Come On...Would Somebody Please Give Me A Break

Our move is complete. Everything was delivered to our new home last Friday. The delivery was smooth and uneventful...just the way I like it.
Spent 2-3 days running around getting everything unpacked and put away.
Luckily there is a recycle center only about 1 1/2 miles up the road. So after rolling up batches of packing paper and taping it into bundles and breaking down all of the boxes, I was busy taking many loads to the recycle center.
Unfortunately we have been dealing with a few other problems which have made this move unpleasant up to this point in tie.
In a previous blog entry, I had made mention about the trouble I was having getting our car insurance transfered over to North Carolina.
The agent that I had been dealing with had made a couple of mistakes when he entered information as far as my address and other important info needed for my insurance. This agent had switched numbers on our PO Box number.
Because of this error, it has caused us not to receive any documents from State Farm showing that we indeed have insurance coverage in North Carolina.
Every time I called him, he said that he mailed the paperwork to me.
After I found out that he had mailed it to the wrong address, I requested that he change all documents to the correct address. Unfortunately this has been difficult to get accomplished at the cooperate level for some reason.
We were planning on going to get our drivers license today and I told the agent this, a couple of days ago. He told me that if I call him before I go to DMV, that he would fax the forms over there, to show proof that we had auto insurance.
I was not comfortable doing that because we had not had much luck with him getting things done correctly along with the fact that I was afraid that I would not be able to contact him before we headed to get our drivers licenses and even if we did contact him, that we would get to DMV only to find out that he had not faxed over the paperwork that we needed.
The bottom line is that I had lost all faith with this agent and was not comfortable dealing with him any longer. Heaven forbid we should have an accident and needed someone that we could depend upon to provide us with the proper service or help us with any insurance needs that we might have.
I placed a telephone call to the head of that agency and left a message for him to call me. I did not hear from him until later on the next day and by that time, I had already put into motion a transfers of our auto insurance policies to another agency. Had he called me the same day that I had called him, we would have most likely stayed with his agency but utilized a different agent within his agency.
Because of the error of putting the wrong mailing address down initially, it will take a couple of weeks for this all to be settled and straightened out and for all of our auto insurance policies to be transferred over to this new agency.
And now for the icing on the cake...Charter Communications.
My experiences and frustration with Charter Cable has been previously documented in some earlier blog entries but with yesterdays fiasco, Charter Communications really outdid themselves.
Below is a brief synopsis of the customer service that we received from Charter Communications:
The tech was running behind and showed up 45 minutes late...3:45...no big deal because it happens all of the time.
As soon as he got there, we knew we were in for trouble.
The place where we live is brand new. It has all of the wiring within the walls for telephone, cable and internet services.
Nothing on the outside has ever been hooked up,so basically the tech is starting from scratch.
Right from the start, he is complaining about how behind he is and how many more service calls he has scheduled for the afternoon.
He comes inside and looks at the number of telephones that we have...3 to be exact and all are different. The tech tells us that we should have "one main bank" for 3 identical phones to charge in. This would have made his job easier...he made it sound like everyone has a set up like he wants and made us feel that we should go out and buy a system like the one he was speaking about.
The tech spent the next 4 hours complaining about the number of stairs he was having to climb, the number of times he had to go up and down those stairs, he was on the phone talking to another tech and asking her if she had heard the crazy lady that he had as a customer earlier in the day and then proceeded to tell me that this lady(another customer) was a lunatic, bitching to me about the number of jumpers that he was putting together and the number of splitters that he had to use.
It was just complaint after complaint.
After he once again was complaining about him missing other appointments, I told him that his complaint should be with whoever does the scheduling...not with me.
The longer he was there, the more tense and stressful the situation became.
I found this tech climbing on our bedroom dresser so that he could plug in a cable wire.
On several telephone calls that he had with what sounded like other techs, he was heard complaining about the job that he was here for.
He complained and blamed us because this job was taking so long, that he was losing money by not being able to get to other installation appointments.
Before everything was done, this tech had packed his stuff up and taken it all downstairs to his truck.
By this time, there were cable wires laying over our bed, the nightstand was pulled out and had some unknown type of equipment on it...must have something to do with the phone and basically cables laying here there and everywhere.
I mentioned to the tech that the upstairs television had not been hooked up to the cable wire and that he did not leave any cable wire for me to hook to tv up to it.
It was at this time that things got real nasty.
The tech told me "can't you just go out to a store and buy some cable wire" and "are you too cheap to buy some cable wire" and "all of my wire and tools are down in the truck" and "I have already done a bunch of jumpers, splitters and 50 cables for you".
I could not believe what I was hearing.
I then looked in our office/craft room where our computers are and my desktop had not been hooked up to the internet.
I told the tech that this job was not complete. He then stated that he would hook the wire up to my computer...he was saying it in a really sarcastic fashion.
We explained to him about all of the things that were not done and about his behavior throughout the 4 hour ordeal.
He really did not have much to say about it, other than to reiterate the amount of work that he had to do and the number of appointments that he missed because of us.
It became a rather personal thing at thing point.
We told him that we were customers too and that the service that he provided was not acceptable.
We told him that we wanted a receipt for money that we owed Charter Communications...they take $90 COD and then apply that amount towards your first bill.
We got our receipt but refused to sign off on one of the sheets of paperwork that he had.
Veronica did sign off on one of the pieces of paperwork but also wrote on it that the job was not complete and that we would be contacting a supervisor.
As soon as the tech left, I did file a formal complaint with Charter Communications.
After not hearing from anyone this morning, I called Charter Communications back again and spoke to a supervisor.
This supervisor was able to pull up my my official complaint from last night, which listed in detail, all of the things that were done, were said and not done by this technician.
The supervisor got in touch with the local dispatcher and the local installation supervisor.
I am now awaiting a call back from the local installation supervisor so that we can discuss and rectify this situation.
Never in my life, have I ever received such poor quality service from any company nor have I ever had a technician that behaved in such a rude and unprofessional manner.
Hopefully I will have happier news in the near future but for now...the beat goes on.