why i hate charter

i moved a few months ago, and in the process, cancelled my cable services with charter communications. they instructed me that i would get a prorated bill, gave me the total amount i would owe, and that was that. or so i thought.

once my mail forwarding took effect, i received two bills (both on the same day - thank you to the always-efficient united states postal service) from charter, for $0.63. yes, you read that right...63 cents. the balance had been carried over for two months, because the bill didn't reach me early enough. they probably spent $0.50 on each piece of mail, so they just lost 37 cents by billing me.

so i thought to myself, it would be silly to write a check for 63 cents, surely i can pay online or over the phone. i mean a check itself probably costs at least $0.25 and a stamp is $0.41, and i can't justify spending more than the amount of the bill just to get them their payment.

i got online to pay the bill, only to find out that the site cannot locate my account number, since i cancelled my services two months ago. so i called 1 800 GET CHARTER (which i strongly advise avoiding if possible) and spoke with a customer service representative. she assured me that i could pay the bill over the phone, no problem. but there would be a $1.99 fee for speaking to the rep to pay it. um...what? you're going to charge 3 times the amount of the bill to let me pay it? that's just ridiculous.

but then she said they had an automated telephone bill-pay, and that was free. she gave me the number. i called it. alas, they had no record of my account. so i called 1 800 GET CHARTER again. the guy i talked to this time said, no problem - they have a service for closed accounts to pay bills, and gave me that number. i called it. it was a COLLECTION AGENCY. they sent me to a freaking collection agency over 63 cents. having been on the phone with various people for close to an hour at this point, i was (needless to say) pissed off.

so i call GET CHARTER again. before the rep could even say anything, i rattled off the entire scenario - including the bit with the collection agency (who by the way practically laughed in my face over the 63 cents) and web site and everything. she FINALLY said, "i can charge the 63 cents to your credit card on file, and waive the $1.99 fee." they even had my credit card on file this whole time??!?!?!

obviously, you can see why i hate charter. but i think the bigger issue here is cost-to-benefit analysis. charter spent about $1.00 to mail me the bills, then at least an hour of talk time in their call center to deal with me. over 63 effing cents. idiots.

so it was announced that the male and female winners of wimbledon this year will get paid the same amount of money, regardless of how many sets they play. i must say - i don't follow much tennis at all - but this is really kind of crazy. it's very well known that women make less than men in the vast majority of workplaces, but this is a very public, very media driven event, and they hadn't made the purses equal until 2007?!?! come on...it's the 21st century.


and besides the sheer fact that you can't offer men more money than women in an event like this, the men aren't the "spotlight" at all. i bet even male viewers like watching the women better - cute girls running around in short skirts - what guy doesn't like watching that?

so that's about all i have on that subject. sorry, that kind of sucked.

ps...paris is out of jail. now i can finally get some sleep at night.

sorry for the long stretch of inactivity. much to busy for regular blogging, which is sad. i actually went home from work the other night and did work. real work, from home. i felt like a 55 year old man, with a wife, 4 kids and a mortgage.

more importantly, the world just gained a new chiquita:
i love how all babies kind of look like little old men, with their scrunched-up wrinkley faces. so cute.

in other news, fat chance won game #3 on 6/8! i performed well above normal, with a decent outfield play as well as a hit. and a walk - which i'm getting very good at. tonight's game is at 10 pm, so given that the entire team isn't fall-down drunk, we may win again.

i'll be out running tomorrow am...head downtown if you aren't doing anything. it's for a good cause.