Thank you... customer service?

Wow... I didn't expect people to be back so soon, or that they would forgive me so easily. Thanks! You guys are awesome!

(The puppy dog picture worked so well yesterday, I thought I would try another one today!)

The weather outside is good, I feel good, now I need to turn this positive energy into positive results. I wasn't as productive at work as I wanted to be today, but I am planning to move a couple loads of boxes from the duplex to the marital home. If I get really ambitious (although I doubt it), I will mow the lawn at the marital home.

How many people have Comcast as their TV/Phone/Internet provider? Well I have been using Comcast for many, many years. Not because they are the best, but because for the longest time they were really the only option in my area, unless I wanted to switch to satellite. Recently Verizon has opened up their phone service to include TV and Internet connection. I haven't looked into them, but I am seriously considering it.

I was reviewing my bills today and I see that Comcast has started to charge me for HBO and Starz which I have had for well over a year now for free as part of some "bundled package". Well apparently the package expired and no one told me, so they just started charging me for the extra channels. I called them today and asked them to remove the channels, and asked what else they could do to make my monthly bill a little more affordable. Angie, who was a nice representative, told me that they had a bundle that would last a year, and would give me three additional premium channels, along with HBO and Starz that I am getting now, and PAY LESS than I am now. Of course, I have to remember that next September I will need to call back in again to see what new bundles they have then, if not I will get a heck of a jump in the bill with 5 premium channels!

I asked why didn't I get automatically switched to this bundle so I would be a happy customer when I got the new channels with only a very modest increase in my bill, instead of a huge increase in my bill with no additional services. She said, that they can't add channels without the customer calling and requesting it. Apparently, it's not against their policies to increase my bill, but it is against their policy to increase my services...

I really hate the lack of customer services some of these companies offer... I have complained about this company before (Comcast 9/2007), but I think it bears repeating... What can we do to go back to a society where customer service is important?

Later Lou

Out of it...

To the few readers of this Blog, I must apologize for the lack of anything new since Feb. 22nd. I got a few new toys, and I was way too wrapped up in playing with them than just about anything else. As you know I got the new 30" Widescreen HDTV and the DVR to go with it. Well I also got a new DVD burner, and a new DVD player. I have been spending all my free time burning DVD's. I have already used just about 1/3 of the blanks I bought, and they came in a tube of 100 blanks! I am spending so much time creating the DVD's I don't have time to use them, so I decided I need to slow down a little bit. :-) Well believe it or not, but I did do a few other things this past week. My mom was in the hospital for a "near heart attack". She went in Saturday and got out on Thursday. She has had a kidney problem most of her life, so this heart thing was pretty serious. The good news is she appears to be doing much better. When she got out on Thursday I stopped over to her place, and helped her get her groceries. I haven't been shopping with my mom in years. I also visited my great-aunt Mary Thompson, who is in a local nursing home. She isn't doing as well as my mom, but she is keeping her spirits up. I was supposed to go see her again with my brother this past weekend, but I was out on a date with my girlfriend. I hope she is still hanging in there. My girlfriend took me out to see the show "Wicked". I don't get to go to the theater very often, so I was really looking forward to the show. We got there, and our seats were at the very back of the theater, but we could still see everything pretty good. The show was very, very good. I highly recommend it! It creates a whole new way to look at the classic movie "Wizard of Oz." Hopefully I brought you up to speed of the things going on in my world... Maybe the next post I will update you on the rest of western PA! :-)

Addicted

I am addicted. I am addicted to my new DVR. I have spent way too much time watching TV this past week. One of my favorite television shows is Star Trek. Yeah, I know that’s geeky, but that’s me. Well it’s not on in the evenings so for years I haven’t been able to see it. Yeah, could have used my VCR to record the shows, but making sure that both the cable box, and the VCR were on the same channel was a pain in the rear. The good news is that I can watch a 60 minute show in less than 45 minutes when I bypass the commercials, but the bad news is I am watching 5 times more TV than before.

New TV

Before the Superbowl I ordered a Digital Video Recorder, or "DVR" from my cable company, Comcast. I was hoping it would be installed before the big game so I could pause the game if I had to go to the bathroom, or instant replay any wardrobe malfunctions that occurred when they panned across the Seahawk's cheerleaders. I was excited, and I couldn't wait. My income tax refund came in the Friday before the game, so I decided to splurge on myself and by that new TV set I have been wanting to get for the last 2 or 3 years. I had it all picked out I just needed a good deal. Circuit City near the Beaver Valley Mall was running a sale on TVs and the 30" Widescreen Sony HDTV that I wanted was reduced. I ordered it online, and picked it up that evening! As you have read (or at least I hope you have), I promised to help my girlfriend with her bathroom refinishing, so I decided I would set the TV up Sunday morning before the cable guy came to hook up my DVR.... However, my girlfriend came over to visit Friday evening, and seeing the big box in my living room, she suggested we postpone the bathroom and check out the set. So we built the stand, and struggled to get the set on the stand, and after about an hour, I powered it on for the first time... Wow... what a thing of beauty. I couldn't get the HD channels until the cable guy came, but just the change in the size of the screen and the clarity of the picture from what I had before was just awesome. Here's what I had:

Here's what I have now:

I am now addicted to the TV set, and my DVR is already almost full of saved TV programs. I imagine that a year from now, I will have gained about 30 lbs, from the lack of activity other than pressing the buttons on the remote control!

Package in car?

Well, I am guilty... Full of guilt for not posting anything here since April. Well actually I am not feeling really guilty. If someone was actually reading this, and expecting there to be something here THEN I would feel guilty! I am sitting in CiCi's Pizza in Cranberry Twp., PA writing this entry to the ramblings. I am wishing I had something exciting and witty to write, but alas, I am wit-less... So why are you still reading? I just watched the most boring news cast of my life. There was a bomb scare in Washington, DC and they were showing live video of the car where the bomb was supposed to be... Waiting... Waiting for something to happen... Watching the waiting with nothing happening was just about as exciting as brushing my teeth in the morning, without the plaque... Well it was successfully "disrupted", thankfully... It was so boring that I looked away at the wrong time and missed the "disruption" which was a small explosion that popped the door off the car... When I looked back the car looked the same except that a blanket was over the car now... I didn't realize I had missed anything... I suppose the whole thing would have been more interesting with sound... Anyway, why the TV thought it would be exciting to show an unmoving car sitting there doing nothing for almost my entire lunch hour, is beyond me. Why not just tell us it was a probably a bomb, show us something else until something "interesting" happens with the bomb... BTW: "Interesting" when talking about a bomb is defined as "bomb explodes" or "bomb is successfully disarmed, but the technician grew a few new gray hairs". Then show us the highlights over and over again... Until we have the images burned into the retina's of our eyes... Well it's over... Glad it came out ok, meaning no one hurt. I haven't heard yet whether the suspicious package was actually a bomb yet... For all I know it might have just been someone's dirty laundry left in the car too long and starting to develop its own self-awareness. Now that would have been news! While the package in the car was being taken care of the scroll on the bottom of the screen described a story about a parking ticket placed on a car with a dead guy inside... (Yeah that was more exciting than watching the car just sit there...) Apparently the guy wasn't discovered to be dead until 2 days after the ticket was placed on the car, and the guy had been missing for 9 days. You think there would have been some distinctive clues that the guy was dead... You know like not breathing, and fogging up the windows! :-) Or that he hadn't moved in almost a week. Maybe they just thought he was a pile of dirty laundry. Well it's time to go back to work. I better put a reminder in my PDA to clean out my car when I get home from work tonight. Later Lou