Service companies

In New Mexico we do everything backwards.

If you make sure to pay your cable bill, they turn you off for it. They do the same with the power, gas, and phones, but if you are slightly behind you will get a service upgrade or a week of CinePron for free.

Here you need to be at least 90 days past due before they cut off services, but then it gets expensive. Disconnect fee, reconnect fee, service fee, and an extra fee just because someone named Bill had anal surgery on or about the time you came in to pay are all accepted practice here.

When you do go in to reestablish service, make certain that you get a receipt. It is a common practice here to assure you that whatever service you are paying for will be up and running with in the hour, just to discover after you are gone that some small fee went unnoticed and suddenly everything comes to a screeching halt leaving you out in the cold. The company you are dealing with will NOT call you to let you know what happened. They will wait till you call them and after 20 minutes of the ‘Bureaucrat Dance’, they will inform you that a $2 fee went unnoticed and that you need to return immediately to get service restored as soon as possible. If you have the receipt, then there is a good chance that the fee is detailed on it and you can save yourself a trip back by explaining that it is on said receipt.

After you deal with all the ‘Service Department’, you get to deal with the surly Tech that knocks on your door to angrily ask you if things are OK now and is there anything you need before he goes to perform another thankless task for an unappreciative company.

Whenever dealing with one of these service companies, I have learned the hard way that expressing any anger or animosity will just delay service. NEVER use the “F” word because they will just hang up on you and set some mysterious setting that automatically refuses any call from your number. Then you are forced to call from a cell phone or neighbor’s house.

And more to the point, that’s why I did not post this weekend; the cable company turned us off for paying the bill.