CableVision Launches New Ad Campaign

I’ll spare you the details of my recent downward spiral of circular exchanges with Cablevision customer service (can a circular exchange spiral downward? I’m not sure.) because I lack the energy for a blow-by-blow. Suffice to say that their might army of help desk automatons has reached new lows. Maybe, later, I will give you the blow-by-blow.

It goes loosely like this:

Amanda: “The guy you sent to my house was totally irrational and unable to help me.”
Robot Beast: “Our records indicate that our technician was unable to obtain landlord permission to perform repairs. Would you like to reschedule?”
Amanda: “Only if you can send someone who will fix the cable box and not arbitrarily agitate my landlord and make things up on the fly.”
Robot: “Only a technician can make that determination. Would you like to reschedule?”
Amanda: “I hate you.”
Robot: “thank you for allowing me to serve”

I think the real reason New Yorkers are so curmudgeonly is that we have to put up with bull hickey like Cable repair men who show up by the half dozen (seriously, how many trucks did they

need?) and insist that they’re doing scheduled maintenance as noted on my bill (no they aren’t, and no it wasn’t) but that they’re only maintaining my line, not my neighbor’s line, even though my neighbor lives next door and you’d think that scheduled maintenance would be kind of orderly that way. Then he tells me that they have to put a box on our building (which is where the landlord aggravation comes in) five whole feet from the box next door but they can’t say why I can’t just use the box that is there. Telling me that everyone else has their own box doesn’t explain why I need my own box.