The Cable Guy (or lack thereof)

My wife and I decided to shut off the cable for the summer. I know, its a vain attempt to promote that our kids get outside and enjoy the summer but honestly, its was as much for the two of us as it was for our children. Turning off was simple (although the cable company did protest). What we found out was that turning the cable back on was much, much harder.

Everybody has a horror stories about waiting for telephone or cable service repair people. The standard "we'll be by between 7am and 8pm on Wednesday" is pretty standard. At least you know they'll come by... or will they? In Vancouver we've traditionally only had one cable provider and that was Shaw Communication based out of Edmonton Alberta. That single provider had a monopoly until some deregulation allowed in some much needed competition. Last week my wife decided to turn the cable back on and was told that a service person would be out to our home on Friday between 1 and 5pm. Firstly, why do they need to send somebody out? In this day and age why can't access to the existing cable services (already in place) be toggled remotely? Anywhoo, the wife waits around but unfortunately we had to take off to a dinner party at 5:15 and, you guessed it, the cable guy showed up at 5:30.

Ok, kind of crumby but no worries, we phone and they tell us he'll be back on Saturday to hook us up. I wait around all day and sure enough, no cable guy. We phone Shaw at 7:45pm on Saturday night and they assure us he is still on route. And now I'm pretty perturbed. We phone again (now this is part of the story where the rubber hits the road as they say) and again, we're hit with half-heated promises of service follow-through. In fact, we phoned Shaw on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and each time they apologize for the misunderstanding. Each time they also tell us that somebody will call us back shortly to explain/recommend solutions. Nobody ever calls us back. Never. What worse, they tell me that this is my fault. They say:

• They couldn't get access to the cable box because I live in a gated community. Wow. Just wow. Not only don't I live in a gated community, but my house is 100 years old and we've left the side gate open for the last 3 days giving the cable guy full access the cable box, power box and even the kids sand box.
• They came by on Sat but nobody was home. And again, wow! Sat in the house the whole day (didn't even go out back in fear I wouldn't hear the doorbell). Still the side gate was wide open.
• We'll call you back. Four times they said this and yet nobody has given us a call at the writing of this post (day three of our first call).
  

I've now just got off the phone with another poor service rep who again tells me somebody will call me back, but now its too late. The wheels have come off this service experience ride and I've just decided that my hobby for the next 30 days is to make the cable guy rue the day he decided to piss on back and tell me it was raining.

So here is what I'm going to do:

1. Set up a Facebook page called: Shaw Cable: I'm Tired of Your Horrible Service! http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=149537638407522
2. I'm going to write to all the senior leadership at Shaw Communication including their board of directors (yes, getting their email was pretty easy)
3. Write letters to all of the local and national newspapers, blogs and advocacy organizations
   
4. I'm going to give Telus (the competition) my business and make it my goal for the next 30 days to drive as much business away from Shaw as possible.

In the end my rants and raves won't amount to much. But hell, its damn therapeutic :)

Christopher Hennebery