We're trying to get to Arizona.
Latest hurdle was supplied by that jewel of American Free Enterprise, the unregulated, unfettered Comcast Cable Company, providers of our internet connection to this blog.
We had the temerity to attempt to suspend cable service and save $200 during our anticipated absence. We've spent thousands of dollars and many years with Comcast and its gobbled predecessors. We understand the dangers and the rules of the game but decided to risk it anyway. These are, after all, desperate times.
So, well in advance, we cautiously notified them of our date of departure. The date was duly recorded by Comcast in our account file, accessed by a representative somewhere in a St. Louis, Missouri.
Comcast allows itself a "two-day grace period" to perform this service. This is a secret, of course, and the grace is extended to benefit the company, not the customer. Therefore, two-days before our departure, when all arrangements, communications and plans are peaking, the cable company found it convenient to suspend our service.
Gracious.
Comcast also provides us with cable tv. Strangely, this service soldiers on, unaffected by the "grace." Earlier, Comcast had indicated its desire to provide us with our telephone service as well. We are confused by just how this might work when the cable fails, as it did last summer when an aerator was run over the lawn. Do you go to the neighbor's house, knock on the door, call the cable help number and then hold at their kitchen table?
We used an 800 number to communicate with a series of lovely, low-paid representatives in a St. Louis sweat shop. Their apparent purpose is to buffer the corporate offices from the unwashed and their inconvenient requests. They have no tools to actually do anything, but they are authorized to write-up work orders, suggestions and such and then place them in a 72-hour queue for action elsewhere. You get that, and, of course, profuse apologies, promises of adjustments, and whatever else from embarassed workers grateful just to have a job, even if it is with the cable company.
Cynics might say that the cable company hopes you will be so thoroughly disgusted with their suspension process that next time you leave town you won't bother them again, you'll just pay them hundreds for service to an empty house. In this free market enterprise motivated by good greed, it would seem that neglect and bad service has a financial reward associated with it.
Corporate offices seem to be located somewhere in the City of Brotherly Love, where the scandalized Adelphia cable company once practiced its artifice. Others are in undisclosed locations.
If you wish to call the corporate number to express your deep-seated feelings of hostility, you may do so at your convenience. There is a special line. It is unknown if this line is connected to an electronic wastebasket or an employee paid to act like one.
Some, like my good brother suffering under a different cable company, believe the mythology that your local government actually regulates this monopoly. This is done, he explains, by simply shutting down the cable company and awarding a franchise to its better.
Does this ever happen? He doesn't think so. Apparently everybody just loves the cable company and understands its ever spiralling costs for the timely, high-def delivery of Andy of Mayberry and Sean Hannity.
We're trying to get to Arizona. Here's hoping we can get back on-line when we get there. If you don't hear anything . . . please call that Philadelphia number for us.
