Cable Companies : A RANT!

[chasedude]

Do you ever get tired of being nickel and dimed to death? I do

My latest edition of the cable bill came with a little increase this last month. Over $2 in one month with no explanation on the bill. Looking closely between last and this months bills I found a difference in the "Maintenance" charges. The charges jumped from $2 to $3.95. Why a nearly 100% increase? Time to get on the phone and find out.

I get a very nice lady on the phone that explained the whole situation to me. She said that the company had people on all different pay scales in the computer system. Now that they've discovered the discrepancy the company had the bright idea to set everyone to the maximum scale in the system.

I was not very happy by this point, and because the rep on their end was nice, I held my cool. I told her that I thought they were wrong for posting the increase to the bill with no explanation for the increase. With the economy in shambles the way it is, putting more financial pressure on your clients is not very wise.

I ended the conversation with a, "Well I'm not paying for this anymore" and got the maintenance removed from my bill.

What was I paying this for? To safeguard some Coax cable and a splitter? Not me! No more Nickel and Dimeing this dude anymore!

[Mama Hip Rockets]

i used to have mediacom. i switched to DISH, and mediacom kept sending me bills for like 5 months after i had my service disconnected. i tried calling them a few times, waiting on hold for an hour and a half, and explaining that i was no longer a customer, but that didn't seem to help. it got to the point where i just threw the bills away as soon as i saw them.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by thurman merman

i used to have mediacom. i switched to DISH, and mediacom kept sending me bills for like 5 months after i had my service disconnected. i tried calling them a few times, waiting on hold for an hour and a half, and explaining that i was no longer a customer, but that didn't seem to help. it got to the point where i just threw the bills away as soon as i saw them.

Same exact thing happened to me.

[rockymtnchief]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Local telephone companies often charge a maintenance fee too, they call it "inside wiring".

In general, it's a ridiculous ripoff.

If your house is fairly new or you know how to troubleshoot it may be the case. But 90% of the homes I work on are frogged together and daisy chained from one end to the other. If they have wire maintenance, I stay there until everything's working. That may entail running whole new wiring. If you don't have maintenance, I prove that the phone works to the NID, let you fix it yourself, or charge you $52.00 an hour to troubleshoot/fix it.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by rockymtnchief

If your house is fairly new or you know how to troubleshoot it may be the case. But 90% of the homes I work on are frogged together and daisy chained from one end to the other. If they have wire maintenance, I stay there until everything's working. That may entail running whole new wiring. If you don't have maintenance, I prove that the phone works to the NID, let you fix it yourself, or charge you $52.00 an hour to troubleshoot/fix it.

I understand that.

However, even the average non-techie can pull phone cable. For alot less than what is charged.

In this case, you're buying an extended warranty but not for something you can't fix yourself but something you're too lazy to do yourself.

[Skip Towne]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

I understand that.

However, even the average non-techie can pull phone cable. For alot less than what is charged.

In this case, you're buying an extended warranty but not for something you can't fix yourself but something you're too lazy to do yourself.

You're right. I'm too lazy to crawl around in attics and under houses. Far too lazy

[CoMoChief]

Just have your whole family download a bunch of Porn. It's easier, cheaper, and the whole family can enjoy it.

[seclark]

Originally Posted by rockymtnchief

If your house is fairly new or you know how to troubleshoot it may be the case. But 90% of the homes I work on are frogged together and daisy chained from one end to the other. If they have wire maintenance, I stay there until everything's working. That may entail running whole new wiring. If you don't have maintenance, I prove that the phone works to the NID, let you fix it yourself, or charge you $52.00 an hour to troubleshoot/fix it.

pretty much the way we do it, except the first time we go to a customer location and the trouble is in their inside wire, we don't charge them if they go ahead and take the inside wire contract.
sec

[rockymtnchief]

The difference in phone and cable is that if one co-ax goes bad, it might only effect one area of the house. In phone, if one shorts it kills phone throughout the home. Unless you know how to shoot it, most people are screwed. Especially if it's in a daisy chain configuration. Also, you can just switch the pairs in a cable instead of running new wiring. The 15 minutes of doing that is cheaper and faster than if you decided to run new wiring.

