Four Feet More

This morning, I received a notification in my e-mail that a person named "comcastcares5" had commented on my last post offering assistance in solving my problem. I was thinking about e-mailing him when the phone rang. It was Comcast. Finally, someone was calling to help me fix this mess!

"Hello!" I said, "Is this Comcast?"

The terse voice on the other line said, "Yes it is Ma'am. How are you going to pay?"

"Excuse me?" I asked. Wasn't this the person whom the Comcast Office said was supposed to call me to sort things out? "Where are you calling from?" I asked the agent.

"This is Collections Ma'am." She then explained that my account was past due and that our service had been discontinued. "WHAT???!!!" I shouted, getting really fed up. I explained to her that we had yet to receive a correct bill on our account and that I had been trying for a month to get this corrected.

Her response: "You still need to pay your bill Ma'am."

"But I haven't ever received a correct bill!!!!" I screeched. "The bills say different amounts and accounts each time! How am I supposed to know what to pay, and why didn't the lady at the Comcast office tell me any of this yesterday???!!! Don't you guys talk to each other???!!!"

I mean, really. They're a telecommunications company - can't they communicate better?

The agent responded, "I believe we do Ma'am. Now how did you want to pay your bill?"

At this point I asked her to clarify the charges for me. It seems the discrepancy in her amount and the amount I was told by billing on Friday was due to late fees that had been applied. I protested that it was ridiculous that we were being charged late fees on bills that had been sent to the wrong address and that had incorrect information on them. I also reminded her that I've been trying to get a correct bill for nearly a month and insisted that she remove the late charges.

The agent agreed to credit the late fees to my account, and I paid what I hope was the correct amount for July. I also learned that the $390 one-time service fee had been dropped. The agent then tried unsuccessfully to "reinstate service" for the account. She became confused when the system wouldn't let her reconnect service, and even more befuddled when I said that our service was working fine and had been all day. I explained again that the problem might be because there are 3 accounts open under our name at 2 different addresses. Then I asked her which account/address I had actually paid. Was it our neighbor's service that was disconnected, and did I just pay his bill for July?

At this point the agent began looking at our accounts a little more closely and said, "Oh, this is all messed up!" "Yes it is" I replied. "And I need it fixed TODAY."

"I need to transfer you to Billing so that they can help you."

"NO!!!" I shouted. "DON'T! The Billing Department told me to go to the Comcast Office to get it fixed, and the Comcast Office redirected me to Credit and Collections, and now you're sending me back to Billing!!! I'm getting the run-around, BIG TIME."

The agent said she would see what she could do and put me on hold. By this point, I was ready to spit nails, so I punched out a quick e-mail to Mark (comcastcares5 who commented on my last post). As I was typing, a woman named Diana came on the phone and told me she was getting in touch with a supervisor to sort things out. Slowly I began to relax and feel a bit more positive.

And then my call was disconnected. Lovely.

I finished up my e-mail to Mark (including the part about being disconnected) and gave him my home phone number. Then I sat and waited for Diana to call me back. But after a while I began to think that she might not call, so I picked up the phone and dialed 1-800-COMCAST, pushing all the necessary numbers to try and get back to a live person in the Billing Department. A woman came on the line and began asking me for my account info. As she accessed my account, I could tell that she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing. "It's a mess, right?" I asked. She kind of laughed and I said, "Look, I was just on the phone with a supervisor but got disconnected. Can you please put me through to someone who can help?"

BEEEEEEP - the other line rang, and it was a call from Philadelphia.

"Are you in Philadelphia?" I asked the woman. "What?" she replied, sounding confused. "Are you in Philadelphia? I have a call on the other line and I'm wondering if it's the Comcast supervisor calling me back."

"Well, Ma'am, I don't know. I'm in Wisconsin!" Perfect.

"Can you hang on a minute?" I asked, and then switched over to the other line to see who was calling.

Lo' and behold, it was comcastcares5, Mark! I quickly greeted him and then asked him to hold while I hung up with the agent on the other line. When I switched back over, Mark again apologized for the trouble I was having and said he had contacts in my area who could help out. He said he would have someone give me a call today to address the issue. "When can they call me?" I asked. The question seemed to catch Mark by surprise, but hey, I have things to do, and I can't really hang around the house all day! Mark asked, "Where are you located?" (which I found a little strange since he said he knew contacts in my area) I told him we were in California, and when he started speaking again, I heard a strange, high-pitched noise, and we were disconnected. *sigh*

BEEEEEEP - another call coming through on the other line.

