From: nhmas@gauss.med.harvard.edu (Mark Shneyder)
Newsgroups: rec.video.cable-tv
Subject: Re: Why is cable so bad?
Date: 12 Jan 93 15:27:03 GMT
Organization: HMS

In article <C0pwvL.MMH@world.std.com> fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush) writes:
>
>I talked with system engineer Mark Kelly...who told me in effect, "Yes,
>we know there's a problem.  We may fix it eventually.  But it could take
>a while."
>
>--Scott 

That sounds really retarded. But my guess is that's one of the qualifications
cableco seeks for when it tries to fill its job openings.

Cablevision of Boston/Brookline hires the same type of inept people to
fill plenty of open spots,from management to customer service. These untrained,
inexperienced,and usually very uninformed idiots don't stay around too
long. Their turn-over rate is very high(just check out the Jobs Channel
listings and you'll think there's no one running the system).

Let me tell you how clueless people who work at Cablevision's Customer
Service really are. I was staying home with a bad cold for one day in
the beginning of December. I had nothing better to do than sit in my bed
and click away thru the infinite wasteland of morning,daytime cable TV.
Then around 2:30 BOOM! The cable service goes out. So I call up Cablevision
and tell them that I just lost my service completely. The woman on the other
end tells me that they have no knowledge of any system wide troubles in
my area. So I figure it'll take them a while to track it down. She asked me
if I wanted to place a service call which would be 1 week from the day.
(I suppose they figure that people just pay for their service and don't really
watch it so 1 week is not bad of a wait for a service call :-). She urged me
to take that appointtment since if I was going to call later it might not
be available and my wait could be extended. So I still declined...I went
to sleep. I woke up around 7pm and the service was still out. So I called
up again to place a service call. The guy on the other end sounded like
he just walked off the set of "One Flew Over The Coocoo's Nest". Again,he
punched up something on his computer and there was no report of trouble
showing in North Brookline area.  So I signed up for an appointment(1
week wait). While I was talking to him I looked out the window and saw
that all the apartment buildings on the other side of the street were
in complete dark. Aha! So after I hung up with the dufus, I called up
Boston Edison to see if they had any power outages in my area. They said
they were digging some underground lines earlier in the day and it was
the cause of power problems in my area. So it's around 7:30 now and I'm
getting pissed since it's Wendnsday night and I won't be able to tape
"Seinfeld" at 9 o'clock. So I called up Cablevision ....again....to see
if the Edison's power problems might have affected the cable servie in
the area. To my big surpriese there was a taped message saying that
Cablevision was aware of the problems in my area and the service would
be restored as soon as possible. I still wanted to talk to the customer
service rep to see what it actually was. This time I got a woman who
punched up something again and said that the problem was due to Edison's
digging up lines and damaging Cablevision underground cable (my area has
mostly underground cable) and that Cablevision techs were on the scene
all *afternoon* working on the problem but she couldn't tell me when we'll get the service back. I also told her to cancel my service call to which she
responded by saying that if my problem is not cleared when Edison's mess-up
is resolved, I may not be able to get the same appt. day again when I
call back. I told her to go ahead and cancel it. She did. 
The cable came back shortly after 8:30pm. I was happy because I got to
watch and tape Seinfeld at 9o'clock.

The point of the story is that at Cablevision one hand doesn't know what
the other one is doing and the customer service is always in the dark.

-Mark
Newsgroups: rec.video.cable-tv