Cable Horror Story

Just been reading the stories about all the non-sense the cable companies pull when it comes to broadband. Well, here's mine.

Seems our cable company changes ownership about every 2-3 years. My cable modem was installed under the old regime and worked fine for over a year. Nothing was broken and we foolishly invited the cable company to screw up the system by getting another TV drop installed for our daughter's room.

I knew something was wrong when the guy that installed it asked, "You got cable internet? You aren't tagged for it."

Well, that was Thursday and on Friday about 10am my wife noticed a cable company truck in the field with a guy up a pole because the watch mute was barking. When she tried to check email about noon it was a no go. I had her check and the modem had lost sync on the cable. She cycled it with no change.

I was at work when the wife called her personal support tech (me) and I was too busy to accumulate the whole story. I pushed her to @Home support. She called back 3 hours later telling me they would have to dispatch someone. By this time it is 4:30pm on Friday and they knock off at 4!

Some time later I arrive home and do what I do. I check the connections thoroughly, crawl under the house to check for critter intervention, swap the cable modem and a TV line to no avail.

Now I'm back on hold for over an hour to get to @Home and I explain that someone installed a TV drop, asked if we had Internet, a truck was in the back and now the Internet is out. They assured me the events were unrelated and that they would dispatch a truck.

All day Saturday, no truck. I called again at 3ish, they assured me they were dispatching a truck. All day Sunday, called again at noon and suggested they were not telling me the truth or they should call 911 since the driver was a no-show. Shortly before profanity was uttered I hung up.

On Monday I instruct the wife to call if anyone from the cable company shows up. Watch mute starts barking and she calls me. I was on the scene quickly and start politely grilling guy on the pole. He tells me to check my cable modem and tell him when it syncs. Sound promising and is. It is working in 2 minutes.

When he gets down off the pole he fills me in. Apparently this is a problem stemming from the change of ownership. Since the records of the new company didn't indicate I had cable internet the geniuses put a filter on it without asking or checking. To add insult to injury they don't dispatch on weekends and the @home folks lied to me the entire weekend. He also told me this happened to about a dozen folks over the weekend.

Keep up the good work and keep them honest,
Greg Duvall
Bowling Green, KY

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