Since Mark got disconnected, I switched over, and was surprised to hear Diana's voice. "Diana!" I exclaimed with joy (this was all starting to get a bit amusing to me by now), "I was just on the other line with Mark, but we got disconnected!" "Oh, don't worry about that." she said, "We've been working all this time to solve your problem and..."

BEEEEEEP - Philadelphia on the other line

"That's Mark" I said, "Can you hold please?" She said yes, and I switched back over to Mark. "Mark! Diana's on the other line! She's trying to sort things out." He said, "Take your time," but I didn't really want to have him hanging around waiting, so I said that was OK, I would try to fix things with Diana and e-mail him later.

When I switched back to Diana, she said that the other accounts had been closed and that my account was now current. "Which account would that be?" I asked. After all, it could be any one of the three. She confirmed the account number that I had thought was correct all along (Yay me!), and assured me that the late fees would be reversed and that I would receive correct bills in the future. "I sure hope that's true this time!" I replied, and Diana laughed. I was only half-joking.

So, hopefully all's well that ends well and the problem truly is fixed this time. If not, I'm sure you'll be hearing about it.

What I've been going through for the past month with Comc@st not only is extremely irritating, it is almost surreal. I mean, how could a company's customer service be THAT bad? Well, it takes a lot of hard work, let me tell you, and Comc@st has gotten it down to an artform.

The saga began when we were notified by our homeowner's association that June 30th would be the last day that they would be covering our cable costs. If we wanted to continue our service, we would have to set up an appointment with Comc@st to have our account transferred over. No problem. We made an appointment and the cable guy came out on July 1st to transfer our service. There were a few glitches with our TiVo, but otherwise the set-up went smoothly. When we signed the paperwork, we noticed that they had the wrong address down (it was actually our neighbor's address, and that house was currently vacant). So we changed the address on the paperwork, the cable guy wrote a brief note and we initialed it. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

A week later, a new neighbor moved in to the previously vacant house and brought over a Comc@st bill that had been delivered to him. Sure enough, it was our account, but they had the wrong address. Complicating matters further, we received another bill for a different account at our address (the previous account from the homeowner's association). We tried to fix this address and billing mix-up with Comc@st over the phone, but they recommended that we go into their regional office to straighten it out. Since we had just purchased an HD TV and needed to upgrade our service anyway, it wasn't too big of an inconvenience to drive to the office and request assistance. We talked to the service lady at the desk, and she assured us that the address and billing problem had been solved.

She was mistaken. A week later, we received another two bills, for both our address and our neighbor's address, and one of them now said we were past due (this was the homeowner's account which had been closed on June 30th). Meanwhile, our new neighbor has been unable to set up his cable service because Comc@st already has our account listed at his address! I called in again and this time spoke with a very nice lady who assured me that the problem was now cleared up and we should be receiving correct bills in the future.

Then she promptly canceled our service.

By this time, I was ready to commit mayhem. Our phones, internet and TV were down and I could only call Comc@st on my cell phone. Which gets terrible reception in the house. So I kept getting disconnected with the Comc@st guy. At one point he said, "Ma'am, I'm having trouble hearing you," which prompted me to shout into the receiver, "That's because you canceled my dang home phone!!!!" Fortunately, I had been cut off by that point and he didn't hear my outburst. After 45 minutes shivereing outside in the cold night air (the only place I could get good cell reception), the Comc@st technician had reinstated my service temporarily and scheduled a cable guy to come to our house on Friday to "verify the equipment" and correct the address.

Friday came along and Comc@st called at 12 pm to confirm the appointment. I did so and verified that they were coming to our address, and not the neighbor's. The service person assured me that it was our address and that the technician would be here within the half hour. 20 minutes later, I see a Comc@st van pull up and a technician go to the neighbor's house. "Effin-ay!!!" I yelled as I ran down the stairs asking Jeff to redirect the guy to the right place (I was not in the right mood to speak to him in a friendly manner). Jeff asked Cable guy if he should be at our address, but he just gave him a blank look and mumbled something incoherent. Then he hung out in his van for about 15 minutes and drove off. When I called Comc@st an hour later to see what had happened to our service guy, they said that the order had been closed. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!! I explained, as calmly as I could, that the guy had gone to the wrong house and that they needed to get another technician here TODAY to fix this problem. Around 3 pm, a different cable guy showed up with no idea what he was supposed to do. After Jeff explained the job to him, he verified the equipment, corrected our address and drove away.

