Like this past Wednesday, for example.
"Really?" you ask incredulously.
I'll let you be the judge.
I rose bright and early (well, okay, early) and dropped off my kid at the Rapid station. Then I sat with my cell phone on the porch, ate my breakfast and read, waiting to hear from the internet service provider who was coming to fix my wonky connection. (I won't give them away or anything, but I will say their company name is comprised of three letters and an ampersand.)
My adventure began a few weeks earlier, when my internet connection deteriorated to the point where it kept cutting out halfway through various tasks.
We've had problems with squirrels chewing the line to the house. Also, there was a tree branch that encroached from another property and was scraping the wire. So, after we paid to have the tree trimmed, we called the internet provider and asked them to come out and replace the line.
The guy arrived. He tested the line and said it was fine. He went up on the pole, fiddled with the connections there, declared there had been some extra loops in the wire, and everything was great now.
He left. The problem came back.
I called my friends once again, very calmly explaining that we wanted the line replaced or we were taking our business elsewhere. I even said we were willing to upgrade if they would replace the line. My new-best-friend assured me that, if I went to the souped up plan, I would, as a matter of course, get a new line to the house.
I now believe the service rep would have promised me his grandmother's gold teeth and his first-born son to get me to stay. And I had about as much of a chance of getting either of those things as I did of getting a new wire. But I am getting ahead of myself.
There I was, sitting on the porch, when I heard the phone ringing inside the house. This was the first bad sign, since I had specifically instructed them to contact me on my cell phone.
The next indication that something was amiss was the surly service guy, whose response to my new-line inquiry was "we'll see." (Anyone who grew up in my house knows that "we'll see" means "no.")
He proceeded to rewire the inside of our home. He never got up on the pole or looked at the wire. He installed a behemoth of a modem that is more than twice the size of the old one. And he assured me the line was clear and operating nicely.
No, he was not going to replace the outside line.
Oh, and by the way, his company was going to ask me to take a survey, and could he count on me giving him a "10".
I must have looked like someone slapped me in the face with a ham steak. Was he kidding? He was rude, dodgy and condescending. And I was supposed to give him top marks for this?
I pointed out that someone had lied to me about installing the wire. He said the survey was based on his performance, not his company's. I held my tongue. I did not point out that his attitude was awful. He continued to press, and I continued to dodge.
You will find this as funny as I did, I'm sure, but I never did get a call from the company asking what I thought of their service.
And, last night, the internet connection got slow and stopped for awhile.
Soon I will have the opportunity to speak with them again. I predict we will be getting service from their competitor.
That log cabin in the woods is looking mighty appealing right now.
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