Eblo

Incompetence

. . sometimes it works to your advantage.

When we moved into our house, I called our beloved local cable company to get pricing and set up service. I spent about 45 frustrating minutes on the phone with "Carolyn" trying to get all of the available promotions wrung out of her. See, apparently you have to specifically ASK about a promotion before they can tell you about it. "Are there any deals on cable modem service," won't cut it. Oh, she told me about a deal, but it certainly wasn't the best deal. And you have to remember to specify, every time you talk about a new option, that you do not want the premium install (which involves their tech crawling all over your computer installing god-knows-what) otherwise, there it is in all its $99 glory. Yes, Carolyn, I still only want the basic install.

The cable was installed on time and all has been well with the service itself. However, since moving in, we've gotten two cable bills and both of them have had errors.

On the first bill, I was charged an installation charge I don't believe I should have been charged. It might be a standard charge, but it wasn't explained to me when I placed the order, so I wasn't expecting it, so I refused to pay it. After a bit of wrangling, I got a credit for it. Cool.

On this most recent bill, I noticed that the $21.99 promo rate we had eventually settled on for the internet service was not applied. Instead, I was getting jacked for the full $42.95. So this morning I called to get that corrected. On the phone, I was greeted by a cheerful Latina-sounding female by the name of Anya. After telling her I had a cockatiel named Anya, I let her know about the billing problem. She looked at the notes on the account. I was wondering if there was something in there about me being a cheap bastard for nit-picking the installation charge. She didn't say anything about that. She just noted that I'd gotten a promo on the install charge for the cable modem, but not for the monthly service. She said it was no problem, she could add it. As it turns out, though, their current promo is $19.99 for 6 months as opposed to $21.99 for only 4 months. And I would get the new promo. Score!!! Now I just have to wait for the next bill to see if it's actually applied . . ..

So I'm glad my initial contact with Carolyn was rife with annoyance and incompetence. Just this once, it seems to have worked out all right. And I got to talk to Anya, one of the most pleasant and helpful customer 'service' reps I've had the honor of working with.