Undear Time Warner Cable,
At 11:30 Wednesday afternoon of this past week, the cable and Internet service at my house went out. My mother called and asked what was wrong. Your service representative told her that there was a general service interruption in our area and that crews were working on the problem. Fine. It happens.
Around a quarter to two that same day, mom and I left the house to run some errands. Out front was a very disreputable looking truck with a trailer. Two guys were poking around the utility box across the street. Mom and I figured that this must be the repair crew and went on our way. Turns out we were only half right, but we'll get to that.
Mom and I get home a while later and there's still no service. Another call in, and this time the service rep says that no, there's no outage in our area, the nearest general outage is in a little town about half an hour away. This, needless to say, does not make for happy customers. Earliest a tech can show up is Thursday afternoon. Fine. I at least will be home.
The tech guy shows up on time-kudos for that at least-and tries to diagnose the problem. First he was rather baffled by our lack of a cable box. When he was unable to find the problem inside, he checked outside. He found the problem.
The crew out front on Wednesday was supposed to be repairing the cable-for the house next door. For whatever reason a new line was needed and the guys in the pickup were the ones doing the installation. In the process, they physically cut our line and didn't notice. Now our line has to be replaced, but a crew can't come out until late in the afternoon or early in the morning. I told the tech that late in the afternoon would be strongly preferable.
Guess what? No one showed up. By this time my dad is boiling, and was making it quite clear that the situation was unacceptable. The cable finally got fixed at around 10 am on Saturday morning.
The lack of TV didn't bother me all that much (except for missing the season finale of Doctor Who), but the lack of Internet was upsetting for one simple reason. My sister got married on Saturday. Guests were coming from about 10 states and two countries. With no email, no one got directions ahead of time, the minister didn't get the service until shortly beforehand, and we didn't know that two flights had been cancelled. Maybe this shows too much dependence on the Internet, but trying to coordinate 100 people across 14 time zones by phone and at the last minute is a bit of a stretch.
The point of this tirade is that when a service goes out, it really should be corrected in as timely a manner as possible, especially when it's your own danged fault. Your crews, even the subcontractors, should be identifiable. And please, let's try not to let this happen again soon, twice in less than three weeks is quite enough. Our yard doesn't need any more holes.
No love,
The frazzled maid of honor