Okay, this is my first rant here. I absolutely HAVE to get this out of my system.
I work for the local cable company. Before you laugh, let me just state that I do about everything there from answering phones to designing neighborhood cable systems. I am the six man (a basketball reference) in the company. I love my job because of the variety (and also because I am the only one who is cross trained in every department).
There is, however, one aspect to the business that I simply cannot stand. I absolutely hate even talking to people who don’t pay their cable bill on time. These are the people who simply cannot comprehend the harm they are doing to other people by being late with their bill.
All of the logistics are provided here.
For one, if you are late with your bill, do not call us complaining when your digital receiver shuts down becuase you are late with your bill. We will not re-activate the receiver until you pay us. When that box turns off, it is due to the fact that you are exactly one week away from being completely disconnected. That means we have to roll a truck out to your house.
Do not complain when we do show up at yuor house to give you one last chance to stay active. Yes, we do knock on your door before we disconnect your cable. Yes, we do charge $20 for this service. That is just a fraction of what it costs to send the truck to your house. Guess what? If you don’t have the money to pay us at that time, we’ll charge an additional $20 to hook you back up again once you get your account caught up. Forty freakin’ dollars for being late with my bill? Don’t give me any of that shit.
One of our trucks costs $30,000 completely outfitted. That truck gets an average of ten trips a day for an average of 50 weeks a year. That is 500 trips per year. A truck will average 5 years of service before it starts to cost more to maintain the truck than it does to buy a new one. That is 2500 trips over a truck’s lifetime. That equals $12 a trip. One can add another dollar to that for gas. Add another $10 for the wage of the technician. And, before we are done, we must also consider that the truck has about 50% of its original cost done in maintenance over the course of its life. That means we can add another $6 a trip. That equals a flat $29 fee for the bare minimum. That does not include the fact that we pay labor for the people who have the trucks outfitted and maintained. That does not include the fact that we have to set aside four full man-days of time just for the people who have to prepare the orders. That does not include the fact that we have to spend oodles of money on the paper and postage we have to use to send a letter informing you of the fact that you need to pay us (about $2500 a month). And, finally, that does not include the people who never pay us (our corporate office estimates that an average truck roll costs $65 when considering every ounce of money that it costs to generate that truck roll…from the receptionist answering the phone to the guy who actually knocks on the door).
Our company has been working hard over the past year to get within our monthly “non-pay” budget. We averaged spending over $25,000 a month (over $2.5 million nationally) in non-pay expenses last year. With 40,000 customers, that would normally be over $0.50 a customer just so we can have people who don’t pay their bills. With 100 employees, that is an extra $250 a month that each of us could be taking home.
The only option we have is to screw the people who deserve to be screwed. We will no longer charge people who pay their bill on time every month for the actions of delinquants. We no longer make any sort of payment arrangements unless you notify us before your initial bill is due. Considering that we wait a full 60 days after that to perform the disconnect, you have plenty of time to reconcile. Plus, I always know if I am going to be strapped for cash before my bills even arrive in the mail. Yes, I was late with my electricity bill once (about a week late) because I couldn’t afford to pay it. I called the company the day I received my bill in the mail in order to make arrangements to pay them. I paid half of it before the due date, and the other half the week after the due date. It’s pretty simple…and no one got riled up. We also no longer send out “cablegrams” informing you when you are two weeks away from being disconnected (we saved over $2500 last month by instituting that policy).
We will still knock on your door when it is time to disconnect. We will still charge $20 for our time if we have to do that, though. We are more than happy to keep you as a customer…but you must realize that we will charge you for every expense you incur to us because of the fact that you are late.
If you cannot afford to feed your kids, you should not have cable. I could keep one kid very healthy for $37.50 a month (provided, of course, that he/she wasn’t a teenager).
And don’t threaten me with the old “I’m going to get a dish” rant. They expect you to pay your bills too.
And don’t tell me that you know how to get cable for free either. I will put a warning on your account. We will check back every month for a year to make sure you do not hook yourself up (costing us more money). And we will turn you over to the local police department if we do catch you. Just be thankful we don’t get the FCC involved.
People who steal cable are a strange breed…ironically on the same rung as people who don’t pay their bills. They are both one and the same…they are stealing a signal that is well regulated by our government. It could get one prison time (up to ten years, in fact).
Just feel lucky that we go easy on you.