I'm back.

Okay, so it's been almost a year since my last post.

To be honest, either I haven't been sufficiently amused/ticked off to feel that I had anything worth writing about (Yeah, the same lazy, stupid dipsticks that didn't shovel their sidewalks the LAST few winters maintained their perfect record this year, but I'm just resigned to it and now only hope that if I fall and split my skull open on some lazy bastard's sidewalk, that my daughter and son-in-law will get a nice settlement from the lawsuit...), or I've been TOO cheesed off (at, say, the sock-puppet-in-chief and his Vice) to be able to write anything about Iraq, Iran, the almost-but-not-really-a-recession, the Bank Bailout: Part Deux, etc., in any manner that would not get me an all-expenses-paid vacation on a lovely Caribbean island...

Today, however, I ran into a fascinating example of corporate stupidity that I'd like to share with all and sundry.

Now, I have my cable TV and internet access both provided by Comcast so if, after posting this bit of corporate asininity. I suddenly become incommunicado, you may start by checking to see if my e-mail account has suddenly ben terminated.

Because this is all about Comcast, you see, and - by extension - the inability of big business to actually fix ANYTHING out of the ordinary now that they have gone to "efficient" centralized "customer service".

So...

I turned on the TV this morning to check the local forecast on the Weather Channel. Immediately, I noticed a couple of things:

1 - There was no sound.
2 - The usual "crawl" showing the local conditions, capsule forecast, etc., was not running across the bottom of the screen.

Watching for a few minutes, I noted that:

3 - The lack of sound continued into the commercials, and;
4 - The every-ten-minutes forecast had TWC's generic "four-alphabetically-arranged-national-cities-per-page-changing-every-few-seconds" forecast, rather than the LOCAL conditions and forecast.

Having run into this before, I decided that it was a local cable-office problem, rather than a Weather Channel problem since:

A - At least some commercials are inserted locally, and ALL were soundless, and;
B - The local forecasts are inserted locally, or at most, regionally.

Having had this happen once before, and contacting TWC to find out if it was them or Comcast that had had a lapse of attention, I was told by the TWC people that I needed to get the local ID number that starts off the crawl, and they could contact the relevant people to reset their system and all would be well. I got the number, sent same, and (relatively quickly) had my local forecast back.

Of course in THIS instance, with no crawl, I have no way of getting the ID number to send to TWC.

Which left me trying to contact Comcast.

(Oh... I can hear you starting to laugh, now...!)

Because Comcast, like so many companies, has become "efficient" by having one national call-center, with no one who knows how to do anything but schedule a service call to your house.

Which is fine, actually, IF THAT"S WHERE THE FRICKIN' SCREW-UP IS!!!

There is, unfortunately, no way to schedule a technician to make a service call on the HOME OFFICE AND FLIP THAT ONE BLEEDIN' CHROMIUM SWITCH TO TURN THEIR COMPUTERS ON AGAIN!!!!!!

...And no way to CALL the local office to point out their problem, because all calls go to the NATIONAL FRICKIN' CALL CENTER!!!!!!

I won't give you the whole sordid phone conversation, because it's just TOO depressing, but I think some high(?)-lights are in order:

Customer Service Drone: ...and just to confirm that this is the holder of the account, can I have the last four digits of your Social Security number?

Me: Why do you need my (SSN) to report a problem that's at YOUR end of the wire?

CSD: It's to make sure that no one is making service requests on your account.

Me: So... someone is going to call you up... pretending to be me... in order to let YOU folks know that YOUR service is down...? Does this even make sense...?

Eventually, we got past that hangup by giving him the address on the bill.

Silly ME - I thought that that could be used to find the address and internal phone number of the local office, so that he could report their problem to them...

No... that was just so that he knew where to send the service call... and they had a slot open on Tuesday, at...

Me: No... No... NoNoNo... Let's try this again... (You may now imagine that little vein in my forehead is starting to throb...)

My cable connection... is fine.

Every other channel... is fine.

Every channel EXCEPT the Weather Channel has a picture and sound and everything...

The Weather Channel has a picture but no sound...

It has the generic national forecast that TWC feeds to its uplink, but not the LOCAL forecast information that YOU people add.

These facts tell me that the problem is NOT at the Weather Channel's end, and it's not at MY end, but at your downlink and distribution center, which is a mile-and-a-half away from me...

And which I can't call...

CSD: (Proudly) ...Because all customer help requests come to the national call center...

Me: ...And for which I do NOT feel like getting out of my sickbed - this being the reason that I'm HOME on a Monday afternoon - so that I can WALK DOWN THERE AND TELL THEM TO SEND SOMEONE INTO THE BACK ROOM AND FLIP THE BLEEDIN' SWITCH!!!!

CSD: That does appear to be the case.

Me: (Resigned) Yeah... fine... okay... thanks...

CSD: So, will there be anything ELSE that I can help you with, today, Mr. Mo...

Me: *click*

As I've been writing this, I think that I may have a solution to the problem that will get Comcast's attention:

Because, the way that I see it, all of those companies ADVERTISING on TWC on Comcast should be due a rebate for the day(s) that they lose getting their full money's-worth on their ad investments. Once "someone" calls the advertisers about the problem, the clients call their agencies, and the agencies' media buyers call Comcast asking for their money back, I think the problem may be solved...

Now where did I put that pad of paper...?