We are the Phone Company & we are Omnipotent!

Remember this hilarious line by Lily Tomlin on Saturday Night Live ages ago? Well in this case it was the Cable company.

For the last few weeks there have been mysterious yellow and blue paint marks on our and neighboring streets. Last week there was a noisy truck parked and doing something at the intersection of our street and Main Street. Joe said they were tunneling under the street for some kind of cable to be run through.

This morning Bresnan Cable workers and equipment showed up on our street and a man was digging through some of my prairie border to get to cables that run up the post next to the driveway. Joe drove his business van down the street into our rear drive for lunch and when he went out later to go back to work there was a trench across the street and he couldn't get out to go to his appointments. By this time all the workers had disappeared and there was no one to explain the situation to. No one had warned us, and how could they trench clear across a City street without providing access? Needless to say Joe was perturbed (polite word)!

I called the 800 service number for Bresnan Cable and aafter hearing how important my call was to them I had to go through the press 1, etc. routine and wait till I got a disinterested and then rather huffy person who said she would call the local crew about it. I told her she'd better tell them to do something quickly because I was calling City Hall to complain about a street being trenched without notice to us, and probably no notice to the City. That's when she got huffy. After all, they are doing it for our sake so our cable TV and high speed internet would perform better for us. Be that as it may, if my husband cannot get to his scheduled business appointments, someone should do something.

I then called my friend who is the editor of the local weekly newspaper and suggested that this could be a story for the paper. He came over and took photos and was surprised that this had been done, and told me he had also called to inform the City Manager.

My this time Joe had gotten impatient and driven through the weeds and across the old railroad tracks that run next to the street in order to get to his appointments.

I discussed the situation with the workers when they returned to work and then the crew superintendent talked to me and apologized. As he told me how this was to improve our service and how Bresnan really wanted to please their customers, a car turned off Main onto Circle Drive and nearly drove over their big red cable lying across the road, getting the attention of all the workers running to yell and stop the car. I pointed out to the superintendent that if there was some kind of sign at the entrance to the street, those things wouldn't happen.

I then went in to phone a prescription to the pharmacy and discovered that my home phone had no dial tone, so I went to check the business phone. No dial tone there. I rushed out and called to the workers that they had another problem. First they asked if I had Bresnan phone service and since I didn't they suggested that I call Quest service. I explained that everything was working fine until they did their trenching. They checked, and sure enough, a main phone cable had been cut and the whole neighborhood was without phone service. Now my neighbors are talking to me and to the Bresnan workers. Lots of people are unhappy with Bresnan.

The Bresnan Superintendent checked my cable TV and internet service before they left for the evening and so we do have those services again. More phone company workers were here and told me they would get the phone service back on, but they told my next door neighbor that we might not have phone service until 8 pm tomorrow.

I am normally a nice peaceful grandmother but I figure that after big business steps on me several times I have the right to bite their ankle. Of course, I'm so insignificant to a big company like that, but I aim to get the word out as far as I can. I'm tired of all the TV ads about what wonderful customer service these big companies provide to us; I'd much rather have them prove it in the way they treat me. If customer service is good, they don't need to advertise to explain it to us.

Now, back to quilting, to lower the blood pressure and make me feel good again.