Hit Me Baby One More Time

It seems the Cable Company has risen from its ashes. A coworker forwarded me this letter they sent out recently:



And I am tempted.

And conflicted. You see, at times, I hate the cable company. I really do.

Sure, now they have a brand new website whereas the old one was mostly a placeholder. It spells out all the new plans you could sign up for.

(I do find it odd that the website seems to be entirely in English, though. While English as grown increasingly pervasive here, the employees function in Creole or French. Maybe their target audience is the NGO/IO people?):

The major change is that they have now associated with one of my ISPs which might prove convenient. According to their price list, if I chose the double play option, my internet bill would automatically slashed in half.

But this comeback is problematic for me. First, the wording of their email is misleading. They say that the basic plan will give you 25 (the website says 26 channels). However, on closer look, that is a misrepresentation, to say the least. Let's look at the channels listed in the left-most column:



The first one is their own channel. In the past (read: prior to 2010) they had a very light programming. Only the newscast and a couple of talk shows, as I remember it. The rest of the time, the channel displayed Canadian programming and the occasional official live broadcast of elections, carnival etc. The other "local" channel was 3, only made up of program listings and commercials.

The next five channels listed are FREE LOCAL CHANNELS. Yes, I get them now with the bunny ears. How, then, could they seriously advertise them as paid-for channels? So you would actually be getting only 18 "real" channels.

My US readers will recognize most of the channels, I'm sure.

So what is my problem? Let's do a little backstory, shall we?

My father signed up for the cable service back in the early 1970s so we have gone through several mutations, mainly in price. Before the earthquake, we had about 60 channels. Or, should I say, they advertised as much. Some neighborhoods could not get the signal for all the channels.

In the past 10 years, the most note-worthy changes were when they forced us to purchase decoder boxes in late 2003. It cost $77 USD or we were told we would not get any channels. In the beginning of this adventure, they use to black-out more and more channels for every day you were late in payment.

They raised the prices at least 3 times since. Then, in December 2008, they announced we would need a new decoder because the company was going digital. I was puzzled because the US and Fr, which represent the bulk of the channels offered back then, were going digital in June 2010 and November 2011 respectively. Why the rush? I resisted the change, in part also because the new decoder was $88 USD. And they would neither take back the old one, "it belongs to you now" nor give existing clients a rebate.

They removed about 3 channels by the end of 2009, including my beloved HBO.

Then the earthquake happened and we were sure the company was done with. In late July 2010, they sent out an email that I did not receive. The account is still in my father's name and he does not have an email address. The Cable Company did not try to reach its clients in any other way. I emailed and I called, nothing.

What they were offering was a 50% rebate on their new competitor, the Satellite Company. You can see here, highlighted segment were they spelled out the offer:



For those who do not read French, it says that you will get a 50% off IF the Cable Company gives you a ticket.

I never got that rebate. Well, I don't actually miss it since the equipment + service would cost me almost $1000 USD.

But my problems don't just come from miscommunication. Their costumer service was notoriously bad and their practices deeply upsetting to me.

About 10 years ago, the Cable company offered the option of paying at any branch of a local bank instead of coming all the way downtown, I-can-smell-the-sea-from-here-downtown.

Problem was I had my service cut several times because they thought I hadn't paid. I'm always, ALWAYS on time with my bills. I'm the sort of woman who has a budget and a schedule. Seriously. When I called to complain, they told me they had no way of knowing who paid when. Their solution was to ask me to CALL THEM EVERY TIME I HAD PAID AT THE BANK TO DICTATE THE DEPOSIT SLIP NUMBER!!!

I refused to do it but my mother did so religiously.

And then there were the fees. An employee once came to cut our service for overdue fee. They were wrong, of course, as I've said above. But my brother wasn't aware of this, so he paid him. And they billed me for 40gdes + 10% TCA (sales tax) for "at home payment services".

When I moved in 2007, they charged me 880gdes for the move + 440 gdes + TCA for a length of cable, roughly the price of one month's subscription at the time. The technician said that he could not reuse the old cable and that it belong to us. Note that he never came to our old house but went directly to the new one.

So you can understand that, while the local channels I get with the bunny ears are DEAD BORING (don't worry, it's an upcoming post), I just don't want to get into this mess again.

I spoke to an employee yesterday and there are no special considerations of any kind for the old clients. He only mentioned that the 2009 decoder box might be reused. I told him most of what I've outlined in this email and he suggested I write an email. Which I did this morning.

