The changeover was painless, taking less than an hour to achieve. Setting up the new e-mail addresses took longer, something I hade to deal with, but it was just time consuming as there were a number of verifications required to activate our new e-mail addresses. That was the easy part.
Do you have any idea just how hard it is to close an existing cable TV account? I’m finding out.
The list of requirements for closing an account is long and daunting. About the only thing they don’t require is a DNA swab and a retinal scan. Opening an account it easy...and it’s designed to be that way.
The folks in the ‘Loyalty Department’ (Yes, that’s what they call it) asked me why we were making the switch and I gave them my litany of reasons why I no longer wanted to do business with them which included:
- Lack of tech support. I’ve been dealing with a Internet service problem for two years and in that entire time I haven’t been able to speak to a human being in Tech support to fix it, something that had to be taken care of on their side of the cable modem.As I mentioned in my previous post on this matter, it’s like they’re trying hard to lose as many customers as they can. If that is their aim, they’re succeeding. I know of at least six of my neighbors who have also made the change and a few more contemplating doing so.
- Service outages. Quite often we would lose Internet service, usually requiring restarting the cable modem. It was an almost daily occurrence. This was a particularly bothersome and inconvenient on those days I was working from home.
- Loss of TV channels. There would be outages of a number of different TV channels, most lasting for only a few minutes, but there have been times when we’ve lost them for hours.
And so it goes.