The Cable Guy

The week before we moved we called to schedule our cable provider to come out to the new house and install cable, Internet, and phone service. We thought calling a week in advance would be plenty of time for them to come out while both Dave and I were on vacation. Well we were wrong and the couldn't come out till today, almost two weeks after our call which in itself is a load of crap.

So we scheduled them for 12-4 today and I went into work this morning but took half the day off to come home for the cable guy. He arrived a little after one and I walked him through the house to show him what we needed. For some strange reason the people that built this house did not have any cable or phone jacks ran to the entire upstairs which includes a large loft area where we have the computer set up. When the guy saw that the wall for the Internet was an internal wall and would have to be fished he said he wouldn't be able to do that today because it wasn't on the work order that Time Warner sent him. A helpful piece of information is that the cable guy doesn't work for the cable company but his company is contracted out to do the installation for them. Back to the story, I called Dave and had Dave talk to the guy because not only was he saying he couldn't do it today but that it would cost us $39.99 for every half hour he spent in the attic fishing the lines and he said they typically take 30 to 45 minutes to do. We were planning on having jacks in both the kids rooms installed but the walls they would need to be on are also inside walls and I'm not paying that much for the kids to have cable they can watch movies just the same.

Dave finally works out what we want done and the guy then tells us that Time Warner is saying he can't even install the cable box downstairs because it all has to be done at the same time when the Internet and the phone are installed which still does not make a single bit of sense to me. The cable guy called his supervisor or told him he could install the one cable box and come back Saturday to do the rest but Time Warner just wouldn't agree to that. At this point we still have them scheduled to come out Saturday morning but I'm not sure if we are going to keep them now or not. We may do some more research and see what else we can get but we don't have very many options where we are which make all this that much harder. The thing that really upsets me is that I took half a day off work for this and got nothing for it.

The only good thing about today is that the cable guy was nice enough to hook up cable to the house so we do have the channels that you can get without a box and he didn't tell time Warner that he did that. Since he has left though I keep thinking about the movie The Cable Guy with Jim Carey, I really hope this guy isn't crazy like that!