I Got All Night.....

Once home this evening I noticed a missed call from Time Warner Cable on the house phone- hmmmm... did I forget to pay my internet bill in August? I certainly could have- with everything else that I have had going on especially with Dad, forgetting my $29.95 bill seemed the least of my worries.

Fearing I may lose my lifeline to the world (Facebook) I called Time warner Cable to make a payment over the phone- just like I do every single month. It is all automated and I know it by heart- I don't even listen to the menu anymore I just say Yes, Pay Bill, Minimum, Check and then give them the account number. Takes literally 2 minutes. Except for tonight.

When I said "minimum" the recording told me I had a balance of $114. which I knew was not right so I waited to speak with someone in customer service. A few rings later, Travis, answered the call. I explained my problem to him at which point he informed me that my internet had not been paid for three months and it was $39.99 a month, not $29.95. I informed him that he was incorrect. The conversation went downhill fast after that.

I told Travis that I had my bank statement and Time Warner statement in front of me showing my last payment was in July and that since this was August, July was in fact not three months ago. Travis then corrected me by saying that "technically, this is September, I mean, if you want to get technical about it" I told him that yes, my bad, it is September 1st but regardless, my last payment had been in July. He argued, I argued, he said I would have to bring my paperwork in to the office and then IF there was a mistake they would correct it. I said, that was not acceptable and neither was his attidude and that I wanted to speak to someone else. Travis then asked me, very sarcastically, who I wanted to speak to and I may have said "anyone who isn't a dick" . Travis then hung up on me.

Well. Ever since hurricane Irene, internet service has been out sporadically over three states in New England and I am sure that the customer service people at Time Warner have probably heard as much bitching from people as they can possibly stand, however, I have not had an outage, that wasn't why I was calling and I did not start the fight between Travis and I. Plus, I have all night to call back and my thoughts are that Time Warner really has bigger problems to deal with right now than my $29.95 bill so it is to everyone's advantage to resolve the issue, pronto.

Naturally, I called back. This time I spoke to Troy. I advised Troy that I wanted to speak to a supervisor and I wanted to speak to one right now. Troy politely asked me to hold. When the phone rang back to Troy I could feel him quivering at the thought of having to speak to me... but he explained that the call was in queue and asked was there anything he could do to help me. I decided to give Troy a chance. I think I heard his teeth chattering in fear.

Troy was quite patient and polite though as he went over everything with me and saw that yes, I had in fact made a payment in July, but the problem was that my bill had gone up $10.05 per month and since I always just make the payment over the phone and I always make it for the same amount and was unaware that it had gone up, I was now past due an extra $30.15 on top of the August payment I had forgotten to make and some other crap that made the total owed some outrageous amount. Troy fiddled with things for a bit and then asked me to hold so that he could talk to a supervisor.

I was on hold for at least 10 minutes, maybe 15, when Scott answered. I asked Scott if he was a supervisor and he reluctantly said "yes, why?". I asked if Troy had spoken to him and he said no, he just picked up the phone and there I was. Bottom line was that I got to start all over again with, Scott. To make this long story not too much longer Scott said that yes my bill had gone up because my contract had expired blah blah blah. I decided that it was to my advantage to be civil to Scott as he did have the power to change things and eventually Scott knocked the payment down to $34.95 per month and waived all of the other bogus charges that were showing on my bill, I made my payment and all ended fine (hopefully) in Time Warner Internet Land.

Now here is where it gets bizarre... before hanging up with me Scott reviewed my previous calls to Travis and Troy and agreed that Troy had been helpful whilst Travis had not. Scott said he would speak with him and I actually told Scott that I was satisfied with how things had turned out and that I didn't think it was necessary for him to speak with Travis. Scott said it was my decision. Truthfully, yes, the man pissed me off and yes he has the customer service skills of probably anyone who has spent the last three days taking calls from people griping about their internet still being off, and yes he was rude and condescending but the way I figure it, he is working nights answering the phone at Time Warner and that is punishment enough.

I'll bet that whenever I call there from my home phone number in the future, that a little red flag pops up and all of the call takers pretend to be busy till the new guy finally answers the phone... ;)