Is Comcast the worst company in the whole wide world?

The world's a big place, but they're up there toward the top.......

It seemed simple enough.

He writes, laughing bitterly.

I’m just going to call Comcast and cancel my service, and have them pick up my equipment, because, hey – I’m moving.   And they don’t offer service at my new address.

Easy peasy.     So I called them, and the cust. Service (he laughs bitterly again at that title) rep. was very helpful.  Of course we’ll take care of that sir.    But it’ll be $200 dollars for tech. to come out to your house to pick up the equipment, as it’ll be considered a service call.

WTF?      Ok…   Option B was drive 55 blocks into dodgy part of S. Chicago when I didn’t have time to do so, and drop them off…. 

Option C – We’ll be happy to send you a kit sir, with box and pre-paid postage labels, and you can just drop everything off at UPS.     SWEET!!!

Until the kit never shows up.  And I end up driving all my equipment to the new house.

Only to find that the nearest Comcast location is 30 miles away.    

My phone rings on Saturday, June 21.   Why, it’s… COMCAST!      A service guy.  Seems he saw my for sale sign on the old house, and wanted to know if we were transferring service, or if we would like them to come pick up the equipment.    Told him I tried to schedule that, but balked at the $200 price tag.

“$200?  No sir, we don’t charge for picking up our equipment.”   And he offered to come by the old house, where no one was living at the time, and pick it up….  Nope.     But hey, could you find out what happened to my “kit”?       No sir, not my job.   Call customer service…

Yesterday, I received a terse, automated, text message on my phone.

“We want our shit back, please give it to us”.   Or something close to that. 

So I call customer service (he continues to laugh bitterly at this designation).

Sergio was not very customer service-y.    “Your account’s closed sir, so I can’t see notes on what may or may not have been offered to you.”    No problem, just send me the #$$% kit.

“Oh, I can’t do that, because your account’s closed, and you’ve changed addresses.”

Huh?

“We can only send those to the billing address, prior to the account closing.” 

“So, y’all did the job halfway with my initial phone call, and are refusing to fix your eror?”   F*ck that, put a supervisor on the line, please.

Sergio became snide, told me I could wait 20 minutes to talk to one, but he guaranteed me that they’d give me the same answer.  And he was smirking, I could it tell, even over the phone.

Options?

Drive to Battle Creek

Go on-line and print out labels and mail our stuff back to us.

At least I spent 20+ minutes of my life finding this out, time I will never get back...

So I attempted to print out labels this morning, only to find that…. I can’t print out labels, because my account’s closed and I’ve changed addresses.      

(Note to self, if I ever meet Sergio, I will have to beat him severely, while smirking)

So I find a # to the Battle Creek location, and… I’m on the phone with customer service call center again.

Please tell me what the problem is sir. 

Your rude unhelpful customer service folks are the problem.   

Ok, let me transfer you to customer service. 

“Wait, wait!  Just please, PLEASE provide for the phone # to the Battle Creek location. A # that will actually be answered by someone there.”

“What’s your last name again sir, so that I can pull up your account?”   

 It doesn’t matter!!!!!!!! A phone number!!! That’s it!!!!!!

Finally, after 17 minutes of being put on hold and explaining everything to her again in hopes that she might help, only to be assured that she could not, She coughed up the #.

So, 4-5 lengthy phone conversations, bad information regarding equipment pick up, half-completed account closing, No kits, rude dooshbags name Sergio... 2.5 weeks of playing silly buggers, and the net result is feeling good about getting a non 800#.

Which I dialed, relieved to be done with them.  The battle creek office will answer, I can verify that they’ll take the equipment, I won’t waste a huge trip, and I’ll be done with them all!  Yay!!!!!!

“Habitat!”   

huh?

“Is this comcast?”

“No, this is Habitat, you must have the wrong#.”   

Of course I do.

feeling adrift, and dinner with four guys named Jim.

So, last night I ate dinner with four guys named Jim.    Apparently, there's a 5th guy named Jim, but he no-showed....

When I was introduced around, I flashbacked to many dorm cafeteria dinners with 4-5 girls named Kim.  Only the Jims are WAY older, and not as pretty and have had way more life experiences than the 5 kims had at the time.

Come to think of it, I’ve just described myself…

Pork chops, I think.  (Not really versed on pork, heard tell of a large piece of pork, cut into 5/8 inch thick pieces..)  Baked beans, Miller Lite, some desert thingy that’s actually not bad for you, we were told, because it’s made entirely of sugar free / fat free alternatives to…real ingredients.

