grrgoyl

We're having neighbor problems again. Not Tracey, but the people below her. A single mother and her teenage daughter, who I originally thought were decent people when they immediately jumped into the battle against Tracey within a week of moving in. They're still "decent," but lately there's been no sign of mom and daughter has been having more and more friends over.

Which of course she has a right to, except it seems the longer these "friends" stay, the more chance there is of a screeching, eye-scratching catfight to erupt. I don't fight like that with my friends, so I don't know what's going on. She had a male friend over for a couple of weeks a short while ago. Then one morning at 7 am we were awakened by their screaming argument followed by him slamming the front door hard enough to shake the teeth in our heads.

Since the only common denominator is this girl, I have to assume she's just really hard to get along with.

Yesterday she had several friends over, and just as I went out on the balcony to clean my bike chain the argument had escalated to such a level that every other neighbor that was home was out on their balcony to see what the hell was going on -- the Asians below her, the grandmother across from her, even the 20-something drug dealers (suspected -- they play videogames night and day, and have many different "visitors" who only stay for five minutes at a time. What does that suggest to you?) were out. When you're bugging the drug dealers, you know you're out of control.

Ridiculous. I marched down to put a stop to it, gratified to see the grandmother marching up to join me. The daughter came to the door. Grandma asked if her mother was home. She wasn't. We asked her to quiet down (or at least close her windows, I added). She sheepishly agreed to do so.

As I resumed my work, her party moved to the balcony, where they weren't fighting at least. Instead they were conversing rather loudly, with generous helpings of "fuck" and "nigga," etc. in the conversation (from what I've seen, all her friends are African-American, so this is perfectly acceptable; unless, of course, you prefer peace and quiet and not so many inflammatory, violent words in your space).

I wrote to the HOA to complain. I hope grandma did too -- she has an adorable grandson, 4 or 5 years old, who visits often, and I'm sure she can't wait to hear him start throwing those terms into casual conversation. I guess I've officially become an old fogey. "These kids today..."

~*~

I'm sure many if not all of you are waiting on tenterhooks for the next chapter in the Comcast battle (I'd love to say "final" chapter, but I'm becoming less and less naive with each confrontation).

I got online with one of their reps determined to get rid of that damn cable I'm not using that I'm sure is the root of the problem. I was equally determined not to be distracted by their pretty offers of promo deals for six months.

I got one guy who began his routine of pleasant banter. However, as soon as I explained my situation and made it clear how very unhappy I was, he turned me over to an "account specialist" so fast I almost LOLed.

I explained it all over again to "Andres," who expressed his rehearsed regret at my inconvenience. They all sound oh-so-sincere which, after going through this three times with zero results, only infuriates me even more.

He promised to return me to plain old high-speed internet (what I had before all this nonsense), but I had to call directly to cancel the cable. Whatevs, Andres.

I then launched into my first meltdown of the day. I said I wanted to trust him, I really did, but after going through this three times I was becoming a little distrusting and cynical. I actually begged him. "Please Andres, PLEASE don't tell me you're going to make the change and then do nothing. I'm not being unreasonable. I just want my plain old service back. PLEASE."

He typed back what was probably meant to be goodnatured laughter, but in my near-hysterical state could just as easily have been sly, knowing chuckling ("Sure I'll downgrade your service! No problem! NOT") and an attempted reassuring "I'm here for you!" No Andres, no you're not. As soon as we close this dialogue box, you disappear into the bowels of the Comcast work pool and I'm left holding the bag.

At least he gave me a confirmation number, and I informed him I would be printing out our conversation. I wasn't trying to be threatening, but I'm sick of being left with no recourse.

As soon as I left Andres (still sniggering behind his hand), I called Comcast, eager to again re-enter the fray (NOT). I got what sounded like a nice young woman. I AGAIN explained what had happened thus far (story gets better each time I tell it) and said I wanted to cancel cable, that was all.

After receiving her rehearsed regret, she made a big deal of looking up my info to try to figure out where everything had gone so wrong. Unfortunately for her, because the longer she talked to me, the more worked up I became, leading to my second meltdown. I didn't want to take it out on her, but I did use my phrase "universal employee incompetence" from my previous post. I've heard it doesn't help your cause to get abusive with them. I don't like being mean if I can avoid it, but we can all see how far being nice has gotten me. I pay my bill every month. On time even! I am a model customer. I shouldn't be treated this shoddily.

She seemed quite taken aback, which is surprising; based on the huge volume of complaints on comcastmustdie.com, you would think they would take every call fully prepared to deal with another customer who had reached the limits of their patience. In fact, if they don't go through some sort of special training to deal with the equivalent of trauma victims, I firmly believe they should.

She agreed to remove the cable. THANK YOU. I apologized for venting to her, but hoped she could understand my frustration. She laughed warmly and reassured me. I actually started to fall for it, until we went a little astray by her offering, "I can still get you that Blast Internet deal if you'd like..." NONONONONONO. I told her, with fewer capslocks.

When she said she had made the change, I again begged her as I did Andres. This is what you've reduced me to, Comcast. You've stolen my pride for lousy high-speed internet. To calm me down, she gave me her initials (not her actual name) to track her down for any more problems. This seemed odd, but since I can't exactly hold them hostage on the phone for a month until I'm sure the change is made, it was better than nothing.

I asked her what my new balance would be. She couldn't tell me because the system takes 48 hours to update. Which gave me an opening for my other complaint, the fact that the website balance never changed but the phone line's did. I said "I don't know what kind of games you're playing there."

"That's actually no game," she said. "Unfortunately the website doesn't update as quickly as our main system does." Which I might buy if it were lagging by a few days. But a few weeks? Your webmaster sucks, Comcast. And what about that phone balance? "You're seeing it change daily because of all the changes you've been making." Oh, that's just plain bullshit. If I'm changing from $68 to $29.99 (or even $19.99) a month, why is it going down in $4 increments? Are you trying to find the money elsewhere a bit at a time to cover it?

So I left "RBJ" and hoped for the best. I gave it a week, whereupon the phone balance seemed to level off at $50.45 (online still $68.78). I paid that, but who knows what will happen next month. I'm fully expecting right now to be writing a follow-up post, so you have that to look forward to.

My "Dylan apoplectic" icon was born to handle my Comcast posts.