Irritation

Today was the trifecta of irritations.

It all started off at 6:30 this morning when I discovered that my cable was completely out - internet and tv. Called in - first lady was about as good as you expect Time Warner customer service to be. I was incredibly upset to find out that unless this was a general outage that I was just out of luck for nearly a week. Which is awesome for a home office. And they wouldn’t call it an outage until other people in the hood called in problems - which seemed dubious to me given that it was 6:30 in the morning. So I hung up distressed.

Some minutes later I had the notion that since they could easily ping my modem when I’m on calls with them, they could pretty easily ping my neighbors’ modems and see if this was a widespread problem. Smart right? My momma didn’t raise no dummy. Well the next gentleman I got on the phone with far from thinking that was a reasonable thing, thought it was possibly the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. It didn’t make sense. He told me how little sense it made for several minutes and then made the comment,”Would you expect con-ed to go there and test out all your neighbors’ electiricity?”, to which I initially replied, “Uh.. I don’t know” He said, “Well they wouldn’t”. Then I said,”But, a) con-ed wouldn’t tell me that I’d be without electricity for a week before they even started looking for the problem and b) con-ed doesn’t have a way to test my neighbors electricity within a couple minutes while sitting there on the phone.” He suggested that it was just an example and mumbled off.

Read on to see how this ends up! Plus two more irritations from this morning!

Then, while I was trying to find out if there was any way for me to pay to expedite a visit or else perhaps upgrade my service to business level or something where perhaps they would move with more alacrity, the guy literally kept cutting me off mid-question saying “No.”. “No.”, “But what about…”, “No. You’re asking the same questions and I answered clearly and concisely, No”. “But I didn’t ask..”, “I don’t know why you keep asking the same question.”. That went on for a little while. Then I said,”So you’re just going to be a jerk to me now?” “Yes”. And then it took a turn for the worse.. a little bit later, “Can I speak to a supervisor”, “They don’t get in until 9″. “Can I have your name?” “No, you’re not going to call me a jerk and then have me tell you my name”. And then he hangs up on me, while telling his co-workers “This guy’s got a problem…”

Fortunately, 6 hours later, things seem to be back up here. I need to reconsider Time Warner Road Runner as my main conduit. Upgrading to business level service starts approaching T1 levels of money. More research is required.

So while that debacle was happening, I figured I’d take the time to fill out some rebates I got from a large purchase from MacMall. This is the most involved process imaginable. I don’t think I’ve worked so hard for $10 in a long time. I had to send in no less than 5 different rebates - each asking for upc codes, serial numbers, part numbers, things cut off this box and that box. Some of them asked for information for which there didn’t seem to be an answer. What’s the part number for this? Nothing on the box or the packing slip says part number. What’s the UPC for that?

It is completely ridiculous and, in my opinion, scam-taculous. This is especially true when it is a rebate from the company you have ordered from… they know exactly who you are and what you have ordered. Granting the necessity for whatever bureaucratic reason that it has to be mailed back to them, rebate style, why is it anything more than a simple coupon where I write the order number? They will then know everything about the order. Not that this is an original idea on my part, but it definitely seems like a trick to make things so difficult and annoying that people either don’t send in the rebate or follow the murky instructions incorrectly disqualifying themselves from it.

And then as if my morning was going awesomely enough, I went to deposit the checks we got for the wedding. Some of them were made out to Maria and me - turns out you can’t deposit those checks into something that isn’t a joint account. Even when we went back to the bank together and she had her ID and said, it was fine for me to deposit, it was a no go. What the hell is that? Then the solution was to add her to my account and then take her off after we deposited the checks, only to find out that one could add someone but not remove from an account. Ughh..

Although there was a little nerdy bright spot in there when she said, the problem is it’s felix and maria - see? Next time tell people to make the checks out to felix or maria. So at least we got a little boolean logic lesson in for the morning.

Sigh. I can’t wait to be on the beach.

Jul 31st, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: rant