Thursday, September 14, 2006

The free joy comes to an end

When we moved into the townhouse we had a disagreement about whether or not to install cable TV. We eventually made the compromise of getting it, but I would be the only one to pay for it. Because of this, I decided to just order Basic Cable... that's your basic local channels, plus the shopping channels, a bunch of Spanish language channels and some other random ones way up there on the dial (Dials.. remember TV dials!).

When the cable guy was there installing it, we chatted while he was running cable in the attic. We were talking about computers and telecom stuff and other basic geeky stuff. He was also rather bitter at the cable company with how they contract out the work and then treat the contractors like shit. So as a welcome to your new home gift, he turned on extended basic service for us. That was a $20/month savings.

This week the cable company was doing an audit and discovered their "mistake", and took us back to the basic cable level. I spent about an hour rebooting Tivo and troubleshooting before I realized what had happened. And then I spent an hour reprogramming Tivo and deleting ALL of those shows that we have it record for us that were on the channels we don't get anymore. Sigh.

6 comments:

J said...

Oh boy, does THAT suck. :(

Maya's Granny said...

When my step-father died, my mother had cable turn all cable since they had taken it for him to watch sports. But they didn't come out and do it and she had full cable for something like 15 years for free. She kept meaning to call and remind them, but she was afraid that they would charge her the back fees that it just went on and on.

She wasn't charged, since the company had the turn off order on file.

Anonymous said...

Oh darn that is too bad. That darn cable company..

Anonymous said...

Well, at least you got a free upgrade for a bit. When I was growing up, my father got free Cinemax for years! That was pretty good until they just seemed to play Roller Boogie and Xanadu all the time.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I clicked the wrong button. I was "Anonymous."

Gina said...

Bummer!

I know not the joys of cable in my home, I have to go to my sister's.