Why I Hate Cable Companies

A few weeks ago, we had a major ice storm here. It took out a bunch of trees which in turn took out the power and cable. Our cable came back on a day or so after the power, but it has been flaky ever since. The TV works pretty well, but the internet has been horrible. It will work for five minutes and then cut out for hours or an entire day at a time. So, of course, I call the cable company. They tell me that a tech will be out within a few days to check it out. Well, two weeks later, I have yet to see a tech. So, I cuss and kick and scream, then calmly call the cable company again. I am informed that the previous work order was cleared because they included us in an outage area. At this point, I want to throw myself on the floor like a three-year-old kicking and screaming. However, I remember that I am 33 weeks pregnant and would never be able to get off the floor so I restrain myself. The guy on the phone says that he has pulled up the service from our house and that in fact 2 out of the 3 signal levels are out of range and that will cause intermittent service (DUH, I just told him that). He's going to put in a new work order (great, because that worked out so well last time) but it's going to be TUESDAY before someone can get out here. I calmly explain (and by calmly I might or might not mean hysterically) that I reported this two weeks ago and I'd really appreciate not having to wait a whole week more to get it fixed. He nicely (with just a hint of annoyance) informed me that he could not override the system (dang it, I should've asked for a manager...but I hate being that person) but that I could contact the billing department and ask for a credit once it is fixed. I'm so irritated with the service right now because it makes it difficult to complete my homework, my oh-so-important blogging and my shopping for Kacey. On a positive note, though, I just managed to get the internet to work long enough to order this crib. Yay!