***WARNING - This saga is not intended for the easily bored***
The deadline of February 17th came and went without much fanfare. For all of you with TV antennas fastened to your roofs [does anyone still have one besides me?], you know that the stay of execution for broadcasting stations to transition from the ill-fated analog to digital signal has been moved out to June 12, 2009.
In preparation I dutifully purchased two converter boxes, connected everything as directed, pressed the ON switch on the little black box and voilá…it was horrible!! I couldn’t believe it, we no longer had access to the basic channels the way they were previously set-up; instead what we had was a bazillion Korean and Spanish channels as well as a clear view of a traffic camera positioned on 5th Avenue in NYC.
My mother is a sweetheart, but she has a penchant for always stating the obvious as if it were a new revelation, this tends to get my blood pressure up when I’m already stressed about the situation. Well, she stared at the TV as we repeatedly pulsed through the channels trying to force it to work. I knew she was frustrated too, because about the third time through, we returned to the surreal black and white pictures of 5th Ave. She said in her aggravated tone, “I don’t care about the traffic, I want channel 2, 4 and 7!” DUH I thought, that’s what we’re all hoping for! So I did what every other person in this situation would do, I calmly detached all the digital converter boxes and temporarily reinstated the antenna. Mom was happy, that’s all that mattered.
Since that frustrating day in February I’ve been anguishing over the looming June deadline, hence when I received a card in the mail from Comcast about their cable service I saw this as a sign and called them. Now you have to keep in mind our house is 100 years old with high ceilings, plaster and lathe walls, and a basement filled to the gunwales with treasures my brother and his wife have collected over the past 25 years [one should interpret this to be a disaster zone]. So when the gal went over the installation requirements to put in an installation work order I let her know in no uncertain terms that this was a huge job, because the house has never been outfitted with anything other than a few telephones. She seemed nonplussed and set the date for the following Thursday.
Installation day arrived and a cable consultant [versus a Comcast technician] showed up at 11:40 AM, of course he was scheduled between 8 and 11 [reminds me of that Seinfeld episode with Cramer and the cable guy]. I took him through the house, showed him the six TVs and when he saw the antenna connections on all the TVs he wanted to see the hook up. So we trudged outside to the back of the house where an antenna guy [versus the cable guy…always seems to be a guy] had brought the coaxial cable down off the roof to a juncture under the eave of the house on the second floor. The guy stood there staring at it for quite awhile and when I queried him he responded “Don’t worry, let me get started.” It was then I showed him one of my prized hostas in the garden below one of the connections (I collect these magnificent plants) and asked that he not step on it. He assured me that he would not, so I went inside and let him do his thing.
A short while later he asked if we had some twine, so my mom gave him some, I asked him if he had everything he needed, his response was, “Don’t worry,” and he disappeared outside again. That should have been my first clue that we were in for an eventful day.
He returned a half hour later to borrow our extension ladder and then spent hours, pulling cable from the telephone pole, running it to the newly installed grey “box” on the house, splicing it into an electrical ground, stringing it across the outside of the house along the eave to the wiring juncture at the back and integrating it to the pre-existing antenna cable. At intermittent times I would check on him and he response was always, “Don’t worry.”
After three hours he was ready to work indoors to install the cable boxes. I thought this would be quick, but in all this took him another two hours. While in the upstairs bedroom he asked me, “Whose bedroom is this?” AGH!!! I was totally creeped out!!! I responded that it was mine and changed the subject. It was while he was connecting one in the next bedroom that it became evident that we weren’t receiving all the channels I‘d subscribed to. When I questioned him about this, he responded with, “Don’t worry.”, and “Oh, by the way, I stepped on your plant, I’m sorry.” Hmmm, was it my imagination, or did he just change the subject by remorselessly apologizing for stepping on the hosta that I had specifically asked him not to step on? Wow, was I annoyed, I was looking forward to seeing how this plant had fared over the winter, and besides ‘Sea Gulf Stream’ had set me back a pretty penny. Groan!
