...can I say it's over now?

I feel like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween when she thinks the danger is over...when Michael Myers sits up in the background. My hope is that Time Warner will stay down this time.

My husband went to the Time Warner office to hash out all of the problems we had been having. He found out that we were considered a "business" by some of the operators because having both of our names on the bill used up too much space for the personal account line [I never changed my last name when I got married, so I had to add him to show that he does have the right to discuss the bills with them]. They acknowledge that they screwed everything up, but that there would be a problem in getting the check back because the technician would've taken it directly to the bank (which is why I do not regret writing "Extortion" in the memo). He ended up having to call in to a higher-level person when he got home, because our bill cycle apparently cycled today, so now the part of the bill that wasn't past due is past due...but we'll be fine as long as we pay it by the beginning of next month (giving us the chance to stabilize our finances).

In the phone call that he made when he got home, we found out that the supervisor that he spoke to Tuesday [he had called the independent contractor's customer service when we got our disconnect door-hanger] is going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, because he blatantly lied to us when he said that our contact with him would stop all collection proceedings. The woman on the phone was also the most sympathetic to our situation (and, I think we actually did get an apology out of it; my husband insisted upon it) and was even concerned about the financial hardship the check could cause us [I had finally acquiesced on the whole getting-the-check-back issue this morning because I don't want to pay the stop-check fee and I'm sick of the stress]. He filed a formal complaint about this whole issue, which the woman said will ensure that higher level people will have to look at what transpired (so for all of the people who treated us like sh*tty deadbeats...look out!).

The result of all of this was a baby scare (the child stopped its regular movement for a few hours and I panicked, but the movement resumed eventually and I was able to relax), my husband had to be the diplomat and apologized to the technician because, as he put it, the guy was just doing his job [and while I agree with that assessment, I was serious when I said I was going to stab him if he came in my house], and we are no longer getting the highest level of high-speed internet [saving us $10/month] and we are no longer going to get that waste-of-money channel guide that we never read anyway [$4.95/month]. When the woman told my husband that we would be getting a $6.95 late charge [it's gone up over the years], he told her that after Macy's shenanigans, this charge is nothing.

*For those who have not had the joy of a Macy's card, there is an automatic $28 late fee if you are even one day late on your card payment. Fortunately, I have not been late, but I've had to run out to the store to make the payment because they will charge you a $10 processing fee if you do it over the phone, and the payment will still be two days late if you do it on the day it's due. All this over a $5 payment [it's almost completely paid off; the only one of my three store cards in that arena (like Macy's has stuff I want to buy; the last thing I got was a watch)].

Things should finally settle down now (I hope). But hear this now, if anything happens to my baby as a result of this sh*t, I am burning that new building of theirs to the ground.

P.S. As much as people know Halloween (I'm about as old as that movie), the film I had seen a ton of times is Prom Night. It's Halloween, but with a revenge angle that is actually deserved. The remake has nothing to do with the original, and I like it even if it is a bit cheesy.

Those Cable People Are Hilarious!

In my never-ending battle to just be stressed out all the time, I have the conclusion to the Time Warner debacle from yesterday. I made my husband call them back on my cell phone (I had more minutes left) to make an arrangement to pay them on Friday as long as they turned our services back on [we still had cable (no box=too much effort to come out to cut it off, but I wanted the phone back on for emergency purposes]. I finally got it through his head that when I tell him to call services (so that I'm not doing it and cursing them all out) that he's to do a complete conversation and not just ask them about the few things I mentioned with no follow up. What followed was actually pretty masterful. Who knew that being a seasoned liar would pay off?

He called them up and wanted to know why our services were cut off when they sent us an incorrect statement [true] without sending us the promised reissue [lie]. They sent us a notice two days before it was due saying that we owed $300. What pissed me off about it (because I made him call them the day we received it) was that we had just gotten through paying them a lot of money and they printed the bill long after we had paid them, because we were only behind by nearly $50. They should've offered to send a reprint of the bill, but he didn't request it at the time because he was on auto-pilot at the time. Anyway, he kept insisting that we were going to pay the bill once we got the reissue but we never received it and were cut off abruptly. He got the woman to acquiesce to his persistence and made arrangements to pay on Friday, but wanted to make sure our services would be turned back on.

This is where the story gets interesting.

Apparently, the reason why they've been itchy to cut us off is because, according to her computer, we only had cable and must have thought we owed for several months worth of service. We only found this out when he mentioned getting the services turned back on and she said that she would have to send out a technician. He explained to her that the phone and internet were cut-off remotely, so why would they need to send someone out, and she said that her notes said that our cable was cut off at the pole. "No it wasn't" he told her, in such a fashion that I fell out laughing. We had to tell her that the cable had never been cut off in all the years we've had it in this apartment, because they keep thinking we have cable boxes. How do they run a company when they don't even know what services their customers have? I can assure you that I would not be paying nearly $150 a month for standard cable, but it does explain the sudden cold-shoulder we've been getting lately from them.

She also had us down for receiving e-mail bills (which I never signed up for). This just turned into a head-scratching moment because I don't know how their information got so screwed up, but I think it's been off since they moved to their new building a couple of months ago.

I will be paying them on Friday, because the phone will be off on Saturday if I don't (they've done it before). Again, I'm not saying that I deserve to have my stuff on without paying, but these people had gotten trigger happy when they assumed we were deadbeats on a simple cable bill (and cut off our primary phone that I'd rather have on for emergencies) instead of having all of their facts straight.

What a way to run a company, Time Warner.

New NEW Mission: Get Time Warner To Suck It!

I just got off the phone with my husband who had to call me from his cell phone because our phone is out. Why? Because Time Warner decided to cut us off because we owe them $49. We paid them twice last month to get caught up (putting us in the poorhouse to the tune of $399), but because we were past due by that amount, they cut us off without warning (the letter we got in the mail was for the incorrect amount because it was printed in the half a day between when we said we would pay them the bulk of the bill and when it was actually paid). We had no official due date, and we are trying to get current with all of our bills, and this new cut-you-off-immediately policy is new. What's pissing me off is that this was the same tactic used by AT&T when I switched from them to Time Warner. I got a cut-off notice every month for two years before I finally got sick of their tactics. We would make arrangements to pay the bill and then the operator would (usually nastily) ask me when the next amount would be paid, since the bill was due in four days. I always had the same answer: I don't know, and the cycle would begin all over again.

Look, I'm not trying to say I don't owe people money. My bill for Time Warner is approximately $140 a month for phone, internet, and standard cable. We're all but caught up on the bill when they decided to turn into AT&T and strong-arm us into paying our bill now when we don't have the money to put gas in the car for me to get to work tomorrow (the money sent to us never got here), so they can just go to hell.

If we had to, we could probably find a way to get by on cheaper internet (at least until school starts), but I don't see how cutting someone's main phone off is a good idea when they can't call you to pay the fucking bill. I don't know why they stopped their old policy of just making your internet e-mail not work (which was a great tactic in helping me find out that a payment I thought I had made in the past did not go through), but if this keeps up, I don't know what we'll do.