Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Cablevision Sucks

Well, since it's so late, I can no longer access my execution system to see my numbers. After a certain hour, my company won't let me back in... no idea why, but, whatever.

From what I remember, my best trade of the day was in WLL. I got in early on the day and sold in the .60s and .70s. I had a bunch of decent winners on the day, probably 6 stocks over the $100 level.

But on the downside, I booked over $300 in losses between TNH and CF trying, foolishly, to short them.

Since I don't have access to my trades to explain them adequately, I'm going to let it go.

So I'll tell a brief story about my Cablevision experience.

The problems really began yesterday. My connection was slow and I was dropped a couple of times. The same thing happened this morning, but the real party started at 2pm, when they went down for the count.

So, I did the unthinkable and called their "customer service" line.

It was great, I spoke to a polite, clearly well educated and sincerely sympathetic technician who knew exactly what my problem was. He walked me step by step through the problem. No attitude at all, clearly had been well-trained and enjoyed his job. Not. NOT!

After sitting through over 3 minutes of automated bullshit that didn't apply to me or my area, I finally spoke to a "technician" named Nicholas.

I told him that I couldn't get online and he said, "We don't have a modem associated with your account." What? Okay, well, I wasn't lying to him... I pay them over $100 bucks a month and I have a modem... I was staring at it.

When I got him to understand that I actually have a modem, he told me to unplug my modem and then plug it back in. Every time some idiot technician tells me to turn something off and then turn it back on I feel like brain cells, somewhere, are being slaughtered.

But as he told me to do this, the lights on my modem went out. I asked him if he had reset it. He said, "Sir, I can't reach through the phone and unplug your modem for you." I clenched my teeth and took a breath.

It's moments like these that I feel the mediation class I took on Saturday has actually helped already. Because instead of letting him freak me out too much, I simply realized that "Oh, I'm talking to a miserable fuck" and with that realization I was able to even have a little sympathy for the shit.

Of course I still had the problem. He then asked me how many splits I have in the house. I have one. He told me that was the problem. I asked him (calmly, calmly) why I've never encountered this problem anytime in the past 2 years? He told me the split went bad and that I should buy a new one. Okay, fine. I also scheduled a "technician" to come to my house tomorrow sometime between 10am and 8pm (LOL!) to fix the problem.

The best thing was that at the end of the call he actually said, "Sir, is there anything else I can do for you today to provide you with excellent Cablevision service?" As if by telling me that I just received "excellent" service that it must make it so...

Anyway, the end of the story is that I went to Radioshack and shelled out $12 for a new splitter. I brought it home and it didn't work.

5 hours later, Cablevision calls me to let me know there was a service outage today. Therefore, they wanted to "free up my day" tomorrow and not have me wait around for a "service technician" that I wouldn't even need.

So, thanks to Cablevision, I am free tomorrow, except I have to go back to Radioshack to return the damn splitter.

2 comments:

wincity said...

What a stupid guy. The tech people for my cable company are equally useless. I once had to explain to an internet support guy, step by step, how DNS works. HA! At least he didn't have an attitude.

Dinosaur Trader said...

Yeah, in a way, it's better it was down for the remainder of the trading day because it threw me off of my mental game a bit.

It's silly to let that stuff get you crazy, and I'm trying to get better at letting it go.

Thanks for reading,

-DT