And the Comcast laughs just keep coming

Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. We received a notice in the mail today from a collections company informing us we owe Comcast $740 for unreturned equipment. You know, the same equipment I've been trying to return to them for two weeks now. On the day we fired their sorry asses I was transferred to the 'pick up department' where I spent 52 minutes on hold with these fools. They never got back to me so the pickup was never organized.  There's a limit to how long someone should reasonably be expected to remain on hold and I reached it. I figured if they wanted their stuff back they would come looking for it in their own good time.

And so yeah, I gave the stinking DVR to my friend Jessica. Ironically, she is one of the three Comcast customers in the contiguous United States who has not had any drama with this company. It's especially ironic if you know her since she's a walking definition of a customer service department's worst nightmare. (Love you girl!)

So she calls her buddies at Comcast to explain how she got the DVR and to have it switched over to her account. What do you know, they have no record of the Schwinds, who live two miles from her, ever having had a Comcast account. Nope, don't know those freaky folks, so sure, go ahead and keep that DVR they tell her.

With steam coming out of my ears (remember I'm still dealing with our local phone company who keep charging us thousands of dollars for a service we don't have with them), I call Comcast customer service and proceed to lose the plot with them over the collections note.

'Oh I deeply apologise', says LaShawntell, (I'm not making that up), 'I can help you with this. I can get someone to come out and get that stuff for you, don't you worry'.

She puts me on hold (oh God, please not the Comcast 'on hold' treatment again). But she comes back after a blessedly short time and tells me 'we don't have no record of you having an account with us. You sure you have a Comcast account? What you say the last 4 digits of your social was again?'

Oh, my bad LaShawntell, sorry, yep, you're right, I was just joshin' with ya. Never mind! 

Dear Lord. She puts me on hold again and when she comes back she says 'Oh, I found y'all. Your service was disconnected so that's why you wasn't showing up. I see here you all have a technician scheduled to come to your house and do some work. I can get him to pick up the equipment when he comes to your appointment.'

Me: ???????? Um, why do we have a technician scheduled to come to our house?

LaShawntell: Says here they coming to do some outside work at your house.

Me: Outside work? Will they fix our fence? It's falling down. Because since we don't have a Comcast account, there's no work they could possibly be doing for us 'outside'. It would be great if they could fix our fence though.

LaShawntell: (crickets chirping).

Ultimately, it turned out she was unable to schedule someone to come pick up the equipment after all. She could put us on the schedule for a pick up but she couldn't guarantee when it might be. Not even a vague, ballpark idea of the day or week or month. I mentioned that I would not be sitting around waiting for a maybe pickup on some random maybe date but if she liked I could just bundle everything up and leave it on the porch.

Maybe it would still be there when they eventually came to collect it. Or maybe not. Hard to say really.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventures in Customer Service Hell when I try to physically return the equipment to an actual Comcast location myself. Hey, maybe I'll walk out with a cheque for $740.

We Take Care Of Our Own (With Lyrics) - Bruce Springsteen

Updates as they come to hand :) Now with accompanying video... Although, can it still be called a video if he is not technically moving in the video? Interesting.

And a question about the lyrics. 'There ain't no help, the 'Calvary' stayed home'. Followed by something about no one to hear the bugle blowing. I thought at first I was mishearing and that he was really saying 'cavalry', which seems to make more sense than Calvary. However, it's definitely 'Calvary', it's even capped in the lyrics on the video. This is an absolutely fascinating use of this word in this context. I'm going to go with that because I can't believe he would make such an error. Genius.

Thoughts anyone?

(And yes, ok, I am prepared to admit that I might be slightly biased but this song is Awesome.) 

We Take Care of Our Own

I'm sure there are plenty of things I should be doing other than sitting here playing this on a loop. But right now, I just can't think what they might be...

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you've got... 

Wild in the country

Today was beautiful. Seriously cold, but beautiful. So we went on an icy adventure. Across the desolate mountains, through the breathtaking valleys, fording frozen streams and fighting off bears and villains along the way with sticks and plastic guns. It was awesome. 

Aaand the fun continues

The national telecommunications giants, Frontier and Comcast, have been sent by God to test me. Apparently, He is eager to find out what my actual breaking point might be. Although I have asked myself time and again 'what would Jesus do?' I find I keep arriving at the same answer. Jesus would have flipped out on these morons long before this. In fact, I'm pretty sure Jesus may have contemplated what I am contemplating right now. And not a court in the land would convict him, or me.

Lessee here. Brief back story for anyone unfamiliar with the saga. Frontier, who is not our long distance telephone service provider, keeps billing us for long distance calls that we pay another company for. Despite agreeing that they've made a mistake and promising to fix the mistake, they never fix the mistake.

We get bills from them in the neighborhood of $1500 per month now. For a service - let's say it again - that they do not provide us. Never, at no time, ever have they provided us with this service. Believing their billing department would eventually catch up with the memo from head office to cease and desist, I was lulled into a false sense of security. Silly me, I just kept paying what we actually owed instead of what kept appearing, and growing, on our statements.

I mean, we now have our very own Frontier case manager for heaven's sake. What could go wrong?

Saturday's mail brought us a letter from Frontier (see exhibit A, below) advising that our service was going to be disconnected forthwith. Why? Non payment of long distance bills dating back to September, of course! Now remember (this is the good bit), they ain't our long distance providers!

After clocking up a few more hours of my life attempting to solve this latest snafu, I was eventually promised it will Absolutely Be Fixed Today. And this time, we mean it! Would we lie to you??

Melissa from the 'Escalations and Complaints' department won't go as far as to say she's sorry although she did agree to refund the charges we incurred for 'changing the long distance carrier back to the original provider'. Twice. Um, Melissa? Where exactly are you located sweetheart? I need to come slap you upside the head. You can refund the charges for that too.

Don't forget to check in with me next week folks when I report that our service has in fact been disconnected.

Meanwhile, in Comcast news... oh, nevermind. Our house was obviously built on top of some ancient sacred burial ground and we have royally upset the inhabitants.

This dog

I do not know whose precious little dog this is, I found him on Pinterest via tumblr via a hundred other people who 'reblogged' him. I love him. I want him. That's all.  

William's baptism

OK, so we were a little late getting around to this, being that William is, er, 6, but never mind! God understands and did not even ask for a tardy note. At least William will be able to say that he took an active part in his own baptism and that he remembers it. Most people can't say that.

We had an intimate gathering of friends and family present for the occasion at St Joseph Church on December 23, 2011. William's first grade teacher Sister Margaret Ann attended. Sister Elizabeth Ann was there too. She's in charge of tracking down all non baptized citizens in town, making them repent their sins and getting them dunked. (Not really). Monsignor Fryer officiated and we are thankful for his time since I'm sure he may have had one or two other pressing issues to attend to two days before Christmas.

Matt and Darlene honored us by agreeing to be William's godparents. Matt wore his dress blue uniform in order to impress the Monsignor. It worked. (Thanks Matt.)