Did not need to know that last part...

And I had a nice time, all things considered, sitting at the picnic table; eating pork chops off a Styrofoam plate; making polite conversations with the aforementioned Jims and others who all get together once a week to share food and stories.   One of the folks there knows a lot about my new house and the history of the neighbors, and the name of the lady for whom the home was likely built, over a hundred years ago...   That was worth the price of admission, right there.... 

I hope to do so again, at least 1-2 more times this summer.    

In a way I would not have predicted, it actually helped me to feel like I belong… someplace.    A little less like I’m not 100%... anywhere at the moment.     

I’ve been floating on a bubble of temporary… everything for way too long,  so much so that the smallest thing, food with strangers as an example, feels significant.

 Last week it was a new library card, granted me outside of proof-of-residency guidelines, because… I know a guy.

Hope to be in my new home, with the things that make a house a home, like… my wife and daughter and my stuff, in less than 30 days.   Then, perhaps, I’ll feel like I actually belong someplace, one place,  all the way.  That will be a very good feeling.

Hey, if you’re gonna dream, dream big.

House Hunting, House Selling. or..Why I'm up at 4am every morning.

So, things have been a bit busy.

Seems we're moving.

Moving would indicate the vacating of one premises, and the subsequent inhabiting of another.
And we are, by god, trying to do both of those things.   I think it would be easier to just do one or the other, but there would be obvious gaps, so... people tend to do them, side by side.

It's been 15 years since we've done this.
After 12+ years of moving every 9-16 months, of  living in 11 different towns in three states, with well over a dozen different addresses mixed in there, we've stayed in one place for 15 years.

And now, we're off again.
And while I'm sure we'll be very happy wherever we end up, eventually, the process is not really all that pleasant, and If I ever actually sleep until my alarm goes off, ever again, I'll celebrate it.

We get nervous if we don't have enough people looking at our house, and we get crabby because someone wants to look at an inconvenient time.
How clean is clean enough when you're running late to get out the door in the morning?
Not that we could let anyone come in during the day anyhow, because of the 80lbs of people loving poochie that we've got taking up space in the spare bedroom.....

By far the bigger issue right now is finding a place at destination.  And we think we may have done so, depending on outcome of negotiations, pest inpection and well and septic inspection.     So yeah, only those things....

Which, if everything works out, is a HUGE relief, because honestly, everything else we've seen has been a home and garden freak show.  

Drove past the very first house we were to look at last week, and went to turn around in a driveway just past it.  Only to see several signs advising that we may just be shot if we were to pull into the driveway to turn around.   "If you can read this sign, you're in range!"  was my personal favorite.

"No sweetie, you can't have a play date next door at the Gunnutstafon's.   Maybe little Ellie could come over here, but she's got to take her shoes and side arm off at the door.      And when was the last time you saw our dog?   Do you hear banjo music?"

The photos on THAT house didn't show that you would constantly be wobbling about on uneven floors, to the extent that you feared you were suffering from vertigo.
Next....

The lovely pictures of the next house we visited, didn't show that your 2nd floor master bedroom's sliding door gave you access to... nothing.  the deck was long gone.  Watch that first step...
Next...

And some of the listings were thankfully so ridiculous, that we did not actually bother to visit those homes.
At the time, we shook our heads, but in reality, we're grateful for the ridiculous photos, as they saved us some time.

I think the best, by far, was the listing with a photo of the "partially finished"  basement. It had a futon, an air mattress with unmade bedding on top, and... a huge confederate flag with Hank Williams Jr's face in the middle of it, hanging from the wall.     It was, indeed, the focal point of the photo.

A distant second was listing with a the picture of the main bathroom, complete with 64 oz. truck stop coffee go mug sitting on the back of the toilet.     Perhaps it was full, and too heavy for the photographer to carry away before snapping the picture.

Seriously - what the hell were these folks thinking?     This is your homes' best foot forward?  Confederate flags and 1/2 gallon go-mugs on the toilet?

At least the house with pictures of wiring dangling loose by half-peeled wall paper was honest about it being a diamond in the rough.     A very small diamond... in a very big rough....

I had a buddy in college, who was fond of dropping trou and mooning the camera, whenever someone decided to take pics.   We saw far more pics of Lee's butt than we did of his face.     I kept wanting to photo shop one of those old photos into some of the ones from the various listings.  I figured, what did they have to lose?

So, we're hopeful we're done with one or both ends of things very soon.   Perhaps we'll be able to sleep again.    

Next few posts will likely be more about the big adventure.   Hope you enjoy them.