I woke up this morning to find the cable and internet off. As I sat on the couch poking remote control buttons to no avail, I thought about when the last time was I had paid the cable bill. Why … just last month!!! How in the world could it be disconnected?! This began an an hour of sitting on hold … an HOUR … to wait to talk to a human being about what the hell is going on. I mean, we hadn’t even gotten another cable bill yet!
The human, and I do use that term loosely, was less than helpful, and thus began 30 minutes of back-and-forth about whether or not the cable bill had been paid. Fact one: I pay on the phone, and I check the bank balance immediately after to make sure the payment has gone through. I don’t trust the cable phone system to be correct that it has. The money is usually pulled five minutes after I call the payment in, and it had been last month. The payment was made long enough ago, it even appears on our paper bank statement. Fact two: I have a confirmation number for the payment, meaning the phone system was certain I had paid the bill. Additionally, I always call the cable company and talk to a human to give them my confirmation number, because we have had problems in the past with them not noting receiving payment. I has gone through that hassle last month and had been assured my payment had gone through. All the same, the human on the other end of the phone insisted we owed some outrageous amount of money and deserved disconnection. I asked to speak to another human.
I cut right to the heart of the matter before the next human could even open her mouth.
I have a confirmation number for a payment which was made last month and has already been withdrawn from my bank account, and yet this morning, I find that my cable and internet has been disconnected. I have already been on the phone for an hour and a half trying to sort this out. You have ten minutes to sort it out or you can leave it disconnected and I will go elsewhere for my cable and internet needs.
Three minutes later my payment was “found” and my cable/internet was working. Didn’t even get an apology for yet again another massive screw-up by Time Warner.
So that’s how I spent my morning. Hope yours is going better.
Now, back to the housework.
Of course, to make this a proper corporate-grade screwup the full process has to be:
They applied your payment to the wrong account. This other account was then not charged for since they were paid up and now suddenly some poor other customer is (amount of your payment) in debt and about to be cut off.
Good luck finding a better provider, they’re mostly like that.
I imagine that is exactly what happened. My payment had to go somewhere, seeing as it wasn’t in my bank anymore.
Yup, might as well stick with the evil I know. At least over the last decade plus, I have a pretty good idea in what ways they screw up and how to deal with it.