true story

The following really happened and is an ongoing story. At home we had cable TV for years, but then the monthly expense kept getting higher and higher. We realized that for the hundreds of channels offered, there were only a handful that we actually watched. We called the cable company, which I'll call Company A, and complained about the price, but they said take it or leave it, so we left it.

We turned to another company, Company B, which installs the big dish on the outside of your home. It is an okay service, and the monthly bills are cheaper than the cable bills. The DVR system that came with the dish service was confusing, but we got the hang of it.

Then about two months ago, our Internet service, which was provided by yet another big company (Company C), went screwy. It seems that Company C, which also provided phone service to our home, had made an auto upgrade to its Internet system. The upgrade affected our wireless router so that we were no longer able to get on line on our computers. We called Company C about five times, but they were unable to fix the problem. Finally, frustrated, we canceled Company C's service.

We went back to Company A, which had previously provided us with cable TV. This time it was not to re-order cable TV, but only to get Internet and phone service. The company's workman came out and installed what he had to install. Then the following sequence occurred:

• By installing his new equipment, Company A's serviceman knocked out some of Company B's dish signals to our TVs.
  
• We called the dish people (Company B) to come out and fix things. The dish serviceman came out and fixed the TVs, but within a day Company A's phone and Internet services went dead, because he had crossed the lines of the dish equipment with those of the phone/Internet equipment.
• We got back on the phone with Company A to come out and fix things. The Company A serviceman came out and did his repairs, but in the process he did something to Company B's dish equipment so that the signal no longer reached the TV in our bedroom.
• We got back on the phone with Company B to come out and fix things. The Company B serviceman came out and after much investigation he proclaimed that the problem was that Company A's phone/Internet service and Company B's dish service were trying to share the same line. His suggested solution was to drill holes in the front of our house right outside our bedroom and have a black cable hanging down. The black cable would run from our bedroom TV out through the wall and then down the front of our house where it would ultimately snake to the back of the house where it would connect to the dish. We told him no thanks, the eye sore was not needed.

So, we are going to wait until our "dish contract" with Company B runs out in early April and then we will cancel service and go back to cable TV (Company A), which we probably shouldn't have left in the first place. When that happens, Company A will be our provider for Internet, cable TV, and home phone service. Hopefully, the company won't screw things up.

The bigger the world becomes, the more inept and unconcerned the larger companies seem to be. Having dish TV at the same time as having home phone/Internet service should not be a hard thing to do. Apparently, nothing is easy anymore.