Two weeks ago we experienced an afternoon storm that clapped and thundered many bolts all around our area. After the storm I noticed that my TV set, which had been showing me CNN International, was now showing me nothing. I also noticed that the DVR which I rent as part of my digital service from Charter Communications was off. No error message, no blinking lights, no signs of life. A quick translation of my cable from the DVR directly into the back of my TV set showed that the cable was, indeed, gushing out video, but the DVR was dead. The only thing to do was to call Charter and report the demise of my Moxie DVR.
I chose not to "hablar en Español" by pressing "1", and first had to trick the gatekeeper recording who assured me what she was doing was EXACTLY what a representative would have me do. (Pressing zero never seems to avoid this step). Eventually I spoke to a woman who again told me I should try to restart it. Once I convinced her that this Moxie had none left in it, she said I could make an appointment for a technician to come to my house — or I could go to a Charter office and exchange it for a working box. I chose the latter, after she told me I could drive 20 miles and make the swap the following morning. She said that she would send the office a note attached to my account and they would have the box ready for me. I was impressed with how well this had all gone.
The following morning I drove half an hour to the office in Duluth, Ga. I presented my defunct DVR to a very nice woman behind the counter who promptly told me that they don't exchange boxes at that office, that they don't even have any. She looked up my account and found no note attached to it, nor any mention of a problem call on my account at all. She apologized and gave me a credit for my fuel and troubles, and she scheduled a technician to come to my house the following day between 1 pm and 3 pm.
The next morning I received an automated call asking me to press "1" to confirm my appointment. When I did so, I was put on hold, and then was told to please hold for customer service. After 5 minutes I hung up. This happened again, in exactly the same way, later that morning. Eventually a man did show up. I met him in the driveway and he informed me that he was here to see what the problem was. I told him that I knew what the problem was, and that Charter knew what the problem was. I said, "My Moxie box is dead, and you are bringing me one that isn't." He looked uncomfortable and said that he did not have any DVRs in his vehicle, but he could give me a plain old cable box until someone comes out with a DVR. When he called, using my cell phone, to find out what the problem was, he discovered that someone could come out the next day and bring the DVR. I agreed that that would be a good thing. He asked that I sign his form so that he could close the work order, which he explained was for the visit to find out what was wrong and not to actually replace my DVR. I signed.
Around 1 pm on the following day I called Charter again, because something told me that perhaps there was no-one actually scheduled to come to my house. I evaded the gatekeeper robot and punched through to the line for customers who already had appointments scheduled. The woman with whom I spoke was very surprised that someone had told me they would be here today, because there was no sign of any technician dispatch on my account. She said that she would schedule someone to come the following day, and that they would indeed bring a new DVR with them. It would be an HD-ready DVR, even though I do not own an HDTV. Fine.
The next day, after successful confirmations of my appointment, a man did indeed show up at my house. He asked me, "So, you are having problems with your HDTV?" "No", I explained, "I don't have an HDTV. I have a regular TV set and a dead Moxie DVR. I was told you would come out and exchange it for a new HDMI DVR box." Well, he did happen to have one, so after examining my dead Moxie, he brought in the purportedly new device. He was somewhat puzzled by my video setup, but I just told him to get it working with the TV and I will set up my DVD player, etc., after he left. We plugged it in and it seemed to work, so he gave me a remote control and asked me to sign his printout. I asked for a manual, and was told, "We run out!" With that, he was gone.
The first disappointment was that the new remote would not control my TV set, so I would have to revert to multiple remotes. I knew that if I had a manual I could find a code and that it would work, but I would deal with that later. My wife, who hears things that dogs cannot, complained that the audio sounded as if everything were happening inside a tube. Of course she was right, and after that I heard it too. But I was ready to put the whole episode behind me and get on with life. Maybe later I would call Charter and see about the audio problem and find out about the remote. (I did download and print out the manual, BTW, but it makes no mention of the remote).
Two days ago we had an evening storm that actually twisted off the very top of the tall poplar tree in the back yard and flung it down (very fortunately) between the glassed-in porch and a beautiful gardenia bush. Our power flickered on and off, but we never lost our cable, and when we turned off the TV that night, all seemed well. Yesterday morning, however, every channel on our Charter Cable was displaying an error message about service being temporarily unavailable but would return momentarily. By mid-afternoon I got the feeling that "momentarily" might be referring, in this case, to "never". Again I checked to see if the regular cable was coming through and it was, so there was no problem in our area. (The rate we pay includes many channels that do not come in on the regular feed). I looked for a reset button, but there was none in the new DVR. I unplugged it, waited 30 seconds, and plugged it back in. No difference. So, there was nothing left to do but call Charter again, and trick the gatekeeper into letting me talk to a human being again (especially since she still had wrong information about my still having the now defunct Moxie).
This time I did not have to wait and listen to all the other convenient ways that I can check my Charter account online, and was attended immediately. After expressing her dismay at my having a problem, and suggesting that I press the reset button on my Moxie, and that I unplug it and plug it back in, and my telling her that I no longer had a Moxie and that I had unplugged it already, she said that she needed to send a reset signal to my box and that would most likely take care of the problem. The signal could take up to an hour, so if after that time I still had a problem, to please call back and set up a technician visit. I knew that this signal would not work, and I told her so, but she said it usually does. After reiterating my skepticism, I had no alternative but to agree — hoping against hope that I would not have to make another appointment.
Two hours later I made it through the gatekeeper again and spoke with another very nice person who asked me to look somewhere on the box for a sequence of numbers that started with 2 letters. I could find no such number, even underneath the box, so she could help me no more, and scheduled me for another visit from a technician. I asked her to PLEASE note that they should bring an extra box and anything else they thought COULD be the problem because I was quite tired of all these visits and lack of satisfaction. She understood my frustration and duly told me she made some notes.
That brings us to today. I received the now customary robotic confirmation call. At 12:15 I received a call from Pete from Charter, saying that he was near my house and would I mind if he came sooner. "Not at all, I said." He was here 15 minutes later and came in and immediately realized that my new DVR box had never been properly registered to my account, which is why after a week it will revert to not working. As he was waiting to speak with someone at the office to legitimize my box, I told him briefly about my experiences of late with Charter. He commented that the DVR I was given was an older model, and asked if I would be interested in the newest model (the one that people are asking for but they can't get them in quickly enough)... the one I thought I had just gotten. He went out, brought it in, exchanged it for the other one and registered it. Then he made the remote work for the TV and was gone within five minutes.
I can't say how refreshing it was to interact with Pete, a young Vietnamese-American man, who knew what he was doing, addressed me politely and intelligently, and had the initiative to offer me more than what he was obligated to do, to go the proverbial extra mile. When I though back on this whole episode of my digital video life, Pete is the hero who swooped in, deus ex machina, and set aright everything that Charter had entangled in a Gordian knot of miscommunication and ineptitude.
Epilog: An hour after Pete left, I lost all the digital channels again, this time with a message telling me I was not authorized to view these channels. One more call had to be made, wherein I had to inform them of the services for which I pay, so that my account would be authorized to allow me to see them. Now, I can relax... right? Oh, and by the way, the audio sounds fine.
