The long saga...

I still like them but boy oh boy has this been a disaster.

I moved into my new place on Nov 14, but had my lease on the old place through Nov 30. As AT&T was not going to be able to install, phone/Internet/cableTV until thursday Dec 3, I left my home office at my old place and used it as my office through Nov 30.
Of course, this did mean the end of Cable TV for me on Friday Nov 14.

Thursday Dec 3 - AM - the day before I depart for California. The installer comes out, walks around to see where the TV is, phone etc. He then walks outside and as it's new construction, he gasps at the 20 or so cables dangling out of the wall. "sorry, I can't do anything. I don't connect the outside.". I insist in getting his managers phone number (which would turn out to be the best move I could have ever done) so I don't have only the national 1-800 main number to call for updates. After all, I want local accountability and contacts.
Thursday Dec 3 - PM - a different dude from AT&T shows up, I guide him to the cables sticking out of the wall, and right away he says “why the hell did they send me out here? I’m the guy that splices the fiber and connects it from the line drawn underground to the house, but I’m certainly not the guy that pulls the cable from the cable box, under your neighbors driveway, under your front yard grass, and up to your home. That’s someone else.”
He gets back in his car and starts making phone calls. 45 minutes later he knocks on my door and explains that someone failed to flag my home as a “Dash-oh” as in –O. Remember how I told you 4 weeks between order and install? Had the initial guy on the phone marked my order as –O, someone would have been out to pull the cable and connect the cable within those 4 weeks for the Dec 3 install.
He feels my pain, and his colleagues’ inability to do their job correctly and encourages me to raise absolute hell on the phone, so things get expedited. Thanks for the tip!
I leave a couple more voicemails for Manager John(not his real name, but he’s the guy I forced out of the initial installer kid) MJ returns my call late late afternoon, and is apologetic. They’re going to come pull the cable Friday, I tell him I’m out of town Friday – Monday.
Friday December 4 – I am sitting in the shuttle to the rental cars at the Sacramento airport when MJ calls. “Sir, they are pulling the cables as we speak, and everything will be ready to go for an in-house install tomorrow.” No can do, I’m out of town, remember. Oh yes, Ok, I’ll set it for Tuesday. “Perfect! Thanks for being so responsive MJ, I appreciate the quick turnaround.”

Tuesday Dec 9 – Install scheduled for arrival between 8 and 10am. 9:45am phone call from Bill the new in-house installer: Hi, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to your house by 10am, as there are some setup issues that they’re working on, and I can’t do anything till those issues are cleared. I’ll call you at noon with an arrival time.
Noon rolls around, no call. 1pm I call Bill at the number he called me. Sorry sir, no news from the engineers. I can’t do anything but will hold your ticket till 6pm and hope I can come out there by then. I call MJ and get his voicemail, he returns my call and tells me I’m scheduled for a Thursday 8-10am install.

Thursday Dec 11 – no one shows up by 10am, so I start my calling campaign. There are still issues with engineering, but no one knows exactly what they are. They’ll be in touch.

Friday Dec 12 – I call MJ at 7am as I know installers go out for 8am appointments, leave a message, after I hear on his that he’s out of the office till Dec 22. However, he leaves a new name for his backup. I call him at 7:15am. Lets call this new replacement manager Dan. He tells me he’s busy getting everyone out the door by 7:30 but will call me back at 8am. No call back, I call him 2 more times over the next 4 hours leaving messages.
I then call the main national number at 11am, and after 30 minutes on hold, speak to someone who tells me he will figure out what’s going on and call me back. He can’t give me his number so I can call him. He calls me back and I push him for an install date. He says the computer shows a Jan 2 install date. Ummm… NO WAY! I want an install tomorrow! I know they can do Saturday installs and I want a Saturday install, or even Sunday. He calls the Dispatch center to see about moving up my install, and we proceed to sit on hold for 35 minutes. I then give up as I have to meet Kristen for a run, but ask for his last name so he can’t disappear on me without me being able to get him in trouble. For security reasons, he can’t give me his last name, but gives me his ID number. Did I mention I also called Dan a couple times and left messages?! By the time I return from my run, I have 2 voicemails from ID only guy, and 1 from Dan. They’re working on it. ID only guy calls me 2 more times to give me updates on his research. Kudos to him. What a great guy, but alas, the news is “he has no news”. Dan calls me as well, and tells me the news I want to hear.
“The engineers set up my account on a Port like they always do. However, they messed up and this Port is unfortunately already assigned to a different account, which is the root cause of the problem.” He will call me on Saturday morning to confirm, but he says he’s putting pressure on engineering to fix this tonight for a Saturday in house install. I tell Dan I’ll be home on Saturday by 8am for sure.

Saturday Dec 13 - (failed attempt at a run gets me home by 7:20am) No call from Dan until about 10am. Tells me my port issue is still there, and he can’t get engineering to return his calls, so he’s assuming they don’t work on Saturdays. Dan is not the regular person, remember, he’s the backup manager, but he’s doing a great job trying. He tells me he hopes to maybe have a Sunday in-house install for me, but will call me back in the afternoon to confirm. If he doesn’t call by mid afternoon, then the Sunday install won’t happen but I’m booked for a Tuesday install giving engineering all day Monday to fix my port issue. Fair enough. Yep, you guessed it. No Sunday install. I had tentative plans to run trails on Sunday morning, but this tentative install cancelled those. However, my hamstring cancelled them too.

Monday Dec 14 – I call Dan midday to get an update on the port situation so I can plan my Tuesday. He eventually calls back when he returns to the office and gets my message, and tells me that he can’t get engineering to call him back and/or fix my issue. My account has been flagged as priority, but apparently engineering doesn’t care?
Dan says he has also escalated this to his boss, as it’s ridiculous and hopes big boss hogg (as I’ll call him) can make things happen in engineering.

Tuesday Dec 15th – it’s 9am and no install. Yay!

To be continued…

However, moral of the story so far. Get local phone numbers from people you meet with in person so you can put pressure on local people. National main phone numbers are useless when facing problems.

If I didn’t hate Time Warner so much, I’d consider calling them, but I just can’t do it. They’ve wronged me too many times. AT&T was fantastic at my old home, and I really believe these local managers are truly trying to help me, but their hands are tied until engineering gets off their butts and fix my Port overlap issue.

Today marks my 1 month anniversary of not having Cable TV due to issue I discuss before this. Bruce hooked me up with some great rabbit ears so I get the basic channels (in HD!), but it is painful to not have cable. I find myself really missing the ability to watch news updates when I want to, or Sports updates, and also home improvement, nature, and learning type channels. If I could only get ESPN, any News channel, and 3 or 4 of the other channels, that’s really all I’d need at this time.

Oh, and Internet access from home would be nice too. Drinking Hot Chocolates at coffee bars is getting old. REAL OLD, especially when it’s quiet in there and I have to make a phone call. Ooof.


UPDATE! As I sit here at Dominican Joe Coffee Shop, AT&T called me and announced that they have resolved the issue and will be at my house first thing tomorrow morning to install. Keep your fingers crossed!