At this point all I wanted was for this guy to be done and to get out of my house. Thankfully when he got to the last TV I started to be less stressed. This final one was the main one in the house, and of course it wasn’t getting any signal. So he hurried back outside, changed a connector and miraculously the picture appeared. We were still not receiving all the channels, and when I pointed this out again he said, “You have to pay for those channels”, which silenced me temporarily, because off the top of my head perhaps I was mistaken.
He finished up, and then instructed me to leave all the TVs powered on. I had looked at the channel guide while he was working and saw that channels I should have been receiving were not coming through, so again I inquired about the missing channels, and he responded with, “Don’t worry, leave the TVs on and they will come in.” “If they don’t, when I come back tomorrow I will run some new cable wires.” And with that he got in his little grey truck and drove away. Well, I wasn’t happy with the cable connection, but I was glad he was gone.
After he left I surveyed the damage…he didn’t close the gate to the 6’ fence in the rear [keeps the big brown rats from eating my collection of 200+ hostas], he left our extension ladder up on the house, he squashed my $45 hosta, he failed to put a cover on the grey cable box on the house, he disconnected every DVD player and left them lying on the floor, he failed to tuck all the wires back in place, and I didn’t get what I was paying for. What a disaster, I guess when someone says, “Don’t worry”, you should worry!
Day two of the installation arrived and he had said he’d be there in the morning.
So I waited…..
And I waited…
And I waited…
Finally I phoned the cable company at 11:00 and the service rep told me that he was scheduled to be there between 8 and 11 [déjà vu…sigh]. When I told her the signal wasn’t coming through she disagreed with me, saying that from her end, we were receiving everything. Regardless I still had the blue screen of death staring me in the face. I gave her one of the serial numbers off the bottom of one of the cable boxes and she keyed it in the computer, pulsed a signal to it, but nothing happened, still the dreaded blue notification. I mentioned that the cable guy had offered to replace cable today, and she informed me that if he did I would have to pay for that, because I don’t have a maintenance contract.
Maintenance contract!!!????
I reminded this nice lady that the man hadn’t finished the installation, how was it I should pay for maintenance? He was contracted to put new cable in and all he had done was to use pre-existing antenna cable. Maintenance? I hung up with her and reluctantly phoned the cable guy [he’d left me his cell number]. He was short with me, said he didn’t have much time to spare, that he was stopping by to change out two of the boxes; he’d have to see if his schedule could afford any time beyond that for me. I told him that he was scheduled here between 8 and 11, obviously he then realized I had called the cable company, because he asked, “you called Comcast?” to which I responded with a “yes.” He said he’d be out as soon as possible and hung up.
He showed up around 2:00, buzzed in with the two boxes, changed them out, brushed me off with, “I’ve got too much to do to run new cable,” and “it took me an hour to get here” [please note that yesterday he said he would only be in the town next to mine]. At this point he must have noticed the sheer and utter disgust displayed on my face, because he stopped and instructed me to, “call Comcast, but don’t tell them that you don’t have full service, tell them that you want a new outlet installed.” “Ask specifically for me, and I’ll come back to run new wire, but whatever you do don’t call today, because I’m working on Saturday and don’t want to come back on Sunday.” With that he vanished and was gone.
I stood there perplexed, and decided that whatever happened, that miserable man wasn’t setting a foot in my house. So I waited until Monday morning and I called Comcast. Have you ever noticed that search as you might through phone menus, there usually is no option offered to speak to a live person, and so it was with Comcast’s answering system. So I employed a trick I’d learned when I was exceedingly agitated with a 401K administrator a few years ago, you simply start pounding on the pound key.
And pound I did, until the phone said transferring your call. I was connected to a woman that fully understood my plight. She too was disturbed that he had asked me whose bedroom was whose, and assured me that he would not be coming back, and that I would not be paying for any maintenance costs. With that she scheduled a Comcast technician to come to my house.
Tomorrow is that day, groan! He’s scheduled to be here between 8 and 11, sigh! Can you tell the anticipation is overwhelming me? The saga goes on.
CD
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