Saturday, August 9, 2008

Words To Never Use Together

One of the classic TV shows of all time was Rocky And Bullwinkle from the early to late 1960’s. With enough slapstick to keep children entertained, it also wove in adult oriented political satire. And with the Cold War at its peak, there was plenty of material to poke fun at. Who can forget Boris and Natasha, the spies convinced the ebullient Rocky and somewhat slow thinking but kind hearted Bullwinkle were bearers of America’s deepest and darkest secrets? Bullwinkle usually unwittingly foiled their plots, but they always returned with even more nefarious plots.

One episode in particular stood out, not so much for the story but for Rocky uttering a terrific line, “Military intelligence, isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

That line can be expanded to include customer service, or lack thereof. There are many organizations whose name should never be used in the same sentence as service. A very recent example is a certain cable company known as Comcast. Just the other day, Jayne moved to our new house. Despite tropical storm Eduaord paying a wet and windy visit, the movers showed up on time, nothing got wet, and later on AT&T appeared to hook up the phone.

Once the phone was working, Jayne discovered she had several messages from Comcast, who was also scheduled to hook up the cable for the TV and Internet. Since Jayne has a second job that is web based, it is essential she has reliable access.

No luck.

Comcast claimed because of the weather they couldn’t come out. Funny how no one else had that problem. They then said they couldn’t make another appointment until next Monday. This means she’ll have to drive into Houston Sunday and use her work computer to get anything done. Repeated calls to Comcast have resulted in a different story each time. No they never had her scheduled in the first place. Oh yes, she was scheduled but they’d give her priority in case another customer cancelled their appointment. Well, maybe that would happen. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Maybe the problem is the idiocy of local communities granting cable companies monopolies. No competition means they can do whatever they please and charge whatever they please. Until someone with authority to do so wises up and opens up cable systems to competitors, customers are basically screwed.

Yesterday Jayne said she passed a Comcast truck parked on the side of a road with the driver looking like he was fast asleep. We’re betting anything if Comcast actually shows up Monday, (meaning she needs to take an extra day off work), that this individual will be the one they send out.

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