From: markc@smsc.sony.com (Mark Corscadden)
Subject: pressure those nasty Bay Area cable companies!
Followup-To: ba.general
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp, San Jose, CA
Distribution: ba
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 21:05:16 GMT

I'm new to the ba news hierarchy (though I've lived in the Bay Area for
fourteen years) and I've been looking around for a group in which to
discuss the evil ways of our local cable company.  The topic is political,
but ba.politics is a madhouse!  Someone suggested ba.broadcast but reading
the stuff there it doesn't seem like the right choice of newsgroup.

After reading about 100 ba.general articles, this seems like a friendly
(and appropriate) place to talk about local cable companies (please note
the Followup-To line).  So here goes ...

1)  Are you sick of the way your Bay Area cable company is treating
    its customers - i.e. you?

2)  Are you sick *enough* that you're interested in taking political
    action to force the offending companies to mend their ways?

If so, then please post to this thread!  If you know anything about how
to effectively pressure the companies in our local Bay Area, please share!
If you have raw material - i.e. problems, complaints, gripes, horror
stories - then please share these too.  If your cable company has been
jerking you around, it can't hurt to get it off your chest.

By the way, my company is South Bay Cablevision.  The service goes out
completely at least once a month, it seems.  What would happen if Pac Bell
had that kind of track record?  How about PG&E experiencing a power
outage once a month?  To top it off, their number to call for problems
with service is always, always, always messed up.  You call, get a
recording, listen to it for 16-17 minutes, and then you're hung up on.
"Oh yea, we're having a lot of trouble with that phone system."  Right,
trouble with the phone system, trouble transmitting the cable signal,
*big* trouble with their billing computer ...

South Bay's latest cute trick was to send out notices to *every* customer
in Mountain View that their service was about to be cut off for failure
to pay.  The notices were nicely timed to be received just before the
Christmas weekend, with a promise to disconnect Monday if payment had
not already been made by Friday.  "We just wanted you to have a *merry*
Christmas!"  The South Bay employee who talked to me assured me that
*everyone* got them, including a man who pays a year's worth of fees in
advance.  He was sent a notice threating to cut his service if he didn't
take care of a bill which showed a $100+ credit!

I was in the office first thing Monday morning (okay - if cable means that
much to me I need to get a life - admitted!) and I saw one other customer
arrive before I left.  She was a wonderfully friendly and polite lady - I'd
say in her 70's - who told the clerk that she'd been trying to reach them
*all weekend* in order to keep South Bay from cutting off her service.
How many times was that scenario repeated?

Of course, these cancellation notices were sent out due to a "computer
problem" according to the South Bay employee whom I talked to.  Funny
that South Bay wasn't able to figure out a way to send out a second notice
explaining the problem once it was discovered, eh?  Real funny - but I
suppose it may actually have been a computer glitch.  That's the *best*
scenario - saying that it was only one more case of incompetence on South
Bay's part.  The worst scenario?  Well ...

It's interesting that a South Bay employee also told me that about half
the accounts in Mountain View are behind to some degree.  Not any more!
All those accounts are right up to date!  Not that I think South Bay
isn't entitled to the money which they are owed.  I just wonder about
what "techniques" they may be willing to employ in order collect it.

These cable companies need to be taken by the *nether regions* and shown
*frimly* how to do it right!  And that don't mean doing it *to* us anymore!

Mark Corscadden
markc@smsc.sony.com
work: (408)944-4086
Newsgroups: ba.general