But, I agree laziness plays a part also. When I lived in Colorado I had the superintendent of schools (educated man) call in with no dial tone. He told me to be at his home at 4:30. I waited until 5:15 and went home. He called in the next morning and called the customer service rep and myself every name in the book. He then said he'd be there at 4:30 again. I waited until 5:05 and he finally showed up. I let him know the trouble was in the house and I needed to look at his wiring in the basement. I walked downstairs with him behind me screaming about all the call he's missed. I got to the bottom of the stairs, saw a phone off-hook sitting on the washing machine, hung it back up, and dial tone was back. I turned and said, "You're getting billed for 90 minutes and the 166 miles I've driven out here both days." It was all I could do to not grab him by the throat after all the shit he spewed out about me and the company.

[rockymtnchief]

Originally Posted by seclark

pretty much the way we do it, except the first time we go to a customer location and the trouble is in their inside wire, we don't charge them if they go ahead and take the inside wire contract.
sec

If it's a lil old lady, I usually find a mouse ped is the trouble

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by rockymtnchief

I walked downstairs with him behind me screaming about all the call he's missed. I got to the bottom of the stairs, saw a phone off-hook sitting on the washing machine, hung it back up, and dial tone was back. I turned and said, "You're getting billed for 90 minutes and the 166 miles I've driven out here both days." It was all I could do to not grab him by the throat after all the shit he spewed out about me and the company.

Wow.....just wow.

[rockymtnchief]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Wow.....just wow.

You'd be amazed how many troubles I've rolled on, got to the house, and went and hung the phone up in the barn. 100+ miles to hang up a damn phone.

The other dandy is when people call in when power is out and say their phone isn't working. The phone works, but they have all cordless phones in the house. Cordless phones need power. Keep at least one old fashion phone in the house. Phone companies have backup generators/batteries that will keep you in service. If you are in a rural area, guys like seclark and myself run around with portable generators keeping carrier systems running indefenitely.

[seclark]

cat puke shorts out the phone jack behind the couch.
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[Lono]

I recently replaced the phone line from my outside box into my house. I did this because you can't hear a dang thing on our phone. It is horrible. We have tried different phones and its not our phone, its the line. I live about 16 miles out of town. I can also only connect to the interent through dial up to 21.6 kbs. Is their something else i can try? I called the phone company and they did something there that helped a tiny bit but not much. You could hear a little better for a couple days. Now its back to cant hear jack on it. Phone rings, shut off t.v and tell the kids to be quite or you cant hear anyone.

[rockymtnchief]

Originally Posted by Lono

I recently replaced the phone line from my outside box into my house. I did this because you can't hear a dang thing on our phone. It is horrible. We have tried different phones and its not our phone, its the line. I live about 16 miles out of town. I can also only connect to the interent through dial up to 21.6 kbs. Is their something else i can try? I called the phone company and they did something there that helped a tiny bit but not much. You could hear a little better for a couple days. Now its back to cant hear jack on it. Phone rings, shut off t.v and tell the kids to be quite or you cant hear anyone.

Hard to tell without more info. I'd assume you're not on a nearby carrier system if you don't have DSL. If that's the case, we put people on a 5A Reg. for people out that far. (Different companies use different equipment) Or on an RE-POTS card if you're far from the carrier. I had that problem out to a Hutterite colony once. It ended up being in the load coils placed every 6000 feet. The difference was that their calls to town were fine. Calls to the neighbor were faint because their cable wasn't loaded either.

Anyway, the phone company can come out and check your levels for loss/noise/milliamps/etc...

[Lono]

Ok, thanks for the info. Here's another tidbit of info. We aren't the only ones who live around there. We live 100 yards from my inlaws and they have no troubles. They do connect slow on dial up also though, but they can hear just fine. The house we live in is like 80 years old. However I dont think that is the prob because i changed the inside phone line.