Just Pick One

Another highly trained professional Comcast cable guy was out this morning to fix everything and make it all perfect for me.

Right. At least this one called first, unlike the last one who sat in my driveway and smoked a cigarette. I am allergic to cigarette smoke. I can still smell it in here.

I really want to describe this guy as I saw him, but don't want to insult anyone. Let's say he was confident he was the Man for the Job.

First, he looked at my modem, my router, and my VoIP gizmo. Then, he took all his little tools outside and made some noise out there while I scrubbed and scraped the runoff from the dog dinners I cooked up last night to freeze. What a mess! Does anything smell worse than chicken livers? I cannot believe I touched raw chicken livers. I still gag at the thought of the odors from the chicken livers and the okra I decided to add to the recipe, but the dogs have re-crowned me the Food Goddess.

So, while I am cleaning and scraping he is doing whatever outside and I am not paying any attention to him.

He comes back in, all proud of himself, and tells me my intermittent service (that just started) was caused by the fact that "they" had laid an indoor line outdoors.

I asked him Which one?

This confused him. I had to explain that my condo was originally pre-wired by Comcast for cable. (It's why I cannot switch to another cable company - my condo people gave Comcast an exclusive contract because they wired our condos.) Then, that first highly trained professional told me I had no idea what I was talking about and put a second line through my backyard.

Now I have THREE of them. Too bad, since none of them work and I will soon be dropping all cable services.

Today's highly trained professional cable guy proceeded to work through his little check list.

He interrupted my diligent cleaning to tell me that I have intermittent service because I have a very weak signal. I forgot if he said it was coming that way from the box or from the station. I was too busy wondering how I got the second and third diagnoses.

Why do I have an intermittent signal? I don't know. I still have it. I keep getting kicked offline and then get back on. It's highly annoying.

However, with the change to the intermittent service came some very high speed. I think I was probably supposed to get this speed all along, or perhaps my signal is coming in testosterone-laden spurts?

Who knows? I will never know.

Once I can get things set up, all cable services will be ended. I will switch to dry-DSL. Dry means no landline. It costs more, but it costs less than installing a third phone line here, which I do not need. My VoIP service backs up my cell phone just fine, and with a reputable DSL company here my phone and internet service will probably work all the time.

What a nice change that will be :-)

If I were a guy, I would say some things about what Comcast can do to my boy parts, but that wouldn't be ladylike, would it?

I wonder if any court would agree that if I had only 50% signal and no one realized it until now, I should get 50% of my money back? What about the indoor line outdoors? What about the first highly trained professional who refused to go in the attic because it was too hot, yet managed to get the cover off to the attic and dribbled insulation all over my dry clean clothes? Then he left his tools here and called me and yelled at ME about it? What about the second tech who was highly inappropriate with me regarding trying to spend the night here with me?

Comcast refuses to deal with anything except the first tech. His manager came out here and washed off the filth the tech left on my ceilings from his hands. Was I supposed to get a ladder and reach up 9-11 feet with only one working shoulder and wash off the ceilings in my new condo? I don't think so. I didn't wipe my hands on the ceiling. Or the walls by the outlets. I had only been here a few weeks when he did that.

It took a year, but Comcast did finally have someone from Security call me regarding the second tech. I gave him all the information I could remember, including personal details of the guy's life (he talked all day about himself), a very good description of the guy, and some exact quotes of things he said to me that he should not have said. Surely they can check the records and see that the guy stayed here all afternoon to hook up a pre-wired home with one TV and one computer. I didn't want him here, but I wanted my service hooked up, so I was polite. Barely.

Wow. I was only kicked offline twice while I wrote this, so far.

I will cancel cable TV and cable internet. I will not get any other cable TV, since I cannot. I have no interest in satellite since I don't watch TV anyway. I will get DSL and keep VoIP. This should work for me.

Let's hope so - since all the records showing dates, times, and names of all my calls to Comcast were lost when my old computer crashed.