When I spoke to a technician on Friday, she said our current balance was $54 and that she would send us a new bill with the correct address immediately. Well, today I got the bill. It is for $449 and includes a $390 one-time service fee. After a brief temper tantrum, I called Comc@st again to find out what the hell was going on. I explained to the poor technician that we have been trying to fix this problem for a month now and that instead of getting fixed, it seems to be getting more and more mixed-up!!! Then I asked her if we still had two accounts under our name and why we were being charged a $390 service fee.

An audible gulp could be heard on the other end of the phone and the woman timidly said, "Ma'am, it looks like there are now three accounts under your name."

"WHAT???!!!" I exclaimed. How could this be???!!! Apparently, the first Comc@st guy who came out on Friday set up a new account under our name at the neighbor's address. That's what he was doing as he sat in his van for 15 minutes. And apparently we were charged $390 for this service.

So today, I am ready to kick @ss and take names! I'm heading down to that Comc@st office with our three accounts in hand to get this mess straightened out once and for all. Wish me luck, because the way things have been going, I think I'm going to need it!

It's too bad I don't have a brick wall nearby. I think banging my head against it would be easier than dealing with Comc@st's "customer service."

***** UPDATE *****

Just got back from the Comc@st office, where I had to wait in a long-@ss line and was again given a blank look by the "customer service" representative. She said she could not help and that there was no supervisor on duty to assist me. She then took copies of my bills, wrote a note and told me that "Credit and Collections" would be contacting me within 48 hours to clear things up.

F@%$#%@K!!!!

I realize you did not move in under circumstances that would have predisposed us to a long and lasting friendship. The previous inhabitants of your house, S and her two daughters, were good friends of ours and frequently invited us over for some excellent Indian food. Sadly, due to these tough economic times, they lost their home and were forced to move out. Our whole family was saddened by this turn of events, but I assure you we did not hold S’s loss against you.

What we do hold against you however, is the unwarranted use of your car’s horn.

Why must you honk your horn repeatedly throughout the day? And not just once, but in three short bursts: Beep! Beep! Beep! I know that this is probably your car alarm sound, but why must you activate it so often? Are you checking to make sure that your car is still there? Because, really, you could just look out your window and get the same results without disturbing any of your neighbors. What I find even harder to understand is why you go outside, look at your car, and then press the alarm button (Beep! Beep! Beep!), before walking back inside the house. Do you need to make sure the alarm still works? Because it was working fine 10 minutes ago when you last activated the triple horn, and I don’t think much has changed since then.

So, maybe you do have OCD. I can understand that and even sympathize with the anxiety you must feel when you do not hear your car go “Beep! Beep! Beep!” However, is it possible that you could confine your OCD to civilized hours? Honking your horn at 11:30 pm on a Sunday evening is bad enough, but doing it again at 1:25 am is just plain excessive. For goodness sake, I’m trying to sleep and your car is parked almost right below my bedroom window!

Please, I beg you, stop activating your car alarm, unless you are getting into or out of your car. If this reckless use of a car horn persists, I may be forced to commit automobilicide. Or at the very least, do a covert horn-deactivation mission in the middle of the night. Of course, with my luck, I’d be under your car, fiddling with wires when you came out to check your alarm (yet again) and would probably wind up deaf or seriously injured as a result. Could you please just save us all that trouble and cease the honking? On behalf of myself and all your neighbors, I’d like to thank you in advance for your kind attention to this matter.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Crap. There you go again…..

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a child in possession of a new pack of gum must chew that gum ceaselessly until it is nothing more than a sticky mass of flavorless goo.

Such is the case with Eamon. Previous experience has taught us that Eamon is not the most responsible gum-chewer. In addition to the numerous wads he’s swallowed, we’ve found pieces of it ground into his bedroom carpet, a string of it attached to his sweater, and a chunk stuck in his hair. So it was a surprise when the Easter Bunny (dang his furry hide) decided to give the kids each a pack of Trident. This went along with his 2009 Easter basket theme of “Healthy Minds, Healthy Teeth” (I didn’t think up the theme, I just went along with it).

