What happened to the raindrops on roses?

Well, I’m starting to despise Cox Communications more than I ever previously had. About a year and a half ago, my family decided to join the latter half of the 20th century and get cable for the house. Since we, as a family, spend a decent amount of time online, they also decided to get the High-Speed Internet service as well.

The person who came to our house to install the cable ended up breaking part of our fence, ripped up my mother’s prized flowers to bury a cable underneath them, and ended up taking about 5 hours to install the cable to the house. He was going to go home and come back the next day to finish, but we cajoled him into staying an extra hour to finish what (I’m sure) should have taken far less time.

After we got the service installed and functioning, the service suffered from continuity problems. Our internet access would simply shut down about once or twice a week for a year, requiring us to reset the cable modem (which was in the far back corner of the basement, where the fool installer had put it). Not three days after our 1-year warranty on the cable modem had run, the cable modem completely stopped functioning. A technician discovered that after so many ‘resets,’ the power supply on the machine had burned out. After demanding a new one at no cost because of our entire year of shoddy and spotty service which caused the problem in the first place, the company relented and gave us a replacement.

The replacement is still cutting out and requiring a reset about once or twice a week.
At the old house North of the river, I had thought that the resets were likely due to some sort of electrical problem with the house. When I moved to my new apartment, I assumed that the service would be a little better.

Well, I called the cable company on the 29th to set up my service. I ordered a package identical to the one I had at home, and the customer service representative told me that I could come in on Saturday the 31st to pick up the cable modem between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm. Thinking that it was strange for a business to be open on New Year’s Eve, I asked whether he was sure that the building would be open. He assured me that they would be open, and repeated the 9:00 - 5:00 hours for me. I thanked him and didn’t think anything more about it.

I didn’t think anything more about it, that is, until I drove to the cable building on Saturday morning around 10:00 and found it closed. In fact, it wouldn’t be opening until January 2, 2006.
Super.

So I went down this morning to pick up my cable modem. After picking up my cable modem, and relating my troubles from Saturday morning to the woman at the reception desk, she told me that someone would call me back shortly from the company to see what could be done to remedy my inconvenience.

When I got back to my flat, I plugged the cable modem into the wall outlet, installed the software, hooked it up to my computer, and... nothing.

So I spent the next 30 minutes on the phone with a customer service representative trying to figure out why the cable outlet on the far back wall wasn’t working. As it turns out, when the cable guy came out on Saturday to turn on my cable and internet access from a box outside, he only turned it on for the wall outlet in the very front of the apartment, and not the one at the rear of the apartment.

So the earliest they can have another technician come out to turn on my cable and internet at the other outlet in the apartment is Saturday morning.

Until then, I have to string a 50 ft cable across the apartment, over a sofa, across my coffee table, and into the room where I keep my computer.

And to top it off, while I was typing that, my internet connection failed, and the cable modem required me to reset it to regain a connection.

If they think I’m paying for this, they are out of their minds.