O RLY? –

and here’s a close up:

…so guy comes to my house to install the cable. I say to him, did you bring the cable cards for the tivo? He said no, it’s not on the work order (which he doesn’t let me see until he’s “done” and leaving). But he “calls” the “dispatcher” and tells me that someone will be by to drop the cable cards off by 5:00. So, when 6:30 rolls around, I call comcast, talk to a “Mrs. Jefferson”, and you would not believe the doublespeak and evasion that ensued. It’s like she was trying every excuse in the Comcast Playbook, trying to figure out which one would stick:

• She has no way of talking to a dispatcher, so she doesn’t know if the guy’s just late or not coming at all.
• She has no way of talking to the dispatchers, so she has no idea about the original tech’s call to bring the tivo cards.
• The dispatcher she talked to was out of the office by 4:00, so she doesn’t know what happened
• The dispatcher she talked to said the technician she sent out never called her about the tivo cards.
• There was no record of my request for Tivo cards (despite the two pictures above, and a confirmation email and a transcript of an e-chat with the salesperson)
• Apparently that means that the technician took it off the work order. Apparently, when a technician doesn’t complete the work order, he can just take the offending line item off and mark the work order as complete. Voila!
• But doesn’t that mean you no longer have an accurate record of what was requested? And that the original order isn’t complete? “Well, that’s why I’m creating a new work order for you”
• So the earliest date someone can come by and hand me the tivo cards is August 21st. Note: there’s no install here, I just need the cards. 2 weeks to get 2 stupid cards.
• Could I speak to a manager? Sure, but her manager was at lunch right then (7:00 PM), so he would call just as soon as he got back. Except his wife was in the hospital, so he might not be back for the rest of the day.
• Is there a manager on duty right now? Yes, but he’s busy with another customer, and it’s their policy to not call customers after 9:00.
• The managers there also aren’t part of her department, so she doesn’t know if they would be able to help me anyway.
• Managers have a 24 hour window to call customers back, but they’re usually very busy.
• I can be put on a “cancellation list”, wherein if someone cancels an appointment, They will come to me instead.
• This process of this list is that Mrs. Jefferson, who has no contact with the dispatchers, when the dispatcher calls her, out of all the other reps, to say they have a cancellation, she can then call me and make sure I’m home.
• This can be summed up with the sentence “I’m making this up to placate you into thinking you can get your cable install completed earlier, but you really have as much of a chance of getting one of these cancellations as you do of getting a manager to call you back. Suck it.”

I guess no-one’s interactions with Comcast are entirely kafka-free…