The cable guy

For years, we’ve had trouble with TimeWarner. We cancelled digital cable because it would fizzle out leaving us without TV for hours. The high-speed cable also has been in and out with large swaths of down time, despite the fact we do work from home (not just blogging!).

The past two weeks, it’s gone out every day between 3:30 and 4 p.m. and not come back until the wee hours of the morning the next day. We didn’t notice it much on vacation (duh!) but it became annoying enough to call the help line yet again. They could find no discernable reason why it was out.

So they sent the cable guy out today to take a look. The catch? He’d arrive sometime between 7:30 and noon.

Guess what? That’s right, he called at 7:45 this morning. 7:45 a.m. (Note: We were at a wedding until late last night.)

He was decent enough to give me 10 minutes to go to the bathroom, throw some clothes on and get a pot of coffee brewing.

Then we couldn’t get rid of him.

He was at our house from 7:55 until 9:30. Now don’t blame me for monopolizing his time. He talked about cooking. He talked about herbs. He talked about religion. He talked about his kids and grandchild. He talked and talked and talked…

As Camille would say: “Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.” (Touch thumb to fingers continuously to simulate you hand talking.)

As the conversation wound down, his stories moved into a disturbing direction. He started talking about the tips the cable guys get. Specifically, his tips. Three separate stories about people giving him tips, anywhere from $20 to $50.

I nodded and smiled. Nodded and smiled. Nodded and smiled.

When I wouldn’t bite, he changed the conversation back to food. And then he was gone.

Thank goodness.

All this in the face of a new age of customer service from an industry that thinks customer service is you giving to them, not them doing for you.

When workers from AT&T and Verizon visit homes to install their new television services, they come with blue hospital booties that they slip over their shoes before going inside. … For years, service was an afterthought for these companies because customers had little choice but to get their phone and cable services from what were effectively monopolies. The litany of complaints is well known: long waits for repair visits, unresponsive call centers, high-priced and inflexible service plans. On customer satisfaction surveys, phone and cable companies often rank even below the airlines. [via NYT (registration required)]

So after that, you’d think he solved the problem right? Wrong. He had to put in a service call because there appeared to be something wrong with the line.

And today at 3:40 cable is wiped out again. But it did manage to come back a little sooner tonight.