Our current cable company has a really lousy customer satisfaction rating — although, in its defense, it’s probably higher than the customer satisfaction rating of guys who sell genuine Rolex watches for $25 on Times Square.
But we’re positively going to dump it.
Probably.
I say “probably,” because we’ve been threatening to switch cable companies for a decade or so. But then, we’ve also been threatening for a decade or so to clean out the garage and we haven’t gotten around to that, either.
Part of the reason we’re dragging our feet is the fear of the unknown. Our current cable company is lousy, but what if the new cable company is lousier?
There’s also the fear of the pretty-much-known. We’ve been with the same cable company ever since the antenna disappeared from our roof and I still haven’t figured out how to record the programs I want: Half the time I think I’ve set the recorder for a football game and wind up with three hours of C-Span. So there’s no reason to believe I’ll learn how to operate a new remote in my lifetime.
The other day, a representative of a different cable company knocked on our door and spent an hour and half explaining his company’s system. Then he left us a 20-page brochure that began with the headline “Experience advanced TV that’s easy to use.” Nothing that requires an hour and a half to explain and a 20-page brochure should be allowed to use the phrase “easy to use.”
According to the brochure, we’d get 480 channels, including 215 HD channels, 108 movie channels and 20 sports channels on our television, plus 350,000 TV shows, movies, music videos, sports and more on our computer. Not only that, we could record four shows at the same time, watch four different sporting events at once and store up to 422 hours of programs. Or maybe 422 hours is how long I’d need to figure out how to do all that stuff.
In the event 422 hours of programs isn’t enough to keep us entertained, we also could buy apps, including the HSN Shop by Remote app, to “browse tens of thousands of items featured on HSN, and purchase products using remote control.” Which definitely is an app that every husband wants to have on his television.
We also could buy the South Asian TV Package, the Filipino TV Package and the Mandarin TV Package. I can’t imagine myself having enough having so much time to kill that I’d need to watch Mandarin TV.
If I ever do, though, I probably should spend it cleaning out the garage.
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