send a field tech to resolve this, there is noth­ing I can do. And let me remind you, if it turns out not be be our equip­ment you’ll be charged for the visit.”

Now, here is the point where some­one will say, “you should have asked for a super­vi­sor.”  But, like I said, I was in this busi­ness for the bet­ter part of decade.  Assuming that lit­tle miss “this call is going long and my stats need help” didn’t man­age to “acci­den­tally” drop the call, I have no doubt that the sup. would be equally clue­less.  So, now I get to deal with a field tech.  Who will no doubt blame my crappy inter­nal wiring (admit­tedly crappy,  but worked fine for 10 years prior to this).  Maybe he’ll feed me their favorite chest­nut about how the “sig­nal takes time to prop­a­gate down the wire.”  Yeah, that speed of light, it’s a bitch.

 

Fuckup The Second, Or, It’s All About The Power Baby:

About two months ago I went out to the elec­tri­cal breaker box on the back of my house to kill a cir­cuit so I could do some main­te­nance.  Imagine my sur­prise when I notice I have a brand new elec­tri­cal meter.  No notice in my bill, no let­ter, no phone call; just a new meter.  Suppressing my rage that some fuck­wit tres­passed onto my prop­erty to install this thing, I carry on with my work.  As an aside, before some­one lec­tures me that I have to give the power com­pany access to my prop­erty; I checked into this, and I am only required to pro­vide visual access to the meter.

Meanwhile, for the last two months I’ve had a note in my elec­tric bill that my usage is “esti­mated” due to the fact that the meter reader can­not view the meter.  “Ok,” says I, “the trees are a lit­tle wooly.” So I bust out the chain­saw on a stick and clear the line of sight.  A months passes, and my bill is still “esti­mated.”  So, again with a weary sigh and a sense of dread I make the call.

Once I reach a human I ask, “What’s the deal, I can see this meter just fine.”  To this, the phone mon­key answers that I must pro­vide phys­i­cal access so their snazzy new RFID read­ers can work.  “Um, no” I reply.

“Oh, but it’s sim­ple,” the drone explains, “we give you a lock for your gate that our peo­ple can unlock any time it tick­les our fancy.”

“Um, no,” I reit­er­ate.  “I have pets; and, more to the point, are you going to be liable when one of your ass-hat min­i­mum wage employ­ees decides to sup­ple­ment his final pay­check with a few thou­sand dol­lars worth of my power tools?”

“Well,” the now less than happy phone-droid lec­tures, “If you’re going to be all unrea­son­able, we’ll have to sched­ule a ser­vice call to replace your meter with a stan­dard one and switch you to our stan­dard rate plan.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, “I am on your stan­dard rate plan.”

“Oh, no.  We switched you to one of our amaz­ing time-saver plans.”

“Let me get this straight,” I ask, “You fuck-knobs, with­out notice or con­sent, changed my rate plan, tres­passed on my prop­erty to install a new meter, and are now demand­ing unmon­i­tored access to my prop­erty in order to read that ille­gally installed meter.  Am I cor­rect here?”

“Mm, well,” she sputters.

“Fine, I growl, “Get your fuck­ing field tech out here.  Replace the meter.  And switch me back to the plan I signed up for.  And, I swear to Ahura Mazda, if I find you fools on my prop­erty unin­vited again.  I will unleash the hounds.”

So, that’s been my day.  Who’s next?  Come on water and gas, let’s go for the hat trick.

 

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