Get ready for an all new tale about the unending stupidity of Time Warner Cable. This one is rich.

Yesterday, there were three envelopes from Time Warner Austin. I didn’t bother opening them immediately. There’s never any point. I know what the amount is, and I can usually guess when it’s due. It’s not like the due date of the cable bill has changed by more than a day over the ages we have had cable. So … I open them this morning.

The first one was, as expected, this month’s cable bill, which is due on June 8. Nothing at all surprising there. I open the next one. It’s a snotty letter telling me they have not received payment on my bill, and therefore they are charging me a $5 late fee, and I had better pay them $5.26 immediately, if I wanted to keep my cable and internet connection. I already smelled the stupid, but I opened the third envelope, and it was the same letter dated two days later.

But wait, WTF? They are charging me a $5 late fee, and they want $5.26. That means they think a) I owe them $.26 and b) they want to charge a $5 late fee for it. Stupidity like that really reeks!

I got out the bill I just paid on May 12. I look at the amount I paid. I look at the amount that was due. I recall the automated system telling me I had just paid the full amount of the bill that was due. I look at the new bill. There are no overdue payments on the new bill. It’s for exactly one month … plus some strange $5 charge appearing in the area where a late fee would usually appear. I verify again that this bill is due on June 8.

Seeing as it is not June 8, the bill is not overdue, and I paid the full amount of the previous bill, which the automated system verified was, in fact, the full amount of the bill, I a) don’t see how I owe them $.26 and b) why the hell I am being charge one, if not two, late fees. Because Time Warner Austin is stupid and staffed by automated systems with computer chips the size of gnat’s brains and humans incapable of thinking beyond a written script, I find myself utterly unsurprised by any of this ridiculousness.

Lin says I should call today and straighten it out with them. I say I should wait and see if they cut off my cable and internet. Why? Because after verifying for myself, using their online bill paying system that we are, in fact, not yet in arrears with them, I might be able to wrangle some credit on the bill for them being dumb asses and cutting off my cable for $.26 overdue which isn’t overdue to begin with. I’m already in the right, but it’s always more fun to also be right and egregiously wronged at the same time. I do righteous indignation very well. You should catch my act sometime. Just stop by when I am planning on calling Time Warner Cable. Lately, it’s been a regular monthly show.

I’ll just procrastinate on it. The letters aren’t the official We Will Cut You Off variety. It’s just the warning letter. I bet we don’t get anything else from them about it. I will be talking to a human being when I pay the cable bill next month though, because there is no reason whatsoever for there to be a $5 late fee on a bill I just got that has a zero previous balance and isn’t due for over two weeks. Not paying it. They rape us for enough each month as it is. They aren’t getting anything beyond the outrageous amount they charge for cable and internet.

Ah well … nothing like a good dose of Time Warner stupidity in the morning to get the blood pumping!