Having gone through this before, I wandered to the basement, unplugged everything, waited 30 seconds or so, then plugged it back in to find that yep, still down.     So I grabbed my cell phone and called Charter (who is in my phone book just for such irritating occasions).

My irritation fairly quickly turned to anger when I found that now instead of some meat bag having you unplug everything and such only to then look it up and see that “oh, there’s a tree down 1 street over on a line”, they now have one of those voice driven automatic attendants doing it.

I. Hate. Those.

I played along at first, until the boiler kicked in and the computer couldn’t understand me saying “Continue” in response to “Do you see your status light on the front of the modem?”   I hadn’t had my coffee yet, by the way.

So I yelled Continue several times, and as my anger turned to rage I then followed with “I HATE YOU!”  and “I’M GOING TO HAVE MEL GIBSON CALL YOU!!!!”.   Yes, I was that angry.

At this point I’m breathing like the Incredible Hulk on a PCP and steroid binge, but I didn’t hang up.  I had already yelled ‘Agent’ enough times into the phone for it to put me in a hold with the other steaming masses.

While I waited, I hooked up the modem and router again and it connected.  But I didn’t hang up yet.   No, my friends, I went back upstairs and put together coffee while I waited for a person to pick up.

“Thank you for calling Charter, my name is ____.  How may I help you?”

If you’re a real person, you can say ‘Continue’ or ‘Go’.

*silence*

If you’re a real person, you can say ‘Continue’ or ‘Go’.

“Umm…yeah, I am.”

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your response, you can say ‘Continue’ or ‘Go’.   YEAH, WE DON’T LIKE IT EITHER! *click*

Yep, gonna be a good day.

So I called and talked to one of their reps to find out what the important information was they must have accidentally left out and he admitted that it was just an ad for the bundled services.  He admitted it!

It makes me wonder if Charter even has an internal ethics policy.  They’re an embarrassment to the industry.

Shame on you Charter Communications.  Shame. On. You.