This Morning’s Conversation With My Cable Service Provider
2010-02-03 – 11:24My side of the conversation this morning went like this. (I would have recorded it “for quality assurance purposes”, but where would I send the recording?)
- I’d like to have a technician come in to move a cable connection.
- Yes, I understand there will be a charge.
- A monthly charge? Why will there be a monthly charge?
- No, I don’t want to add a connection, I want to move an existing one.
- No, I want to disable the one that’s there, and put in a new one.
- What do you mean, you can’t disable one?
- Yes, I want to TURN OFF the one that’s there, and—
- No, I don’t want to cancel my service.
- Yes, I want to—may I finish please?
- Thank you. I want to move the existing connection in the living room to a different place in the living room.
- Right, so the number of connections stays the same.
- Right, but we’re adding one, so if we turn one off and add one, the monthly charge should stay the same, shouldn’t it?
- Yes, adding one, but we’re turning one off, so —
- No, we’re not canceling the service. We are just moving an outlet from one place in the room to another place in the same room.
- No, we’re not moving house, we’re moving the cable outlet.
- So we can put the TV in a different place.
- Yes, in the same room.
- Yes, I understand there will be a charge for the service. But it will be a one-time service charge, right?
- No, I — ma’am, I didn’t ask what our current service charges are, I just want to confirm that there’s just a one-time service charge for moving the cable outlet.
- OK, if you can just send the technician, I’ll explain it to them.
6 Responses to “This Morning’s Conversation With My Cable Service Provider”
It vaguely reminds me of dialogs that people conduct with AI programs.
By SZ on Feb 3, 2010
Yeah, apparently someone just passed the Turing test.
By Geofrey on Feb 3, 2010
Is that why all my customer service calls lately are being picked up by Eliza!?
By Chris on Feb 3, 2010
Isn’t the wiring inside your house your responsibility? Like phone lines and the demarcation point. The only problem I can see you having is if you had to get into the filter box to run a brand new continuous cable.
Try an electrical contractor directly instead of using the cable company’s guy.
Luckily I have a crawlspace under my living room so I can run wires almost anywhere! Great for the home theatre.
CN
By Chris on Feb 4, 2010
@CN Nope, cable outlets have to be installed by the cable company—and you don’t want to know what Canadians have to pay for bandwidth
By Greg Wilson on Feb 4, 2010
Ah, the joy of minimum-knowledge support service. Your strange outlandish request didn’t seem to fit the customer service flow chart, so they valiantly struggled to take your keywords and get back to the script. Probably they could understand what you actually want, if they stopped to listen, but their training doesn’t allow for that.
@Chris, no, everything behind the wall socket is the responsibility of the comms company; that clear demarcation probably saves them unthinkable amounts of legal hassle when inept amateurs botch their modifications. If Greg wants to continue to receive service, anything that happens behind that panel needs to be cleared with them.
By Ben Finney on Feb 5, 2010