I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood
So, have very slow internet service and no VOIP since Friday, when they installed my DTV, right? After the rudeness of Nat/Nate, previously reported, right? They schedule an appointment to fix their error yesterday between 10 and 2. I stressed to them that I had no phone because my VOIP could not work at this sub-dialup connection speed.
I am aware that they call to confirm, and that my phone doesn't work, so I used my $.20/minute prepaid cell phone to do a confirmation call; I was somewhat perturbed that no human answers (and as usual by the whole endless computerized menu), but I say "confirm" into the machine when asked. I wait until around noon, then I use neighbor's connection to check my voicemail on line. At 10.35, voicemail tells me, TWC called to say their service person was there but I wasn't answering the phone so they were leaving, please call to reschedule.
I called and talked to a nice lady named Angela, who said she was very sorry, "they really should have *knocked on the door or rung the doorbell or something*" (!!! Um, yes, when they make a service call, they should ring the doorbell!). She said she'd see if they could get a service person back out there that day and call me back. She did call me back (on the pay as you go cell), and said they had agreed to come back, but she couldn't tell me what time. I said, thanks so much, and waited. Until almost 7 pm. I did not go to the store or do anything that might make me not hear that visit.
At 6.55 I called back. Angela was gone. I talked to Jose. I explained. He said that the note he had said no one would come yesterday, and that an appointment had been scheduled for 10/7. When I will, of course, be at TWH. No one had asked me if I was available on the 7th or informed me that they were making that appointment, much less called me back to say they weren't coming as they had told me they would. I whined. Jose said he was talking to dispatch, and that they would call me first thing in the morning and schedule a service call for today, and to be ready for the call- the office opened at nine. I made sure they had the cell phone number.
At 9.30 today, I called again. I talked to Angie (not Angela). No, there's no record of that; you are scheduled for a service call on 10/7. I explain again, including the fact that I am on a pay as you go cell phone; she says she is getting a supervisor. After a couple of minutes of silence, NY1 comes on the phone line and stays there. At the beginning of that call I had 17 minutes left on the cell phone; I was still on hold when the time ran out.
I went up the street to the store and bought another cell phone card. I called back and spoke to Glenda. I told the whole story from the beginning. She looked at the various memos in my record. She says I was scheduled to receive a call back from a supervisor yesterday, but the callback was cancelled. There is no record of why it was cancelled, or of the fact that someone was supposed to call me this morning, or that someone was supposed to come back yesterday or today. She says I have an appointment scheduled between 8 and noon on Monday, 10/10. Again, no one asked me if I would be here then or even told me they were making this appointment. I told her I wouldn't be here then, since I would be on my way back from Boston. She asked me to be there between 2 and 6 on Monday. I'll try.
In the meantime, being a huge procrastinator, there were things I needed to look up at the library for my TWH presentation. The library is closed Sunday and Monday. I thought I could go Tuesday after my appointment (the library is open till 7 on Tuesday) and again today before and after therapy. I lost all Tuesday and all the time before therapy today; it takes an hour each way to get to the library, and since I wasn't able to page materials yesterday, I would have to wait an hour for the pages if I go after therapy today. Which will leave me about an hour to use the materials. I am rather panicky, though I will think up enough things to say to more or less satisfy the fannish audience, I hope.
But if I had a regular job, I'd have lost a day and a half of my very few personal days or vacation days to this, and it's entirely their fault, and grrr. Just saying over and over on their web site and on the phone that they value my time and that good service is their top priority doesn't make it so.
OTOH, DTV and Tivo are pretty great. So far Tivo has chosen mostly bizarrely but sometimes well for me: I zipped through "My Life by Petula Clark," which was pretty damn good, and "Sex in a Cold Climate," about poor young women tortured by the Catholic church in Ireland mid-20th c- harrowing but interesting. And last night there was a good documentary on race and the OJ verdict on Frontline, though, while it did a good job of accounting for a racial divide in responses and being sympathetic about it, it made absolutely no mention of the fact that this was a case about gender as well as about race, as if only from a privleged viewpoint would those who cheered the verdict seem deeply out of line.
So yes, TWC is also ruining my life by providing too much TV to distract me.
BTW, I appear to have been laboring under some naive misconceptions about Tivo, eg that it would allow me to record two shows at once (or even record one and watch another, which can be done only with the dreaded, trouble-causing splitter). Also that it would magically jump over commercials. Oh well.
So anyway, people trying to reach me, I remain incommunicado except by cell.