Cable Woes

I am seriously peeved with my cable company.

I am an online bill payer. If you expect me to send you a check or pay the bill by phone, you can bet that the payment is going to be late. If I can help it, I get all of my bills online through email, too.

My cable company and I got along just fine for about 3 years. Then, suddenly one day, they decided that the only way you could pay online was if you logged on with your email address from them. Well, I know that I got an email address through them when we first got our service, but I don't ever use it. I have no idea what my password is or how to get into it remotely. Also, in order to log into their online site with this new email address I needed to have a pin number. Well, I have never received or decided on a pin number for my cable company.

This was where the first of our problems began.

At first, I was only slightly annoyed by this change. I simply picked up the phone and called them. I informed them of my dilemma, and they informed me that I wasn't authorized to deal with them by phone - the account was under Mike's name.

Sidenote: Why I would EVER open an account in Mike's name I have NO idea. Considering the fact that I pay all the bills and he is hardly ever home, it doesn't really make too much sense. Note to self: let this be the last time you have to learn this lesson the hard way!

Eventually Mike got around to calling the cable company himself. After speaking with them, he informed me that the bill was paid and I was now named on the account; I thought everything had been taken care of.

Until I received another online bill (that I couldn't open!)... and realized that he had forgotten to get the most important information: the pin number for the account and the password for the email address!

So.. he made another call, explained the predicament, and was informed that a manager would be calling him back (on his cell phone!) with the coveted pin number and password within the hour.

But there was no phone call back.

And today, I received a letter in the mail from this stupid dumb idiotic cable company telling us that this was our last (actually it was our first, but apparently the first is also the last) notice before they cut off our service.

So.. I called the cable company.

And was informed that even though I'm now on the account, I can't be the one to receive the pin number because I am not the primary account holder. I was also informed that the manager had called our landline to give us our pin, but we had not answered. (well, that's because our cordless phone isn't working and we never use the stupid landline, so we don't even have a phone plugged into it currently. Not only that, but they had told Mike that they would be calling him back on his cell phone! I even stood there next to him as he repeated the number to them!)

In any case, I learned that Mike would have to call back on our landline in order to get our pin number. Which, she informed me, is on our bill right under our address and name. However, I informed her that all our bills come online via email, but I cannot get into those bills because I don't have the PIN NUMBER or password needed to access it now that they switched it so that we have to use our cox.com email address.

Oh, she replied.
Well, if you receive a bill in the mail before your husband gets home, you can just check under the name and address and your pin number will be right there.

umm...........

OK.
Bye Then.
I said.

**Thanks so much for listening intently to my problem, and for being oh so much help.

When I got off the phone, I texted the following to Michael:

As soon as you get home we are cancelling our cox cable and switching over to AT&T. They have some really good cable and internet packages.