Everyday Randomness

Charter Pt 1

So I wasn’t online much yesterday. I didn’t get a chance to blog as much as I would have liked, and I was extremely ill. At least it has given me a nice post/rant for today which I have decided to turn into a nice series. I’m doing so because this would be about a 10 page post if I didn’t.

We have had issues with our cable internet service since the day it was installed we called to transfer our service from our apartment to our new house. It all started a little over 3 years ago.

When we got married, we decided to move back to my hometown. Since my grandparents own the house we rent now, we slowly moved out things a little at a time from our apartment, and a week before we moved, I contacted the cable company to have our service moved to our new location. Our cable company is Charter Communications, and we chose to stick with them because a. we had great service at our old location 45 minutes away, and b. no one else offers broadband service at our new location. I took down my confirmation number and appointment, and when the day arrived, we drove out to our new house to wait for them.

The appointment was considered an all day appointment, but when 8pm rolled around without a Charter van appearing in our driveway, I called to nicely inquire about the situation bitch. We were told that the tech arrived at the house and reported that no one answered the door. Of course I kindly let the service rep know that my husband and I had been at the house all day, and not once did a van show nor did the tech call my phone to make sure someone would be at the location. Charter is supposed to call you at least 30 minutes before the appointment, and they’re supposed to try to call a second time if they couldn’t reach you. Of course I ranted over how I had to take the day off work to drive 45 minutes to sit all day waiting on a tech that never arrived, never called, nada.

I couldn’t take another day off that week, and Charter will not install service on the weekend, so I arranged for my grandpa to be at the house the next morning for an 8-12 appointment. Yet again, no tech arrived, no service got installed. I got the same report from the customer service rep about no one being home. I yet again asked why I wasn’t called, and got a lame excuse that the tech tried to call but the number I gave was disconnected. I checked to make sure the number on the account was my correct number, and it was, confirmed the address yet again, and had it noted on my account that I would be getting some compensation for this.

A week went by before the next appointment was scheduled. We had already moved into the house, and since I had quit my job to move to the new location, I was there all day everyday. After another missed appointment, I called and bitched like I’ve never bitched before. I went through 5 levels of management before I reached the top, was given 6 months free service, and finally found out that the tech had been driving to the wrong place. Now, our new house is in West Union. The Charter office is in Spartanburg which is two hours down state. The install tech was driving to Union, which is 2 hours away from the Charter office in the OTHER DIRECTION. He was driving downstate, 4 hours away from us! Another tech was sent out that afternoon, to the right location. I was there when he arrived, which starts a whole new problem that will be continued…..