Right away, Eamon dug into his gum and began chewing it noisily. He did this throughout the day, looking and sounding much like a cow chewing its cud. Fortunately, Vika lost her pack of gum somewhere at Babushka’s house, or else I’m sure I would have had dueling gum smackers in my ear all day long.

Despite Eamon’s love of chewing gum, this time he took it a bit further than I ever would have anticipated. Each night when I go to bed, I “wake” the boy up and take him to the bathroom. I put “wake” in quotes because Eamon is seldom truly awake during these times. He’s generally still half-asleep, and he never remembers these trips the next morning. When I went to take the boy to the bathroom the other night, he began chewing his cheek. “What on earth is he dreaming about?” I wondered. Then the subtle scent of bubblegum wafted past my nose. Surely the boy was not chewing gum in his sleep. Unfortunately, that was exactly what he was doing. Thus began the frustrating exercise of trying to extract a piece of chewing gum from a not-quite-awake child’s mouth.

As Eamon sat on the toilet, eyes closed and head wobbling in semi-consciousness, I said, “Eamon…spit your gum out!” He just kept chewing. So I tried again, a little louder this time. “Eamon! Spit out your gum!” He still kept chewing. Soon I was saying loudly, “EAMON! YOUR GUM! SPIT IT OUT! “ By this point, his eyes were still closed, but he was frowning and shaking his head frantically from side to side indicating that no, he was not going to spit out his gum. Exasperated, I started tapping his cheeks and patting his shoulders to get him to fully wake-up. I tried tickling him, shaking him by the shoulders, and even prying his mouth open with my hands. The boy was not waking up and he was not giving me his gum.

By this point, Jeff had come upstairs to see what all the ruckus was about. With a “For crying out loud!” he grabbed the squirt bottle off the shelf and sprayed Eamon with cold water to wake him up. Eamon squealed in dismay, but kept his eyes firmly shut and his gum safely tucked in his cheek. It finally took a team effort to retrieve the wad. Jeff pried Eamon’s teeth apart while I reached in with my finger and swept the inside of his mouth. I scooped the gum from out of his cheek and triumphantly threw it in the trash! Then I calmly walked my slightly-damp, still half-asleep son back to his bed.

Easter Bunny, if you’re reading this, NEVER give my child gum again!

Thanks.

I guess it's something that every parent goes through sooner or later. Just when you think your child is looking pretty good, they grab the scissors and give themselves a haircut. I had a minor experience with this early on when Vika trimmed a lock of her hair. But fortunately, it was a small lock, and was kind of off to the side of her face, so it wasn't terribly noticeable.

With Eamon, I wasn't so lucky. Jeff was going to drop him off at my classroom yesterday after school, so he called to prepare me: "Jenni, Eamon cut his hair." Oh no. He'd finally gotten to the point where he had this cute, shaggy kind of "skater boy" hair, and I wondered how bad the damage was. When Eames first walked into my classroom, it didn't look so bad. He had his bangs kind of swept over to the side, and I thought maybe it would be OK. But as he began playing and his hair started to move back to it's normal resting place, the haircut was painfully apparent.**

Obviously, I had to give him a trim to help these new bangs blend in. But, if I gave him a cut as short as his bangs, I was afraid he might look like Mo from the "Three Stooges." In the end, I decided on a compromise. I cut his hair shorter, but not as short as the area Eamon cut himself. I figured that yes, he may look like a dork, but it's fitting punishment for him cutting his hair.


** I don't know what is with the dorky smiles in these pictures - I guess it's the best I could expect given the circumstances.

It all started Sunday evening, right as I was about to settle in for a night of Oscars magic (Yay "Slumdog Millionaire!"). I went to change the desktop on my Mac, and the System Preferences panel was all squished. No problem, I thought. I'll just reboot it and see if that fixes the problem.

Big mistake.

My computer would not reboot. It kept getting hung up before the desktop was loaded, and nothing Jeff and I did could solve the problem. It wasn't long before I was in full-fledged panic mode. No internet, no files, and worst of all, NO GRADEBOOK! This trimester is up next Friday, so losing all my grades was a complete disaster! Frantically, I grabbed my Blackberry and began logging into my e-mail and Facebook. It was the only way I could feel somewhat connected to the outside world. I posted a distress signal of sorts as my Facebook status, and my good friend J9 answered the call. Her husband (JP1) is an IT guy for a local biotech company, and fortunately, he was more than willing to help out.

