Corporations Hate You

It’s hard to maintain a blog when you don’t have Internet access.

Last week, our Time Warner cable and web access went out during a bad windstorm in New York City. Also, because we have Vonage, the web-based phone service, our phone was dead too.

My wife and I figured the Time Warner outage was weather-related because there were area blackouts, etc., due to the high wind. Yet two full days later, our cable, Internet and phone were still out.

We called Time Warner and they couldn’t fix our problem from headquarters. Instead, they needed to send out service personnel. But they couldn’t do that for several business days, and someone would have to skip work, stay home and wait for the Time Warner guys who would show up between noon and 4 p.m. yesterday.

So yesterday, my wife stayed home and waited … and waited. Hours ticked by. Soon enough it was 4 p.m. and Time Warner still hadn’t showed. My wife felt like calling them, but because we have a web-based phone, it was impossible without leaving the apartment.

By 4:30, with no sign of Time Warner, my wife got restless and headed out to a pay phone, three blocks away.

“I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure Time Warner wasn’t pulling up as I walked down the street,” she told me. “There was no sign of them.”

My wife got the phone and called TW. After negotiating their voicemail system, she finally got a breathing person on the line and explained that their cable guy had never come to fix our problem.

“Let’s see,” said the Time Warner rep. “Oh, yes. They were just there, at 4:30. They rang and nobody was home.”

“Oh I just came out to call you,” my wife explained. “Can they come back, they must be in the area.”

“No, that’s impossible,” said the Time Warner rep. “You need to reschedule for another day.”

My wife was getting frustrated. “But I took the day off work,” she said. “Can’t you accommodate me since you never came between noon and four, when you told me to be home?”

“We’re sorry, it’s too late.”

So we’ve been rescheduled for next Monday, when someone again needs to take off work. When I got home and heard the Time Warner story, I was frustrated too.

“Let’s just call their competition, and have them install the same service,” I said. “They’ll probably be here tomorrow.”

My wife explained to me what should have already been self-evident: Time Warner has no competitor in the cable market. There’s only the satellite dish company, and we live in an apartment. So Time Warner can treat you like dirt, and there’s nothing you can do about it, if you want your MTV.