Eating Crow

How the mighty have fallen! No, I'm not talking about Verizon and Comcast. They seem to have weathered my assault on their respective fortresses without too much trouble. I am the vanquished heroine, forced to crawl back to Comcast after a tortured experience with Verizon DSL Internet and general grumbling from my summer guests that no TV would, in fact, be a problem.

So, I headed back to the local Comcast store and wondered briefly if they would give me a hard time for returning so soon. No worries. My account was still in a 'hold' category, which I bet Comcast secretly calls 'disloyal customers' with a note to never, ever offer them any deal again. Maybe they have a sense of humor and just label us  'gotcha'--they are pretty sure you'll be back. No slinking into the line required, just the usual pleasantries with the customer service rep, while she efficiently scanned what seemed to be massive amounts of equipment to self install. When I questioned why the 2nd TV receiver box was now bigger than the TV itself and had just one month ago been a 3 by 3 adapter box, she swapped the larger one out, scanned, rescanned and asked me to sign three different receipts. A nagging thought - was this going to be a problem?

"You're all set," she said.
"There are no cables in here," I responded, poking through the boxes.
"Oops-are your TVs HD or older?"
"Old, very old.."
"Here you go." She proceeded to toss in an impressive number of black cables.
"Thank you for choosing Comcast."
Hmmm..I mused on that word--choosing?! Was there a choice?

It's amazing how the equipment changed in just over 30 days.
Here's the handy bag of goodies I received:

Nice for grocery shopping later

The challenge of the easy self install begins:

Only one trip back to the Comcast store. Yup, the new receiver hadn't scanned correctly. A quick rescan and a bonus gift of longer cables thrown in to sweeten the deal.
"Thank you for choosing Comcast."  Again?!

At home: success!

But a few leftover parts:

I showed them!

There will be no TV at the shore this summer. I wish I could say that this was done for high-minded reasons. Vacations should be a break from your normal routine. Summer is for relaxing and enjoying the beauty of the outside world. Read a good book. Sit on the porch, listen to the birds, sip your morning coffee. Enjoy a beautiful sunset. Remember back to the good ole days, when there was no televison at the bungalow and we never gave it a second thought.

These are all good things. But, alas, the decision to not have TV involves a more complicated tale. Comcast serves the Jersey shore and with all the news stories about the conglomerate merging of Comcast and Time Warner, I already had a chip on my shoulder when I called Comcast to restore my full time service after the winter hiatus. I also violated my rule of always calling back at least twice or even three times when dealing with customer service because it's always a different answer. 

Comcast or Verizon are the only choices for internet service at the shore. Suffice it to say I switched to Verizon very huffily before I made the second call to Comcast. Verizon only has the Dish for TV and who wants to be bothered with that? When I relayed the story to Gary in excruciating detail... then he said....and I replied...and he checked with the supervisor...and I did a slow burn...., he merely raised his eyebrows and refrained from comment. (We have been married a long time)  I ended with the conclusion that we would need more than the basic package anyways, which was ridiculously priced and I could see from the slight downturn at the corners of his mouth that he wanted to whisper, "What about ESPN?"  Memories of my mother's admonition echoed in my head: "Cut off your nose to spite your face." I prefer the more modern rationale from my son. "Mom, TV is obsolete--you can stream everything online."  Let's hope the DSL delivers the promised speeds!

Be sure to stop by and see me this summer.  Just be prepared for the simple life. Cards, anyone?