A coworker knows somebody who knows somebody who works for the ISP and right new they are testing the service with about 200 clients and it is not going well.

I cannot wait to see how this unfolds.

It's the thought that counts

This morning's paper had a dozen pages out of 32 dedicated to the Inauguration of Mr Hope. Impressive if only you consider that a 32-page edition is somewhat of a big publication for that paper.

This is just a reflection of the obssession we too have developped with #44. In fact, yesterday, I barely worked at all. My boss brought in his 13" mini tv (purchased just for the occasion, mind you) and we spent several hours captivated by the grainy transmission by a local, free tv station.

Truth be told, there was a tinge of bitterness for all of us, at my office. Here you have this man, talking about getting back to work and putting aside differences to dig a country out of financial (and social) trouble.

But we don't have that.

Instead we have a president who announced in his New Year's speech that, I quote, "2009 will be hard". That's it. No hope for tomorrow, no common goal, nothing.

I did learn the first lesson of 2009, though. Rinse Repeat is a goat. Not the hairy, horned beast, no! Rather the prophetic, divining mythical creature people are always talking about here.

See, he said things would be hard and practically the next day, we fell head first into a gas "crisis". Don't ask me what happened, I don't know. The fact is, gas stations were not selling gasoline at all for several days. No explanation, nothing, but clients were being turned away.

The government simply announced the new gas prices and transportation fares. Oh, don't bother looking for them on the ministry's website. Hasn't been updated since 2005. (Efficient, aren't they?)

Aside : The only pertinent information is that the price of diesel is the same now as it was four years ago.

Public opinion started saying that the gas distributors were trying to artificially raise the price of gasoline, in opposition to the government's decision. I heard this from everyone, from taxi drivers to coworkers.

The gas importers said that the government was taking too much tax on the gallon. I had a minor WTF moment because I just couldn't make the connection. What did high taxes have to do with closed pumps?

As one can imagine, the streets were empty. Empty, that is, except around the gas stations. I have the great misfortune of living within a few blocks of 2 gas stations, each placed near intersections. Do I need to draw you a picture? A friend of mine spent 4 hours just to buy a couple of gallons of regular.

Students were stuck in the country, having, as is customary, visited their families living outside of the capital. You could really tell that education was the number one business in this city. Whenever there is a holliday (or a gas problem), I can go from my bed to my desk under 15 minutes. Quite a feat, believe me!

But back to the goat. While we were still lost in the Land of Information BlackOut (our normal dwelling place around here), we go hit by another bomb.

Parliament was considering a bill to raise the taxes on cell phone calls from 4.70 gourdes to 8 gourdes. Not only that, but there would be additional taxes to be paid on local and international calls. And the cherry on the cake, incoming calls would revert to being paid, at the same rate.

Now, I'm still stuck on the fact that I've been paying my minutes 5 gourdes for the past, what, 3 years? Were did that 4.70 gdes come from, anyway? But to go back to paying incoming calls would just cancel the whole point of having a cell phone.

So, here's were the goat comes in. Sometime last year, Rinse Repeat commented a bit acidly that we could not legitimately complain of the cost of living when everyone on the streets here seemed to have a cell phone.

Let's stop here, shall we? Because I find it terribly disingenuous of him to make such a comment. Or is he forgetting that the government basically stoped giving people landlines 10 years ago? Even if you had the money, you got no phone line. And then, like a rabbit out of a hat, the first modern cell phone company opened and, like a Savior, offered cell phones...to those who could pay them.

Back then, yes, we paid for incoming and out-going calls. And it cost a LOT. The minimal prepaid card was 330 gourdes (about $8 US today). But did the government agency who oversees communications here care? No. Did the national phone company resume their services? Nope. Unless you were a business and could pay the proper...incentives, you got nothing.

Anyway, when the bill was made public, the outcry was such that Parliament had to scratch it. After all, the cell phone companies are the new, adjunct cash cows (with the national phone co) and the two major companies announced that they would have to lay-off a large number of employees, if not to shut down completely. That really scared somebody. Couldn't have been worry for our well-being, oh no.

So there are two morals to this story.

First, when Rinse Repeat speaks, one must learn to overcome one naturally disgust, if only to find out when to duck.

And second, the consummer is the loser, period. Put up or get out. It's lose-lose every time.