We think we’ve discovered the Rosetta Stone of cable company installation stories.

Brian moved three times in the past year, getting a new cable company each time. Over the past 365 day’s he’s had the displeasure of experiencing a trifecta of TimeWarner, Comcast and Cablevision. His Cablevision experience stands out in particular. The tech actually had to ask Brian for extensive help with the install.

All that and a bag of cables, after the jump…

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“Time Warner was without a doubt the worst. I lived in NY City at the time, and went to one of their service centers to exchange my older equipment for a hi-definition DVR. The wait time at the service center was an hour and a half. There were literally hundreds of people sitting on the floor, leaning against walls, etc. It was horrible…but then, just 2 days after that, my cable service went out. I called to schedule a service call and of course, nothing was available for 4 days, and the only time available was the infamous 2-6 slot. I had to leave work early, and waited and waited at home. At 5:45, I called Time Warner and was eventually told that the technician was not going to come because, and I quote “it’s the end of his shift and he don’t want to work overtime”. Needless to say, I went ballistic, and was transferred to a “supervisor”, who told me he could have someone there by “maybe, 9pm”. I made it clear to him that was not acceptable and this “supervisor” actually yelled at me, basically telling me there was nothing he could do. Fortunately, I moved a few months later and I am very happy to report that Time Warner has not received a penny from me since then.

Next was Comcast, and I actually don’t have many bad things at all to say about them. Of course, I was only a Comcast customer for 6 months, so that probably would have changed.

Finally, I just signed up with Cablevision as I have moved again. The installation experience with Cablevision was like nothing I have ever experienced as a consumer in my life. Of course no appointments were available for a week, and the installer was late, etc etc. That’s par for the course at this point. But this installer, after fussing with my TV for an hour or so, finally came to me and asked me “Yo, do you know how to hook this thing up? I ain’t that familiar with these boxes…”. What?!!? That was a first…he eventually figured it out, with more than a little help from me, and after 2 and a half hours, and countless Nextel messages to his girlfriend while he was “working”, the job was done.

I don’t anticipate anymore moves in the future so that will probably be all…but I think that was enough!”

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