Another Cablevision fan
Unfortunately, our power was out for several hours last night, which means I didn't finish the post intended for today. It looks as though the record heat in our neck of the woods caused a blackout in our town, because we really didn't get much in the way of storms predicted. In any case, few things are more fun than sitting around in a humid, sweltering house in the dark--which is why my wife and I went shopping and then out to dinner to escape the situation for a while. (Unfortunately, as Majikthise has pointed out, not everyone has the means that my wife and I do to escape the heat when there is no air conditioning.) Fortunately, the power was back on by the time we got home, but I was too tired to finish the planned post. Also fortunately, I had this lying around from a week or two ago, looking for an appropriate time to post, as well as the brief mention of Dr. Laidler's article.
After my little rant four weeks ago about Cablevision, I've found another Cablevision fan.
Since then, I've mellowed a bit on Cablevision, at least on the cable guy who came to my house. If you remember, when I called to complain that my picture was pixelating, freezing, and even disappearing, the "customer service" drone on the other end tried to tell me it was because I didn't turn the cable box off overnight to let it "update." When the cable guy came in, he immediately hit a service key combination on the box, looked at the signal strength and the number of errors the box was registering, and told me that my signal was so weak that he was amazed that I got any picture at all! He then proceeded to check our wiring and discovered that the guy who owned the house before us had split, re-split, and re-split again the cable again. Worse, at one point, he had hammered a moulding down over the cable, crushing it, which, according to him, can compromise signal transmission. (I was not surprised, as I had always assumed that the cable outlets in almost every room of the house were not the work of Cablevision.) His solution? He ran a new line in and unhooked the main line from all the splits. He even got rid of most of the splits in the line to our other TV. Unfortunately that leaves a bunch of useless cable connections all over the place. On the other hand, they were pretty much useless already, given the number of splits.
The result?
Beautiful HD pictures and sound on the HD channels and good to excellent quality pictures on all the others. It's still way more expensive than it's worth, but at least we're getting what we're supposed to be getting now, and I like Optimum Online too much to consider a switch to satellite (which would also cause my Internet bill to go up for not getting Optimum Online with a TV package).
Clearly, not every Cablevision employee in customer service is an idiot. But enough of them are to cause a lot of grief.
Hopefully tonight I'll have the time to finish the post I had originally intended for today. And sometime next week, if I get around to it, maybe I'll tell you why alties like to call me a "pharma shill" and other favored ad hominem attacks that cranks like to use.
After my little rant four weeks ago about Cablevision, I've found another Cablevision fan.
Since then, I've mellowed a bit on Cablevision, at least on the cable guy who came to my house. If you remember, when I called to complain that my picture was pixelating, freezing, and even disappearing, the "customer service" drone on the other end tried to tell me it was because I didn't turn the cable box off overnight to let it "update." When the cable guy came in, he immediately hit a service key combination on the box, looked at the signal strength and the number of errors the box was registering, and told me that my signal was so weak that he was amazed that I got any picture at all! He then proceeded to check our wiring and discovered that the guy who owned the house before us had split, re-split, and re-split again the cable again. Worse, at one point, he had hammered a moulding down over the cable, crushing it, which, according to him, can compromise signal transmission. (I was not surprised, as I had always assumed that the cable outlets in almost every room of the house were not the work of Cablevision.) His solution? He ran a new line in and unhooked the main line from all the splits. He even got rid of most of the splits in the line to our other TV. Unfortunately that leaves a bunch of useless cable connections all over the place. On the other hand, they were pretty much useless already, given the number of splits.
The result?
Beautiful HD pictures and sound on the HD channels and good to excellent quality pictures on all the others. It's still way more expensive than it's worth, but at least we're getting what we're supposed to be getting now, and I like Optimum Online too much to consider a switch to satellite (which would also cause my Internet bill to go up for not getting Optimum Online with a TV package).
Clearly, not every Cablevision employee in customer service is an idiot. But enough of them are to cause a lot of grief.
Hopefully tonight I'll have the time to finish the post I had originally intended for today. And sometime next week, if I get around to it, maybe I'll tell you why alties like to call me a "pharma shill" and other favored ad hominem attacks that cranks like to use.
(Relative newcomer - really enjoy the blog.)
ReplyDeleteThat's been my experience with most communications companies (telecom, cable, ISPs, whatever) - the people on the phone tend to be next to useless, especially when they're following their lame little prepared flowcharts. Once you finally get them to send a tech out, though, everything's green; most of the techs I've known were far better at customer service than the CS reps, and they know the hardware, to boot.
If you want those other cable outlets to work, you (the general "you") just need to connect the incoming cable to a distribution block. That would allow all the lines to have just that one connector.
ReplyDeleteBTW Dr A. Mathews (Ph. D) claims he isn't a liberal. he is right, he is worse coz he is a Dio fan.
ReplyDeleteHow do you manage to make your webpages in the blog this long?