WARNING
BIG FAT GIANT ANGER AHEAD
Ever have one of those moments where you try to take care of "business" and no matter how many hoops you jump through….you can't get it done? Yea, that's how my morning has gone. For weeks, we've been making a cable change. Why? Because as much as I love watching tv (which I rarely do) and using internet (which I do a lot), I can't come to grips with paying $186.07 a month for service. So, when the nice door-to-door dude rang my doorbell IN JUNE…my ears were a perkin' to the possibility of BETTER SERVICE FOR HALF THE COST!!
Oh yea! Happy dance! Did you hear me? I said, half of what we were paying!!
Needless to say, we jumped on the new deal and started the ball rolling. Which must have had lead in it because the whole process was a drag along nightmare. That was June. It's July 18th and we've been using our new cable provider since July 3rd! So, it took a good long month to get the good deal benefits. Which is another story. One that consists of 47 million calls to Norris (the door-to-door dude) to get an appointment for installation. We'd get an install date, no one would show up. Three times, people!
Don't ask. It was crazy train, and our whole family rode along begging to get off.
Moving on to the reason I'm all flustered and hot under the collar today. I didn't pay the bill to my old cable provider on the due date because we were in the middle of having a switch. My thinking was that I would pay the final bill all at once with the pro-rated days added in. It shouldn't have been any days but the dates kept being pushed back by the "no show's" of the installers. Am I making any sense? I waited to pay the bill….not just decided to quit paying them. I wanted a clean ending to our account.
The new cable was installed on July 3rd in the late afternoon. The old cable provider was closed for the holidays, which put us at ending service with them after the 4th. No biggie. I called them on the 5th, asked how to end service and wrap up our bill (which by this time, they'd sent me a new bill with another months amount due on it). The nice lady told me that in order to end service I must bring in all equipment to the office. Once that was done, we could close down all account services.
Ok, cool. (I have no car)
On the 6th, my son took in all the boxes, remotes & cords belonging to the old provider. Service was now ended. The bill would be finalized and sent to us soon. I waited a few days and called the old provider for a final payoff amount. That's when the "run around" started. No one could tell me a final payment. I could see that I owed the past due bill but they were trying to charge me the next months bill too. Even though I only used the service from July 2nd — July 6th. I explained that I would need to pay the pro-rated amount of usage for those days. They agreed but couldn't tell me how much that was.
She'd have to call me back.
Today…I had waited long enough. So, I called. When I explained to the 2nd person they put me through to my reason for calling….Gwen (that's her name) decided to get really jerky with me and talk to me like I was asking her to solve a Calculus problem and without the help of a fancy calculator! Hello, customer service nightmare!
Nothing was accomplished with this (my 4th time of calling) conversation. I felt so frustrated…I really wanted to cry. My head is pounding! I still don't have the final amount. So, I just mailed the past due bill and will wait (because one of the brilliant statements from Gwen? It takes several months for them to figure out all this sort of thing!)! Whaaaaaaaat?
Listen, here's how I see this. If Cinergy Metronet wants to take several months to figure out how much I owe them for their service of 5 days (which I wasn't even using…since my new cable was clicked on July 3rd!). Cool! I'll wait until then to pay them for it! Thanks, Gwen! You're winning!
The moral of the story? Be prayed up when you call cable customer service! Oh, I kid. It's don't switch cable providers! No, kidding again. I don't have a moral to this story because I'm still mad and headachey! Next time you're on the phone with a (less than understanding) customer rep.– good luck. It might be a test of faith. Or an attack however you want to look at it.
So, Cinergy….Kiss it! Kiss it, real good!
Signed,
Never Coming Back!
Ps- you want to hear something really funny about this situation? The company my hubby works for (IT) deals with this cable provider almost every single day. They (hubby's company) give them so much business it's crazy. Not only were we paying an outrageous amount for our service…we were also handing them tons of customers on a regular basis! In my book, they are the epitome of crummy business!