For Felicity

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’ve actually found a company whose customer service is WORSE than Penelec and Verizon: Charter Communications.

Thankfully, they aren’t anyone I’m stuck doing business with, but Felicity of The Hangover Journals does, and she’s being royally f*cked over by them:

I’m going to reiterate everything that’s happened with me and Charter in this post so I have it all neatly in writing somewhere. [...] You know I never ask for links, but I’m asking now. I want this to get around. I want this article to be on the front page of a google search for Charter Communications. I am beyond anger and into a sort of deep, shaking, silent rage.

At some point during the first week of August, Charter turned my internet off. I called them the morning of August 3 to straighten this out. They claimed that my internet had been turned off because I had not paid my bill since May, when I moved. In actual fact, they had been siphoning $55 out of my bank account each month. When I pointed this out, they at first accused me of getting internet at two houses and then said, well, alright, we screwed up and we’ll credit your account at the new house with all the money that we have removed. So that was an hour on the phone and some screaming and one would have thought, well, perils of modern life and all that, right, but it’s over.

Wrong. It was not over. Charter would proceed to turn my internet off again for the same reason on Sunday, August 5: another hour long phone call, same resolution.

And again on Friday, August 10: another hour long phone call with bonus screaming which took place on Sunday, August 12 and ended up with them -

Turning it off again an hour later. On Monday, August 13 I called again and spoke for, yeah, about an hour, with a supervisor named Monica who assured me over and over that it was all taken care of now.

And it was until last night, when they turned it off again and I am even now summoning up my courage to call the assholes again.

Felicity’s asking for links to her post, with the goal of making it the number one site when folks search Google for Charter. Spread the word.

The View From My Window

I wrote about WhyMommy and her fight with inflammatory breast cancer in my inaugural Saturday Potluck, and wanted to share this lovely, perfect metaphor for online communities she wrote:

It’s hard to explain my affection for blogging and blogfriends to those not intimately familiar with it, but I think it goes something like this. [...]

It’s as if one day last August I walked into my room, turned on the lamp, and suddenly noticed the window on the far wall, where none had been before. When I opened the curtains, the room was flooded with light and warmth, and I could hear a chorus of voices spilling through. I looked out, and discovered an amazing view — not the restful mountains or the popular beach — but a courtyard, filled with children of all ages, laughing, playing, crying, inventing, growing up together, and a sea of other windows — moms — each in a room of their own, writing their own lives, but pausing intermittently to check on the children and to be inspired by them and the women who love them. The windows are close enough that we can call to each other on the spring breezes when we are stuck, when we have something to celebrate, when we have something to mourn.

And it’s a beautiful way to live.

I love this description of blogging and commenting. All of us calling out to one another from our windows, finding that one shared interest between us — be it parenting or politics or technology or … anything — and, through our chats and discussions, discovering more and more commonalities on which to base a friendship.

We share our hopes and our fears and our dreams, we share the good and the bad times, we discuss the mundane and the life-changing, and with each comment, each post, each chat, our friendship grows, just as it would in the real world. And just like the real world, we share our blog friends with others, hoping they, too, will become friends.

The difference is – in the real world, we might pass by some people, seeing only the external, thinking they had nothing to offer us because of their age, appearance, economic status, or gender – and we would lose out on an important group of voices that educate, entertain, encourage, and enlighten us; we’d lose what could have been a wonderful friendship.

Here, through my window, I see just friends. Some of you are close friends with whom I chat daily — or as close to it as possible, what with work and family commitments — and some are newly-made friends I hope to spend more time with, and others are passersby on this blog or others, giving a quick wave before continuing on your own journey.

Each and every one of you enriches my life. As I hope I, in some way, have enriched yours.