A Cable Television Customer's Lament
A Gay Opinion 1/01/03
by R. A. Melos
I will not complain about my cable television provider. I will not complain
about my cable television provider. I won't. I swear, I won't.
Oh, whom am I kidding? My cable television provider is a mere step up from the organized crime family the Sopranos, which my cable company provides for my viewing pleasure, as long as I submit to their demands for more and more money. I know they aren't really comparable to the Sopranos since the Sopranos are more compassionate and loving, and trustable than my cable television provider.
What has brought me to this conclusion?
A simple conversation with a customer service representative of said provider has led me to believe in the inherent evil controlling my source of entertainment. Actually it was being informed, while my cable was out of service for 3 hours and 58 minutes, the company policy is to only give credit for cable outages of 4 hours or more and to only credit the customers who call in to report the outages.
So a service which is paid for and expected to be available 24 hours a day is being paid for even during service interruptions, if the subscriber is unaware of, or too lazy to report, the outage. Thus my cable provider has answered for me the age-old question of "if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise?"
My cable provider has taken on an even greater responsibility in seeing to it I am getting the very best service my money can buy, even when I don't want the very best, even when there is nothing but dead air, by insisting I upgrade my service package and receiver in order to receive the same services I currently receive. If I elect not to upgrade my package and receiver, some of the services I currently receive will become invisible to me.
Oh, those services will still be there, I just won't be able to view them. However, I will still be paying for them unless I contact my cable provider and cancel the services that are there but I cannot see. You see? Oh how clever is my cable provider at extortion? I'm so lucky to have them, since satellite dish providers don't supply the same quality services as my cable provider supplies, according to my cable provider.
The world is just a better place to live in because of my cable provider, which
also provides my Internet access so I may complain about my cable provider.
Life could not be any sweeter, but wait! Yes, life can get even sweeter. How,
you ask?
.
My wise and most gracious cable provider is going digital. Oh joy of joys. Now
I can pay almost twice what I am currently paying, for digital outages, so I
may speak with the same ill-informed and sometimes ill-mannered customer service
representatives.
I am so overwhelmed. I worship the very swamp out of which my cable provider's CEO slithered! I eagerly await my next encounter with my cable provider's most surly of customer service representatives, and savor the anticipation of her most snide remarks. "The days of free television are a thing of the past," she will hiss. "Hold on, while I get a supervisor."
Oh the endless joy I will receive from the endless hours of elevator music playing in my ear, while I wait patiently to speak with the mythical supervisor, will fulfill my emotional need to be walked on and treated like dirt for decades to come!
Thank you, oh great and powerful cable provider, for the sheer pleasure you will bring me by allowing me to view premium channels staggered by a scant few minutes, so I am paying for the same programming on five different channels, each three minutes apart in time schedules. I am not worthy of the more than 200 channels, 175 of which show non-stop infomercial for the most useless products known to man.
I thank you for draining all hope and meaning from my life through the constant
barrage of inane drivel which passes for entertainment in these times, and look
forward to many years of staring at my television screen as I channel surf my
life away.