Caterwauling

I took my car down to my old mechanic in Alexandria today because I needed an oil change and because the stupid thing is making weird noises. So I go into the waiting area and stood at the desk, where the girl proceeded to ignore me. She even left and went outside to rearrange the doormat. I’m not kidding. I was livid.

I made some snarky comment to the hot guy in the Steelers T-shirt who was sitting next to me that I’ve never been ignored when I go into that place. And finally the girl said, “Well, you’re IN the computer.” Well, DUH.

At that point, I had already decided not to go back, but I went outside to talk to my mechanic about the sound. So he said he’d change the oil and take it on a road test and he’d check back with me. So 20 minutes went by and the bitch at the counter tells me, “Your total is __.”

It was the total I usually overpay for an oil change and I asked what the mechanic had to say about the noise. She looked confused and rang me up. I went outside to see my car and couldn’t find the guy who worked on it, so I left. I ran some errands (the Harris Teeter across the street sells wine. Guess where I went). The car refused to start when I picked up my delicious bottle of King Estate Pinot Gris, but as I did get her started again, I left town.

So an hour later, I hear the same fucking noise I’d complained about. ARGH. At that point, the shop was closed and I was already in D.C. again, so fuck me on that. I really need to find a local mechanic. This is the second time I’ve left that shop with more wrong than I took it in with.

But hey, at least they’re not Comcast, whom I cannot escape because they’ve got the goddamned monopoly in this region. *sigh*

So, Comcast. When I moved in the spring, my bill went up to $120 for basic cable and Internet. It was $100 before the move, and I’d made no changes to the service. So I called a month ago, telling them we need to do a deal before I go to RCN, it’s kid-brother competitor. RCN can run cable over Comcast’s wires, but admittedly, Comcast has the better Internet service. And because my job is 100% time-consuming Web-based, well, sick days become work-from-home days and now I have a shiny new laptop so I can work from home more, so I can’t settle for less than broadband.

Anyway, they said they couldn’t do anything about the price, but they could kick in a digital converter/DVR thing. Great. Sold. So the guy said they’d have to deliver it to my place, which I said wouldn’t work because I spend my life away from here. He says, “No problem. You don’t have to sign for it. They’ll just leave it for you.”

Awesome. Really, I live in a very safe, secured area. I wasn’t worried about it getting stolen. So he gives me the UPS tracking info and that was that.

So I let a week or so go by before I tracked the package. The shipping info didn’t work. So I called the idiots in India — er, customer care — and gave them my tracking number. The girl says, “Oh, that’s our internal order number. That’s not the UPS number.”

I’m like, fine, when’s the package coming?

“Oh, it was delivered early last week but it says no one was home so they couldn’t leave it.”

*headslam*

So I’m like, uh, that’s not what the previous jagoff had told me would happen. I asked if I could just come and pick it up in person, and she said of course.

Which I finally just did, a month after the fact.

I have yet to hook it up because I have to call when it’s connected. And I HATE calling there.

I lost my username/password when I moved from Virginia to D.C. because the idiots weren’t competent enough to TRANSFER my service and I had to lose my good username and get one randomly assigned. So I tried their online live help the other night, which was EVER so helpful.

I start out as number eleventy billion in the queue, and when I was second in the queue, I suddenly became third, then fourth, then second, then next. Because apparently second and next are different things. And the girl gets on and tells me that their systems won’t let her tell me my information right now. I said, um, is there a better time to check back in, as I’ve just killed an hour waiting for nothing? She said she wasn’t sure.

Anyway, I’ve had just about enough stupidity for one day. I’ll save hooking up my new wireless router and my new cable box for tomorrow. If every day has to contain misery, I’d like to spread the wealth instead of adding more shit to the already-steaming pile.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 6:27 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.