Everyday Randomness

Charter Pt 2

This is a series I have called Charter Communications Rant that is simply about all the issues I have had with Charter over the past 3 years, and how pissed I am at them.

If you need to catch up on my Charter rant series, you can read Pt 1.

When I closed my last post, I mentioned that an install tech did finally arrive. I spent the day at home waiting on him, and my face lit up like a light bulb when I saw that van arrive in my driveway. A week in my new house with no Internet was killing me. I really didn’t care about the cable TV, but I was dieing without Internet. I couldn’t go back to dial-up because I was still waiting on the phone to be installed, besides, who wants to go back to dial-up anyway? So, I didn’t even give the tech time to get out of his van before I was on the porch waiting for him with my “are you gonna fix it or not?” look. After taking his time getting out of his van, finally giving me a friendly but I’m scared of you greeting, he began his walk around the house looking for the box where service was previously installed at the house.

He walked over to the pole on the other side of my neighbor’s property, came back to my house, walked around again, and said “Mam, I can’t install service at this location.” Of course I immediately gave him the “Why the hell not?” speech. He mumbled something about the power line running to the house being too low, said he needed 6 more inches of clearance to run the line, hopped back in his van and took off. I’m sure my face was umpteen shades of red at this point.

I carried my happy ass back into the house, dialed Charter’s number which is forever etched in my brain….1-800-955-7766 for those of you who have problems, and bypassed all the lower level reps reading straight out of the book, demanding to be put through to the highest authority in the office. I explained everything that had happened, found out I was actually talking to a nice, helpful woman, and toned down my bitchiness just a tad bit. After an hour on the phone with her as she contacted dispatch, waited for a response, tried to call my local office again, put me on hold even longer, and finally returned with an answer, I was able to find out that the cable company has to have at least 8 inches of clearance below the power line. They aren’t allowed to install the line in the ground any longer, and my power line was actually sitting lower than the state allows. This meant we just needed to contact the power company, have them come out and extend the pole on our roof and raise the line 6 inches. She even found the correct number for me to contact to get everything taken care of. She credited my account for an additional 2 months of free Internet service, and I thanked her for her time, hung up, and immediately called the power company…