10.11.2013

Today was kind of frustrating in a lot of ways, but still a pretty day.  It's hard to go up on Angel and have a bad day!  Jim took off really early this morning to get to the lot before the National Grid people got there.  He was hoping to convince them to put the pole where it was supposed to go and where we have the area ready for it. 

Because the trench is open and the poles are going up, it's really time for the Time Warner cable.  That's been a long standing frustration - I started calling them in June trying to make this happen and we still don't have cable.  I called first thing this morning and got a pleasant person who said that she would have the construction department call.  I stressed the importance because the trench was open and she said it would be right away.  When I hadn't heard at lunchtime, I called again.  Of course, you can't get the same person so I started all over.  Again, she was nice and said that she emailed every one in the construction department to call us.  But I was hopeful because this time she gave me her name and extension number so I figured that I wouldn't have to go through the whole story again.  Because of course yet again, no one calls. 

Meanwhile, Jim is afraid to do much of anything for fear he will miss the call from them.  And National Grid never showed up either.  He still gets ton done though...he basically has the trench totally ready to go up to the point where it has to turn and go to the street to meet the pole - wherever that will be.  The pole is laying across the stone wall so even if he wanted to move all that, he couldn't. 

Here's the transformer pad all compacted and ready to go...

This afternoon I tried calling Time Warner again.  This time I was frustrated - I'm sure on top of everything I'm now on some "lunatic customer" list.  I tried getting through to the extension of the person from this morning, but they can't transfer to extensions.  Even when I said that this person gave me her extension - didn't matter.  I asked for supervisors, ranted and raved - the most that it did was that they put you on hold and leave you there for 20 minutes at a time.  I was very hopeful at one point because I got someone who put me on a conference call with supposedly someone from the elusive construction department, but that did no good either.  In the end, after 2 hours - no exaggeration - I'm right back where I was in June.  They're going to have someone call us. 

We're definitely going to pursue this horrid lack of customer service - I've already done a little research and found out that communities enter into local franchise agreements with Time Warner and supposedly they are much more helpful and can make Time Warner behave.  We'll see - I'll work on that Monday.

Leaf Peeper Pic...