Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)




Wed, Jan 16 2008

Fox Business Channel is not available to many of us

is reporting that only a few thousand people are watching the new Fox Business Channel. The reason for that could be that most of us can't watch it because our local cable provider doesn't offer it. That would be my reason.

Charter Communications has been more annoying than helpful to us. A very nice young man came to our neighborhood one evening a few weeks ago and knocked on doors, asking each of us in turn if we were having any difficulty with our cable reception. I told him yes. A couple of our channels have had nothing on them for months and one other channel had an almost week-old freeze frame from some old sitcom. (The latter has since been fixed.) Rather than assure me that Charter would promptly take care of these things, the nice young man used the dialogue to launch into a sales pitch, telling me that we would need to get ready for all-digital broadcast in 2009, and that Charter currently had an offer of installing one set-top box in our home at no cost for one year. I blinked. And I called my spouse to come to the door and listen. Within a short time we were all out on the porch and our neighbor from across the street came over and told the nice young man that if my spouse ordered the box, she would also, because my spouse is very knowledgeable about electronics.

Of course, we did not order the box installation. Two of the formerly active channels still have nothing on them. And I can't watch the Fox Business Channel because Charter doesn't carry it. The company's digital high-speed internet service is useless to us, because we need to run a web server on it. Charter forbids that.

Occasionally, Charter sponsors a free preview of a premium channel for a few days. When our bill comes in the mail it tells us that, as a service to us, free channel previews may be blocked. My spouse makes fun of that statement every time he sees it and says that the statement perfectly, if unwittingly, describes Charter's entire philosophy of service to its customers. I'm sorry to say that I have to agree.

posted at: 08:17 | category: /Arts and Entertainment | link to this entry



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Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero
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