Not Again

In past blog entries, I have berated and bemoaned about the service that I have received at times from Verizon.
Now there appears to be a new leader of the pack when it comes to really poor service.
As part of my prep work for our upcoming move, I made contact with Charter Cable.
They are the main people that cover the Kill Devil Hills area for cable, telephone and internet.
Prior to calling them, I had seen a recent ratings report in Consumers Report on many telephone, cable and internet companies.
Unfortunately Charter ranked close to last place in all of the rankings. Going into this, I hoped that somehow the rankings and ratings were wrong.
I placed a call to Charter and set everything up. We got a bundle package for cable, telephone and internet.
The customer service rep was friendly and was even able to give me my new telephone number.
Once I had everything in place with Charter, including an appointment for our free installation, I then proceeded down my lengthy list of places to call, so that I could provide everyone with our new address and telephone number.
After a couple of days, I had made my way through that lengthy list and was able to take a breath before the next wave of things to do was upon me.
This initial contact with Charter occurred about 2 weeks.
About 2 days ago I got an automated call from Charter so that I could set up an installation appointment. That made no sense to me since I already had one set up. The automated caller requested that I use my touch tone dial on the phone and put in 2 numbers for the date and 2 numbers for the month that I would like to have my installation appointment on.
I plugged in the same numbers for the same date of installation that had already been made previously. Unfortunately the computer would not accept the numbers that I plugged in.
I then hung up and called Charters customer service number.
I spoke to a rep there and provided him with my customer number and service order numbers for the installation.
The rep looked everything up and said that we were all set for the date and time that was originally made 2 weeks ago.
I thought everything was all set again and I was able to take another breath of air.
Unfortunately that breath did not last long.
Yesterday afternoon I got a call from Charter stating that I had cancelled my installation and service and that we needed to start from scratch all over again.
Needless to say...I was neither happy nor pleasant.
As it turned out, Charter tried to up the cost on certain items that I had already locked in at a decent price..I say decent price because Charter prices are a lot more expensive than what we have been paying for our equal services through Verizon and Cox cable here.
I got passed onto another rep who started adding up the prices, which kept going up as the discussion continued.
Finally I had had enough and told this rep that this was obviously turning into a "bait and switch" scenario and that I was not happy at all with the way this whole thing was playing out...especially since I did not cancel anything out and that act was done on Charters side of things.
This rep must have heard enough and she hung up on me.
I then proceeded to call Charters customer service number.
I spoke with a very friendly person there that apologized profusely after hearing my long drawn out story that had occurred up to this point in time.
As it turns out, half of what I ordered was not in my original purchase and history file with Charter, so we had to go through everything that I wanted all over again. I also found out that I needed to provide the installation person $90 in cash...$30 for each service I was getting and that this amount would be directly applied to my first bill. Good thing he told me this because it was the first time I had heard of this charge. The installation person would have shown up and I would not have had a dime to give him....thus no installation at that time and another reschedule would have been in order.
After walking me through all of their offerings and deciding on what I had originally wanted, I ended up getting everything for about $5 less than the original total.
There was one minor problem....remember that telephone number that they had assigned to me...that number that I had gone down my lengthy list of places that I needed to contact and provide updated contact info...well that number was no longer found to be assigned to me.
The number was not registered to anyone else nor was it still assigned to me. It was somewhere out in there limbo land.
With the thought of additional work that I would need to do to re-contact everyone on that lengthy list, I begged the rep to attempt to locate that number so I would not have to repeat all that work again....my "to do" list is rather full as it is.
He promised me that he would try to locate that original number. He did actually call me late last night to let me know that the techs were still searching in limbo land to find my original telephone number.
He is supposed to call me back early this afternoon as soon as he gets to work and checks his email box to see if the techs were able to locate that number.
If not, I will need to get started on that list again....Aaaarrrggggg!!!!
I can now see why Charter rated so poorly in Consumer Reports rankings.
A rep from the moving company is supposed to be here shortly to determine what they will need to bring for our full packing, which will be next Wed.
Don't you just love moving?