I am waiting for the cable guy.
He is scheduled to arrive ‘sometime between 8 and 5.’
It is 4:00.
In the name of Beaver Cleaver and all his undead minions, why have I been stuck in my apartment all day?
Is it so impossibly difficult to at least set a three or four hour window for this man to arrive? Does he have NO idea whatsoever how long his service visits will take? There must be some reasonable estimate, or how could they know how many people to put on his List of Disgruntled Customers to Visit?
Have I been waiting all this time so that he can have Workman Sex with everyone in line in front of me?
I’d feel better about the whole thing if I had any confidence that he was actually going to show up before 5. I did call and was assured by the company that he would, but I am not convinced.
When he comes, I am going to wait until he finishes his work, then push him down the stairs.
That’s a reasonable response, isn’t it?
Um, you probably shouldn’t have mentioned your little plan. Kind of hard to make it sound like an accident later, isn’t it?
I was in a similar position (well, 12 - 5) The guy showed up at 9:15. Pour yourself a cocktail.
Once this happened (phone guy) and he never showed up. Irate, I called the phone company and told them this: they said “Oh, it says here that he did come and he made some adjustments OUTSIDE THE HOUSE.”
Why on Og’s green earth am I asked to stay home for 8 hours for someone to come and make an adjustment OUTSIDE OF MY HOUSE, and not even tell me that they’ve been?
Assholes.
**cowgirl, ** beats what happened to me. I just moved, and as part of the move decided to add a phone line for the computer. Every other time I’ve moved, there’s been no need for me to be there when they set up service. So I schedule the movers and go about my business.
The day before my move, the phone company calls to confirm the details of my swtich. THAT’S when they decide to tell me that someone needs to be there, in case the phone guy needs to get into the building. Obviously, I wasn’t about to reschedule the move.
I’m still waiting for the chance to reschedule the phone guy. If they try to charge me twice for connection service because they didn’t bother to tell me I had to be home until it was too late to do anything about it, I plan to raise holy hell.
Before you push him down the stairs a few thoughts.
- Force reduction. His crew now has 5 people that perform the same installations that 12 people did last year.
- Time Windows. They are a pure fabrication by a clerk (probably not even in the same area he works) that says what she’s told. Since she has no direct contact with the installer she has no idea whether it’s even possible for him to meet his commitment.
Welcome to “Customer Service”. Lie,cheat and steal,we’re the only game in town and they (the customers) have to put up with it.
I’m reminded of a movie, don’t remember the name, but the guy comes home to find his girlfriend banging the cable guy. They have a big fight, and as she storms off, he yells, “Did you at least get a discount?”
I once needed to get an engineer round to look at my central heating.
I was offered a morning or afternoon slot, and chose the morning.
At 12.30pm, I called up the company and asked where their guy was.
“Our morning slots run till 2pm”
[Qwest]That’s our spirit of service![/Qwest]
I got this today. I need to leave my house by 12pm to get to work on time. I had one diagnostic visit last week where the air conditioning repairman was told before hand that the work had to be done by noon and he managed that. While setting up the next appointment I again specify that it had to be done by noon and have to wait several more days for the work just to insure this. I confirmed with their secretary that it had to be done by noon. This morning I recieve a call at 10am saying “They’ll be right over”. 11:30 I find out that he decided to take another call first (“We do have you scheduled between nine and twelve.” 
). They show up at 11:55.
The flip side of that is I have a mechanic who comes by the house to do most repairs. He’s come and gone without me even knowing it most times. I go outside wondering why he never showed and find a new water pump installed or something. 
Worst one ever was delivery of a dishwasher between noon and four; actual arrival time was about ten at night well after the group I got to help me install it went home.
I had a nightmare of a time with several different repair people (phone, plumbing, etc.) not showing up at all, and then claiming that they had been to my house, but no one had been home, even though I’d taken the day off and sat in my apartment all day.
