Consumerist reader William recently moved into a newly built house in New York City and his only available choice for an internet provider is Time Warner Cable, meaning that even after three unsuccessful attempts to get his building hooked up with web access, he had really no other choice but to roll the dice and make a fourth appointment. Unfortunately, the fourth time was most certainly not the charm, as William was forced to call the police to get the combative tech to leave his property.

Here, William details his numerous attempts to get something as simple as a residential internet installation:

The first time, they said that I had to move into the house before they can do the installation. So I moved my stuff in and rescheduled. The second time, they said that they couldn’t find anyone there and left even though we were waiting inside the whole time. So we rescheduled. The third time, the installer arrived when I was out picking up lunch. I said that I would be back in five minutes, and he agreed. I was back literally within three minutes of the call but he had already left.

The fourth time, which happened this morning, the installer said he couldn’t do the installation because there was a high fence around the house. The fence, of course, has been there since the first visit, and none of the first three installers said the fence was a problem. We asked why the fence wasn’t a problem for the first three installers, and he asked for their names. We asked him for his name, which of course he refused to provide, which we thought made our point.

Anyway, he got very combative with us, insisting we just didn’t understand and calling us liars for saying that three other installers had not seen an issue with the fence. We decided to cut our losses and asked him to leave. For some bizarre reason, even though he couldn’t do the installation, this unnamed installer stuck around arguing with us. He insisted that he was right, that we were liars, and that he would call his foreman here to prove that he was right.

At this point, we just wanted him to leave without installing the Internet. He refused to do either. We eventually had to call the police to get this gentleman to leave us alone.

I had expected the installer to leave when we called the police. However, he actually stuck around and kept on arguing until the cops came, which I couldn’t believe. The police officer took down his information and told him that he had to leave our property.

At that point, Time Warner sent a supervisor and a very courteous and professional installer to set up the Internet, which apparently was possible despite the fence. Took them maybe 30 minutes to set everything up. Not really sure what the fourth installer was thinking, but his supervisor apologized for his behavior.

So William was able to get his problem resolved, though all it took was four service appointments and one call to the NYPD. This is not a recommended shortcut to getting your problem resolved.

We just hope William’s internet doesn’t conk out and require a service tech visit.

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