Cable battles

Cable companies have been monopolizing viewership for close to 30 years now, though initially there were several companies that would compete in an area, by about 15 years ago it had come down to one main company per major city or network area. Like AT&T's monopoly before 1982, these companies don't just cover one city, but have statewide networks and almost national coverage, or they cover a powerful network area like New York City. Time Warner, Cablevision, Comcast - these are huge corporations that pretty much do just enough to not be considered a monopoly but might as well be one since any other competition in their areas are pretty much nill. I've noticed a trend recently where just before some major TV event, a cable company will 'suddenly' get into a battle over fees from the major networks and the next thing you know there's the threat of the channel disappearing from that cable company and a lot of pissed off viewers. I first saw this in September of 2007 as the World Series was getting ready to start and NBC and Time Warner went toe to toe. NBC went off the air here in Austin for a few weeks and the one show I was keeping tabs on at the time, 'Heroes', was missed and I never went back to it. This happened again recently with the Big 12 Championship and this weekend it's ABC and Cablevision in NYC while the Oscars are on tonight. I don't believe in coincidence anymore so just like strikes that happen at the worst possible time this seems like a ploy to me and not just some random 'Oh, the contract's up now and someone won't budge'. The big three networks, barely hanging on for dear life up against cable channels and putting out crappy reality shows and zero good sitcoms anymore are charging higher and higher fees to the cable companies to run their networks. But these cable companies have money falling out of their ass, yet they put on the 'poor me' mask when this happens as if they couldn't afford the fees. The cable company is really just a middle man created after network television wasn't 'free' anymore and this just got worse with the digital tranfer from a couple of years ago where NO channels are free and you HAVE to view them via some sort of cable company...sounds like more strong arming to me by you guessed it, the monopoly cable companies. These companies don't really care about the viewers, but if the networks go bankrupt and all the shows that are still watched by America, and this includes the Super Bowl, the Oscars and still a few damn good shows like 'Lost' then who really loses here?

State Farm

Customer service, I've been doing it for twenty years now and I think I know the meaning of good and bad versions of it. I've been with State Farm for ten years now, since moving to the Austin area, and I personally only had one fender bender to report for myself (Jena had a couple of incidents but nothing major) and the bill was ALWAYS paid on time. I would think that this would classify me as a good or coveted customer especially in times like these. Apparently this is not the case with State Farm. With all the crazy shit that went on this year, Jena and I contacted them to get split up on our policy. They actually told us this was difficult for this and that reason (you would think they just had to click a few buttons and it would be done and it wasn't like this was some alien request) so we waited, but this summer we called back and said we needed to go ahead and get separate policies. They split us into two policies and Jena has had her own policy with the Dodge truck on it that she's been paying on since then with no problems. I on the other hand started having problems in October when my bill came with Jena's truck back on my policy. I got the bill on the weekend, so I called the office (no 800 number that you can call whenever!) and left a voice mail about it. I never got called the following Monday so I called and the person I talked to said she's already taken care of it! Was she going to call me and tell me that? She acted like she could give a rat's ass about the whole thing and didn't apologize once. She didn't even tell me what I really owed just for my car, I had to ask her. It was $102 so I paid that and figured we were finished. Then, in November I get my bill and there's Jena's truck again AND a warning that I was late because I didn't pay the entire payment the last time! I left a voice mail again, and this time I said if this didn't get resolved I'd be looking for a new insurer. Well, apparently this didn't mean shit to them because I never got a call back. I paid the $102 just in case so I at least covered my car. Since Jena had been paying with her policy they were in essence asking us to pay for the fucking truck twice! And not once did any research occur on their side or was the issue really resolved like that twit said it was. The proverbial 'straw' landed yesterday when I got my most recent bill from them and it was a CANCELLATION NOTICE due to non-payment!!! I left a pretty nasty voice mail, sent an email directly to the agent saying all this that had happened and that I wanted to be contacted BY PHONE on Monday. I also called Geico, whom I have renter's insurance with and who quickly took care of me after the robbery, and set up auto with them. When I hear from SF on Monday I'll make sure that there's no cancellations on the my record and everything is really fixed, then I'll drop the Geico bomb on them and let them know that I will be telling everyone I know about what happened and even try and get Jena to move away from them. The first rule of customer service is a happy customer will tell ten people about it but a pissed customer will tell ten times that.