On Suggestion

I paid my bill. I love my TV and I love my internet. I do NOT however, love my provider.

I was enjoying an episode of 30 Rock (as I am prone to do cause I love Tina Fey) and had a whole other episode to get through. I was all excited to get my laugh on when my TV froze up and told me that it was "unavailable". I get that technology can be iffy so I do what most people would do (I assume).

I shut off the cable box then turned it back on. My cable itself was working so I switched over to "On Demand" and I could go through all of my menus just fine I selected NBC, then 30 Rock, then the most recent episode. Completely ready to laugh minus the minor irritant.

It was "unavailable at this time". Okay, we just went through a hiccup together, I can dig this. My cable box has to catch up. Just to double check, I try watching something else on demand. CSI Miami (the Rob Zombie episode wasn't up yet but I thought I'd give it a shot) I clicked it. "Currently unavailable" well crap. At least I could switch over to "live" TV and see what was up.

My screen was black. Huh. I paid my bill in full more than 24 hours ago. I was online so obviously they hadn't shut off all of my stuff and my menus were all showing what was "on" but nothing. No sound and no picture but a black screen.

Same old song and dance, shut it off, turn it on, no dice. Which leads me to what I hate most. Calling customer service.

Those of you who read this (Hi mom!) probably know me and know that I worked for Verizon Wireless answering phones for customer service and I hated it, I don't like making other people do it but what other choice did I have?

I should have gotten her name.

I'm pretty hard to offend most days. I'm pretty chill and I can take most things off the cuff and not worry about it. But this lady... (by the way VZW peeps, she didn't even TRY to call sequence me).

One of the things I hated at VZW was trying to find out if people were as un-smart as they sounded. Tip toeing around trying to find out if their phone is on or if they have a battery inserted is almost uncomfortable while you try to help solve your customer's issue.

Man I wish I had gotten her name!

She was extremely put out by the fact that I called (I bet that new issue of Cosmo is pretty darn engaging). She asked what was wrong and I explained what was up with the menus and the screen and no sound yadda yadda yadda. So she takes one of those irritated inhales and our journy begins.

"okay is your TV turned to channel zero zero three?" she asked through her nose

"of course it is, but let me double check" I sat down and double checked the settings I know she has to do her thing and maybe I was being flighty, "yes it's all set properly"

(another sigh)

"Is the little green light to left of the box lit indicating that it's turned on?"

at this point I'm beyond irritated

"okay of course it's on, did you miss the part where I said I could see the menus? yes it's turned on." Now we get to be miserable together

"Fine, what I'm going to do now is send a signal to your cable box, let me know when it says it's resetting and you should see some lines on the cable box."

"okay I can do that" I trusted that I wasn't an idiot. She didn't

I stared intently at the cable box and my TV (At the same time! CAUSE I'M AWESOME!.... ladies) and nothing changed.

"Well?" She asked, presumably flipping through the latest personality test in her magazine.

"Yeah I got nothing yet." I assured her.

A couple seconds later I tell her "ah there it is."

"great. let me know when it says mystro"

we wait for a couple more minutes. Finally my screen changes. and I advise her appropriately.

"Okay what I'm going to do now is put you on hold for 2 minutes while the process finishes"

She puts me on hold. Thirty seconds later my TV resets and I sit there on hold for a little while. Finally I hung up. Irritated but with Tina Fey once again, I started musing. I thought about what would happen if I treated someone like that at VZW. So I provided feedback on our friend.

I should have gotten her name.