It turned out that my doorbell was broken. :smack:
Now that it’s been fixed, my workman woes have lessened considerably. Last week the phone company gave me a 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. window, and the guy showed up at 3:50.
Sorry about your troubles, though. I know I was tearing my hair out when I was waiting all day for people who never showed (or so I thought).
I use the Rent-A-Housesitter method. There are six ‘retired’ housewives (as in, no outside job & kids olds enough to be left alone after school if necessary) and four retired men (usual meaning of the word) in my neighborhood that I am on good terms with. When someone needs to be home for repairs or a delivery, I can always find one of them who will be happy to hang around watching tv or reading in my house instead of their own in exchange for an extra $20 or two.
Hey, skipping the aggravation of waiting all those hours is worth it alone, but when you add in not losing a day’s pay (or using up one of my too few personal days) it’s a great bargain.
Of course, that won’t work when you’re just moving into a neighborhood and don’t know anybody.
Gah! I slept on the floor for a week because of Evil Delivery Guys. I bought a new set of bedroom furniture a few months ago, and after saving for ages was so very excited. I got friends together to clear out the old stuff the day before delivery was to take place. I only had a lamp and a sleeping bag since I was getting a new matress too. They were supposed to be there between nine and noon, so I was up bright and early since you know they’ll show up at nine if you try to chance they’ll come later. Around ten thirty I called to confirm they were still on schedule, then again at eleven thirty (did I mention I was really excited?). At noon I called and they said the guys had been there but nobody answered the door. I asked them to have the guys swing back to my place when they finished their current delivery. I then sat out on my balcony and waited. Here came their big blue truck down the street. And there it went! I dashed down the stairs and ran after them. I yelled and screamed, jumped up and down, the best part was when one of the delivery guys gave me a jaunty little wave! Like I was a kid trying to get a fire truck to run their siren. I called, and was told they were at that very moment delivering my furniture. I told the chicky they most certainly were not delivering my furniture since I was still breathing the fumes from the departing van. Turns out the delivery guys were great big liars and really stupid, too. It took a week before they could schedule a return visit to my area and so I slept on my invisible furiture the whole time. It really wasn’t very comfortable, so I’m glad I got that new visible stuff delivered eventually.
My heater once broke down in the middle of the night when it was -5 outside. I woke up in my one bedroom apartment (the outside wall was nearly all windows) because of extreme cold and was able to see my breath. My cat was whimpering and pawing at my door, so I let him in and put him under the covers to warm up while I called our emergency maintenance guy, who is on call all night.
Well, while I sincerely appreciate that it has to suck ASS to be on call all night on a Saturday night, I would have been extremely grateful if the guy had been sober when he called me back after I paged him. I would have appreciated it very much if he hadn’t told me “Uh, well, I’m downtown now, and after I finish my beer, I’ll come down.” I almost wish he hadn’t called me back - then I wouldn’t have had to lie in an apartment that was approximately 35 degrees by that point, shivering under my covers, upon which were piled all my clothes and towels, seething at the fact that this drunken asshole was finishing off his beer while I was laying in bed with a whimpering, freezing cat. I was even more pissed because I had to work at my second job the next day.
Even more so, I would have been a hell of a lot happier if he had notified me that I had a space heater under one of my windows. And no, I didn’t know it was there because it was hidden by some wood panelling and metal window frames and was not pointed out to me on my walk-through. I could have at least turned this on for my cat, who I could hear crying softly from under my covers. Unfortunately, this little gem was not pointed out to me until I called my property manager at about 8 a.m. the next morning, eight fucking hours after I had originally called the guy, and seven hours after he said he needed to finish his damn beer, to complain that the emergency maintenance guy STILL hadn’t come to fix my heat. “Oh,” came the sweet voice of my property manager, “Didn’t James tell you about the space heater? I wonder why he didn’t do that?” Grrrr…:smack:
Can you tell I’m bitter??