Phone Talk

2009 May 7

tags: Cable Company, Customer Support, Movie, Phone, Phone Borg, Phone Bot, Sexy Angel

by Candy

The past few days I wasn’t able to catch any ‘On Demand’ movies on my cable channel. I don’t know about some of you, but my cable has this ‘On Demand’ which is one or more premium channels that they offer that is scheduled, or there are more movies available free of charge where you can choose from their premium line ups. What’s really cool about that is that you can stop, rewind, fast-forward, just as if you’re watching a movie on DVD. So, this is the part where I love my cable service since I would be able to choose whatever movie I wanted to watch whenever and if there were interruptions, no problem! I get to be able to re-wind. Or maybe, I’d be like WTF?!!! Did I see what I thought it was??!! Rewind! Pause. *OH!* play. Whatever.

So, these past two days, I get this error message and thought WTF?! I’m pissed. I’m paying money for my cable service and I expect it to work all the time. So, day three, I said FTS! And dialed my Cable Company. I hate calling them, it’s not because I’m hard of hearing. Mostly, it’s because I never get a LIVE person. However, I must say, with my low frequency hearing loss, it helps that these automated and phone borgs usually are females and I hear them just fine.

First I get this automated voice that tells me to press 1 if I wanted to pay my bill, 2 if I wanted cable support. Ahh, I’m glad, I didn’t have to listen to anymore of that shit.

I press 2.

Then, I got this phone bot. I don’t know exactly what they’re called. Supposedly they’re some sort of phoneborgs or something like that. This is how it went:

Phoneborg: Please state the problem you’re having with your cable service.

Me: On Demand

Phoneborg: Thank you. Did you say you are having problems with On Demand, is that correct?

Me: Yes.

Phoneborg: Are you having a problem with placing an order?

Me: No.

Phoneborg: OIC. Ok. Were you watching a movie and it stopped in the middle of showing and would not play again?

Me: No.

Phoneborg: OIC. Would you like to speak to a customer support?

Me: YES! Live Person, yes! please!

Ahh, I almost freaked. Used to be in the past, I’d be saying, “I’d like to speak to a real live person, if you don’t mind!” And, I’d get this response: “I’m sorry, I do not understand your request. Let’s try this again. What kind of cable problem are you having?” And, as you can see, it only got me real frustrated. So, this time, I decided to play along and see where it went. Turns out, it was only about four questions before the phoneborg realizes it, or was programmed to realize that it wasn’t going anywhere! Awesome. I guess it pays to be calm and patience, heh?

This time around, I get this LIVE male voice, why do they have to be males? But, this male voice sounded sexy, so, that wasn’t too bad.

Well, it turns out that last weekend as I unplugged the cable box, I never let it upload completely when it was plugged back into the socket before I had messed around with the channels.

So, tonight I was watching The Talented Mr. Ripley and came away from the movie in, oh! How do I say it? It wasn’t the kind of movie that had me all warmed up. It was a pretty good movie, I’d say this Tom is quite talented. I never bothered to watch that movie when it came out on DVD. It is the kind of movie that could wait. There’s some that you can’t wait and then there are some that you can.

Speaking of movies….

Wolverine is out in the theaters now and I’ve gotten so much good reviews on it from a few people, I know, that have already seen it. I guess I’ll have to put it on my list of movies to catch along with Watchmen and it’s ever changing and glow in the dark knob.

Oh, BTW, if you didn’t know. There’s a way to bypass these automated and/or phoneborgs by pressing zero, most of the time.