Eleanor Has Balls

So it was sort of a nice temperature-wise day on Friday, meaning …

Snow and ice were thawing so it was inevitable that my broadband cable connectioooooon would crash.

As it happens ever time it warms up … there’s an exposed connection out there someplace,

That causes me to lose my connection for 6 or more hours at a time,

Whenever things are melting.

Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before … by the time my broadband provider can get a technician out here three of four days later,

Things are either refrozen or dried out and the problem is solved.

Now in the past I’ve asked them to check the connections anyways when they get out,

But according to the first tech support person on the phone,

The service log at my residence says the same things multiple times,

Service was restored before arrival. I’m a lazy piece of Bantha fodder so I left without checking the connections the customer requested.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t even the same technician that wrote that each time. 🙂

Must be a standard Comcast procedure.

Anyways … so without broadband again …

I call technical support working my way through the menu prompts, remembering not to provide my real home phone number at any time …

And explain the problem.

Then, for the first time ever, I’m told …

You’ll have to call the cable group, this is a cable problem.

I’m aware it’s a cable problem, but I don’t have cable service, just broadband.

Let me put you on hold one moment.

No ma’am, you’ll still have to call the cable technical support line.

Okay.

Whatever.

So I then cwalled the cable technical support line …

And eventually got in touch with Eleanor.

Please give me your home phone number.

Which I provided honestly this time.

I can’t discuss this account with you without an account number.

But I don’t have cable service, just broadband. I can give you that account number. Broadband tech support told me to call you.

Well, they shouldn’t have. Why did they have you call us?

I dunna know, maybe because they were feeling particularly insecure about their own abilities at the time I requested their assistance.

They shouldn’t have directed you to call cable support.

Trust me, I’m on the same page with that.

Your account doesn’t even have a personal ID … I just can’t discuss it with you.

Well, that’s probably because I don’t have cable service, unless you randomly give personal ID numbers to everyone, regardless of their inclusion in your collective or not.

What’s the name and address on the account?

Joe Hairdy and my address is …

And your name?

Jane.

I’ll need to speak with Mr. Hairdy.

I’m just calling to schedule an appointment. It’s not that difficult and you don’t have to provide any super, secret information about this account.

The earliest we can be out there is Wednesday … 1-5.

5 days from now ?? Wow. Fine. May I have a pre-call before you arrive?

No. We’re not allowed to do pre-calls.

You always have in the past, I have a service history as you’ve seen, you’ve pre-called each time.

We don’t do pre-calls anymore. You’ll have to just have someone there over the age of 18 between 1 – 5.

Okay.

Is there anything else I can help you with, Jane.

No, Eleanor, I’m all set.

By the way, at this point in the conversation … Eleanor was code for “phucking bitch” … and I think it’s very likely Jane was code for the same !

Since you don’t have cable television, are you using a satellite service?

Yes. Dish Network.

I just have to tell you about this special promotion we have for Dish customers, if you come back to digital cable, we’ll give you a $25 credit for 16 months.

Eleanor, in light of the lack of satisfaction I’ve had with this call, I commend you for having the courage to even suggest that … I love my Dish service, and contrary to what I can say about your cable service at this very moment, my Dish is working just fine. And I don’t have to make a service call each time the weather warms. Thanks for asking though.

Have a nice evening and thank you for calling Comcast Loser Cable.

UPDATE:

36 hours later. I still had no broadband service. I called Comcast Loser Cable again … to see if maybe I forgot to pay my bill or if it got misposted or something, which may be the cause for the interruptioooon in service. This time I spoke with James. Not only did he inform me I had paid and was current, but he was incredibly nice, took my information to give me a pre-call before the tech arrived, and spent a good 10 minutes trying to get me an earlier time than Wednesday. So if you call Comcast Loser Cable … ask for James. You won’t get any satisfaction, but he’s a heckuva lot nicer than Eleanor.

UPDATE UPDATE:

I shared my Comcast frustation with Dad … who laughed his butt off at me … truly enjoying the phact that this time it was me experiencing their ineptitude, not him !! lol Anyways … 40 hours after down time, still lacking service … I decided to take matters in my own hand and see if I could locate the loose spot in the connection outside … I mean, I’m not trained in the ways of cable repair of anything, not like the lazy ass experts at Comcast, ya know … but I figured I’d take a look at it myself … even though I knew it was really unlikely I could figure out what to do in light of the previous inability of Comcast service personnel to locate and solve the problem … and despite the fact the I had already earlier cleaned and tightened the connection from my house to a splitter. So I went outside … to where the cable comes out of my house and attaches to the splitter … choosing to remove the splitter from the equation … as it not only looked exposed to the elements … but was unnecessary. I only need one wire coming into the house. Anyways … that solved the problem. I’m back on-line … it’s working fine. So Wednesday morning, I’ll go back outside, put things back the way they were when it wasn’t working … and let them figure out the solution to the problem for themselves.

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4 Comments

  1. Sure I’m posting a little late in the game but I dealt with the brain trust at SBC at about the same time for relatively the same thing. DSL isn’t much better, or at least not their tech support.

    I’ll spare you the details, but the short story is I fixed it on my own, even cancelled the service call and they still sent the friggen tech out!

    That’s an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back. Grr…

  2. The two things which jump out at me here is that:

    You sure must have a lot of happy clients. Gawd. If you fight cases like that…

    and…

    Try AOL tech support in the UK for dialups. The linguistic degree which is normally needed to enable customers to report problems is sadly lacking in this girl’s case. I normally end up just putting the phone down out of frustration!

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