Now, 3 days later, and a lot on work on JP1's part, I have my computer back! He was able to rescue almost all my files, including my grades, replaced the hard drive for me, and put in Mac's newest operating system! Needless to say, I think he may be my new hero. Batman's got nothing on JP1!

I'll finish this post up with a little Public Service Announcement: Back up your computer. Frequently. Let my story be a cautionary tale to those of you out there who, like me, find reasons why you don't have the time to back up your files. You'll thank me later.

Sorry I haven't written much lately, but I've been feeling a bit down in the dumps. It's a combination of things, really. The job uncertainty is really taking a toll. I've been trying to formulate a "Plan B," but it's difficult since it's possible I won't know the status of my current job until late August. I do know that I will be laid off in March. What happens after that is anyone's guess. I'm one of those people who likes to have a direction in their life - not knowing where I'll be in a year is not something I find exciting. I wish I did, because then maybe this job situation would seem more like a new adventure rather than a scary mess.

The other thing that has been making me blue lately is my step-daughter, Ali. You've probably noticed that there isn't much mention of her on this blog. The reason for this is because she doesn't come around much. I'm not quite sure why that is, exactly. I invite her to every birthday party, event and get together our family has. Jeff calls to check her schedule and see if they can get together, yet she remains absent. Ali keeps alluding to these "issues" she has with us, but when we ask her what those are, she gets vague and says she doesn't want to talk about it. This has been going on for over 2 years now, and it's extremely frustrating. I understand that she has issues relating to being a young adult now out on her own (she's 19), and maybe even feeling a bit displaced after we adopted the kids. But, if she isn’t willing to talk about these issues, how can we ever resolve them? Over the past 3 years, her visits with us have become less and less frequent. In fact, she has only seen us once in the last 8 months. The big letdown came yesterday. Ali was supposed to spend Christmas Eve with us, as she has every year. However, this time, she didn't come by because she had to work. We were disappointed, but rescheduled for yesterday, figuring we would have a late holiday celebration with her. Well, yesterday came around, and she didn't call or show up. When we finally reached her to find out what the plans were, she said she didn't want to be here because Jeff didn't call her on Christmas Eve. WTF? He called her the day before and set up plans to get together, and wished her a merry Christmas. I think he can be forgiven for not calling again the next day.

Needless to say, I was furious with Ali. I was so mad, I was actually shaking. My fury became even hotter when Vika found out Ali wasn't coming over, and collapsed to the ground weeping, "She never sees us! Why doesn't she come over???" I didn't have an answer for her (except my secret belief that Ali was being a vindictive, spoiled brat - I didn't think Vika needed to know my opinion about that though). Finally, I decided to do something about it. I marched downstairs and called Ali to let her know just how upset I was over this. All I got from her was a bunch of "I don't feel like part of the family anymore" and "I have issues with dad!" My response was that it's difficult to feel part of a family that you never see. It is also difficult to resolve issues that one refuses to discuss. Ali had no real answer to this, so she just hurled more guilt and vague accusations. In the end, I just had to let her go. Calling her was a bad decision and just fed right into her need to manipulate and control other people’s emotions.

I realize that Ali is someone who thrives on chaos. Her mother is the same way, and it’s all she really knows. I, however, could do without the drama. Vika and Eamon don’t need it in their lives either. We’re going to send her a package containing her Christmas gifts and birthday gifts from last August (the main birthday present we made for her was a lifebook, very similar to the ones we made for the kids), and hope that she comes around sooner, rather than later. I figure that when Ali’s ready to really discuss what’s been bothering her we’ll be here, waiting.

Remember the video I shared with you all about our trip to Disneyland in 2006? Well, you can't see it anymore because YouTube has blocked it. Apparently, Aly & AJ (or perhaps Disney) asked to have it blocked because the video features their version of the song, "Zip A Dee Doo Dah."

Really? Is this what the world of copyrights has come to? I'm not making any money off the video, and I bought the song, fair and square, off of iTunes. In fact, I would think that the video might give the Aly and AJ version of the song a little more exposure to people who hadn't heard it before. Heck, maybe people even bought the song as a result of my video!

*sigh* I wonder if any of my other videos featuring songs by recording artists will be blocked as well?