Tech Support Jackpot!

As I've told you all already, Sunday nights hold one of my small weekly pleasures. On this night every week, I grab a little snack, (this week, some lovely watermelon imported from NJ) and settle in for two hours of blissful 80's alt rock on VH1 Classic's "120 Minutes." It's not quite the same as the original "120 Minutes", but it's the one bit of pleasantly guilty nostalgia I regularly allow myself.

So tonight being Sunday, I park myself on the couch, and flip to the usual channel. But what greets me tonight? A big black screen that reads "Subscription channel." VH1 Classic has disappeared from my lineup!

So I flipped through my other channels. AMC? Gone. TCM? Gone. G4? Gone.

Now, I know Comcast has been working hard to fuck up my service for the last few months ever since the buyout of Adelphia at the beginning of the year. I've had to call a few times about the internet service, and strange things have been happening with the channel menus. Yesterday, all the channels shifted to new locations, and we lost all our "favorites" programming. So the new development tonight was only a little surprise...

At first I went all Morrisey and moped around, accepting that I'd be without until we moved to Charlotte. Then I decided, you know what, they have support people 24 hours! I'm calling their asses up!

I got a very nice support person named Larry. I told him that I knew they were changing around the lineup, but now half my channels were flat out missing. He said, hold on and let me see what's going on. He said it looked like the packages had changed with everything else, and I could switch to the digital blah-blah package, and it would work again. So I said, okay, well, what will that cost me? And he said hold on...

I told him that I tried listening to the FAQ on the phone before asking to talk to him, and it said that they tried about 20 different ways of notifying everyone of all these changes, but damned if I hadn't seen ANY of them! And he started laughing. So I said, "I bet you get a lot of people who tell you that." And he said, "whew, you wouldn't believe it!" And I said, "Well, at least you're not too busy at night," and he told me I'd be surprised at just how many people call at this hour. Mostly drunks. And I said tweekers, and they all probably want to yell at you. And we had a good laugh. And thus began a very nice conversation with a support person who said, "Hang on a second, maybe I can save you some money..."

Sure enough, some options here, and a "you shouldn't be paying for that" there, and he restored all my channels. He upgraded me to the new service. We now have ALL the movie channels.

AND he saved me $33 a month!

After all that, we still couldn't get AMC to work, and he tried a bunch of stuff but it still wasn't happening. So he said, "I know you don't want to hear this, but it means I'll have to send a tech out to your house..." And I said, "You know, it's not really that important..." And he's like, "Are you sure? Because you should be getting all the channels you're paying for..." And I said,

"You know? It's just AMC. It's not that great a channel. I now have all the OTHER movie channels. And what are they showing right now... 'Raising Helen'?? I didn't want to watch that anyway. Don't even worry about it!"

He said all right and asked if I need anything else, but I told him no thanks, and that he was great, and thank you so much!

So say what you'd like about Comcast's customer service, but all the times I've called I've spoken to really nice people who actually act like they want to help. And tonight's experience was no different, AND it came with bonuses!

So then I spent the rest of my "90 Minutes" with a pleased little grin...