For about a month now, my digital cable service has not been working properly. I'm paying over $75.00 per month, and now, over half my channels are out. First everything was just digitally scrambled; now, they are mostly black.
What's really odd is that the ones that are out are the ones I watch most: TCM, TVLand, Discovery. Channels I don't give a damn about come in beautifully.
Twice Time Warner has been scheduled to come and check on it, and each time—like the aching tooth that gets better right before you go to the dentist or the pinging in your car that stops just as you pull into the service center—service has returned.
But today, half my channels are not working. What really got my goat though was when I called customer service. The guy on the phone instructed me to do a hard reboot of my cable box. Now my cable box—along with the TV and two VCRs—is plugged into a power strip. I told the fellow that I was turning off the power strip.
He then proceeded to tell me to unplug it from the wall. To do so, I would have to move my sofa and crawl around the one of three outlets in my very old studio apartment in Brooklyn.
This place still has the fixtures from the gaslights, so multiple electrical outlets are at premium around here. This guy argued with me, telling me I was not doing a hard reboot.
I said, "God damn it, I'm doing a hard reboot. My TV's off and so are my two VCRs." He then had a hissy fit and said, "Sir, if you are going to continue using language like that I can no longer help you."
If I had said, "God damn, you 'effin' son-of-a-bitch, I'm doing a hard reboot, " he would have had some reason to terminate the conversation.
But I did not use any profanity or obscenities directed at him. I asked to be connected with someone else, and I was put back at the beginning of the queue. I prefaced by conversation with the next person with, "If I should happen to use the words 'God damn, ' will you terminate the conversation." She said, "No." And because she did not argue with me, I had no reason to swear.
They're coming next Thursday. Later on today, when I noticed that one of my two premium services was working, I called customer service again and asked if because of the drought of programming available if I could be given one of the other two premium services available in the meantime.
I had no surety that one of these would work, but I had no reason not to try it. They refused to do it. Apparently, the customer is never right at Time Warner Cable of New York.
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