tanookie, I feel your pain. When we got our cable modem, we had to stay home for 2 days as they sent various technicians out to try to find the correct box to hook up our service. We have underground wires, and apparently they had lost the records from the previous owner of which “box” along the street had been rigged up to our house. And when the higher up technician finally got us hooked up, he wasn’t sure exactly what was included with the free “basic” installation, since he was the “expert” installer.
As you don’t have cable TV, at least you’re immune from these god-awful commercials endlessly promoting why they (Charter does this, anyway) are better than “the dish” or DSL. And yes, you have to watch these commercials even when your internet connection is down or you’re getting otherwise crappy service (well, if you’re trying to watch the Tour de France, you do).
At least Comcast lets you get only the internet connection. Charter does not give you the option of skipping cable, so we pay for basic cable that we watch a few times a year. (Although the TdF was superb.)
<hijack: Are you raising the little ones without TV?>
Lily, we allow for videos and movies. I like having commercial free stuff right now. I also like having stuff independant of what time it is. Want sesame street at 1:45pm? No problem
Neither the hubby or I are all that interested in TV. Every so often we watch the network news but we get more than enough news through the internet.
The shows out there are mostly crap (IMO) and so much of the stuff geared towards kids is horrible.
I don’t see how it is worth the $40 + a month for the hour or so of actual TV we would watch so we live a cableTV-less existance
I used to watch TV. I was addicted to soap operas and emergency vets and trading spaces … then I had kids and there just isn’t the time or inclination to sit there for hours on end! Always something else to do If I have free time I’m probably here! Much more entertaining
I don’t think there would have been extra costs associated with her having the service, but they would have been giving the service away for free. Obviously someone wanting to make a profit will try to avaid that.
I suppose they wouldn’t even have been giving away the service if she hadn’t had anything hooked up to the outlets, but how are they to know if she does?
See, I’m not sure that’s quite true. I sort of remember another Doper who worked for a cable company saying that there is very definitely a cost there – it’s more than a simple matter of flipping a switch. Licensing fees? Royalties? Magic Cable Pixies? I can’t remember, but have a vague recollection of the cost being about 25-50% of the amount billed.
Nonetheless, it was their mistake, and so the service should have been comp’d rather than taking away an existing service.
If you’re at a restaurant and the waitron accidentally gives you a free potato, she shouldn’t have to take your entire meal away to correct the mistake, then accuse you of stealing. That’s just poor customer relations.
My housemate has taken the war on C*****t to a whole new, completely absurd level. A former cable guy himself, he picked up early on the fact that the TV guys have no idea what’s going on with the Internet and the Internet guys have no idea what’s going on with the cable.
Thus, he complains to C@#$%^&t about the fact that our Internet service rarely works during the day. The Internet guys come over and fix the Internet, thus fucking up our television reception. He raises hell with them again, they give us the month free, and the TV guys come over and fuck up our Internet connection again.
Usually after a few days of this nonsense C$%^&*t sends out the one technician who appears to know what he’s doing and he fixes things so that neither works perfectly but at least they work at the same time. The Internet service slowly degrades over a period of weeks.
Then, my housemate waits until the next billing cycle before he complains about our shitty Internet service again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Free month.
This has been going on since at least January. The only problem is my housemate has to spend about three to five hours a month on hold, which eats into his cell phone time.
I need to reiterate that we really do have a problem, but C!@#%^t appears incapable of fixing it. My housemate suspects that the problem is integral to C%^&*t’s local network and can never be fixed to provide the service they promise–in other words these bastards are ripping off the entire neighborhood and, as best we can tell, we’re the only ones who complain vocally enough to get a consolation prize out of it. We get some of the service, some of the time, at the price which such incompetent and dishonest service is actually worth.
I started with @Home, provided by Comcast. After the first month, though, it stopped working. Apparently Comcast periodically sent crews around to audit who’s connected but not customers (I’m DirecTV), and disconnected me. The explanation was that @Home and Comcast didn’t communicate that kind of stuff! It never happened again, though.
Just recently my bill dropped by $3, but they started charging me a $0.25 franchise fee, despite the fact that they hadn’t been charging me due to an FCC ruling on data-only customers like me. They explained that my internet was really $10 less per month, but that they were charging me $7 per month for basic cable as part of a package. I told them fine, and that’s they way it is now. Seems the whole time, though, I’d gotten cable and there was never a filter on the line. I’m still a DirecTV customer, though, since it’s cheaper, higher quality, and multi-lingual.
I’ll say that Comcast internet here in my part of Michigan is damn good. After the initial switch, there were outages for a few hours every couple of months, but now it’s been a good, long time without a problem. No complaints whatsoever. Other than not being allowed to run a server, but it’s not enough of a problem to make me switch to super-slow DSL – SBC offered my a whopping 128-384 (with no guarantees until I committed to a contract!) DSL connection for the low, low price of $30/month. Yeah, great bargain for possible 128Kbps service. The next tier, 384-768K service was as expensive as cable, but (1) not available to my house and (2) not guaranteed until after I committed to a one-year term. Are they nuts?
