comcraptastic

I had no choice but to switch to digital cable a while back. I have to use a converter box just to get basic now. Starting last week about half of the channels disappeared leaving me with the message that my "service is temporarily interrupted. Service will resume in a moment." Five days later I'm on the phone with a pretty non-helpful tech person, who chastises me for not paying an extra fee for a "service protection" plan. Wait, I pay a ridiculous amount for basic television service, which they now expect me to pay extra for a service to "protect" the service I am already paying for? By my logic, if their service or equipment is down and they are unable to provide service, my bill should go down and not up.

Whatever.

She offered to schedule a service call, and only after I asked did she inform me that a fee might be involved in that. And it would be about a week. Alternative, I could "visit the convenient Comcast location near" me. I asked where that was. She had to look it up. Which of course meant she had no idea if it were remotely convenient or any where near me at all. According to her, the nearest Comcast office was on the other side of town, and not at all convenient.

Today I thought I'd try to pop over there during lunch, only to be confronted with lines longer than most airport security checkpoints at Thanksgiving. And a really nasty sort of vibe to the room. Maybe it was all the ozone from the equipment. Or that the large television set up to showcase Comcast's extensive cable offerings was tuned to a local station I could get with rabbit ears and showing Maury. In this episode, a man is sitting between his wife and his step-daughter. He is sleeping with both of them.

I'm in this strange line passing the time on the iPhone, surrounded by ads for Comcast high-speed internet, but there is no wi-fi for the waiting customers. I wait about 40/45 minutes in line just to switch out my converter box. When I do make it to an agent, who looks exactly an Asian Dwight Schrute, my transaction takes less than three minutes from start to finish. Dwight was exceptionally efficient. I have no idea what was taking the other customers so long.

But this is when I became incensed: I had to cross to the far side of town in frustrating traffic to deal with this, sent here by the helpful agent who told me this was the nearest location. Once I make it to the counter, there is a sign posted to visit their new service center—a couple of blocks from my home/work.

Grr.