There's a reason consumers have been known to chuck their cable boxes underneath fast-moving school buses. And why, after making the toss, they'll go out into the street and double-check that the device has been adequately flattened.
This story explains it all.
To start, don't ask me why I have both Spectrum cable and DirecTV, but I do, and let's let it go at that.
When I recently decided to add Spectrum, the company _ a new brand from Charter Communications, which earlier this year acquired Time Warner Cable _ said an installer would arrive at my home between 1-2 p.m. He did, showing up at 1:10 p.m., to be exact, after I'd been kept abreast of his progress to my house through a series of reports delivered as text messages on my iPhone.
Compared to experiences with DirecTV, which uses a majorly inconvenient four-hour window for such appointments, this was great. Score one for Spectrum.
I told the installer he could disconnect the DirecTV boxes for the time being and connect the cable box to the HDMI port on my TV, where the DirecTV box had been attached. He did.
Then he went outside and _ I discovered later _ tore the DirecTV cabling from the outside wall of my house. Bad move, and one that made watching DirecTV impossible. Further, I also found out he had failed to properly ground the new cable. Score a minus-10 for Spectrum.
After booting up, though, the new cable box showed great high-definition broadcasts.
And while that _ and the fact the installer showed me some remote control basics _ was wonderful, he left no instructions for actually using the remote's important features. He also forgot to leave a channel lineup, so I had to download one from the Spectrum website. Considering the new service's price tag, you'd think installers wouldn't be so stingy.
Anyway, I went merrily on my way, right to my PC to program the DVR.
Then stuff happened.
I discovered my DVR-enabled cable box couldn't be managed from my PC or iPhone.
After a frustrating call to Spectrum's otherwise great tech support, I journeyed to the cable store to exchange the box, a process that, with traffic, took me nearly two hours.
The guy who gave me the new box assured me that this model could be programmed from my phone and PC. I went merrily on my way, fighting Friday afternoon's commuters.
I set up the new DVR-enabled box, got a very nice HD picture and went to my PC to program the device. No luck there, either. So I called tech support again, and was told that I had the wrong box _ again. They set up another appointment for an installer to come to my home with a different box, and after braying as only a frustrated cable customer learns to do, I got them to waive the $39 service call fee.
But _ they couldn't guarantee that the installer would bring the right box.
I innocently asked, "Couldn't you make sure the installer has the right box on his truck?"
"No. It's whatever they have in their warehouse."
If I wanted a particular box, I'd have to go back to the cable store. Been there, done that.
I braced myself for the second installer, who arrived on time on a Sunday afternoon, an hour before the second presidential debate. He installed the new box and said it would be compatible with programming on my PC. Except it wasn't. Or so we thought.
He left, and I watched the debate, making certain I recorded it right from the remote.
Dejected by the debate and my long journey into cable darkness, I decided to give Spectrum tech support one more chance to discover whether I could program my DVR box from my PC.
"Interesting question," the tech said. "Let's try some things. I want you to be a happy customer!"
Whoa! A happy cable customer is like an endangered species.
The tech determined that it could be done and then did it. She was almost as excited as I was over the solution, which is: The DVR can only be programmed from the Spectrum website but won't work with an iPhone app.
"Good enough!" I tell her.
We exchange pleasantries, and I go about programming my DVR box from my PC. It's also possible to program it from wherever there's a Wi-Fi connection. No need to throw the cable box under the bus after all. Chalk up 10 points for really good tech support _ finally. And yes, they did agree to restore the DirecTV cabling to its original state.
