customer service.

Dear Time Warner Cable,

Up until recently, I thought we had an understanding. You provide me with internet at "blazing speeds" and I pay my monthly rate of $44.95, which we would probably both agree is too much for internet but within the bounds of local market rates. Having been your customer for over two years now, I thought we had settled into a friendly understanding. Internet for money, money for internet - it seems simple enough, no?

However, a month or so ago, you saw fit to accuse me of stealing service and decided to cut off my internet. I was given no prior notice of this decision, just a note on my door one day saying, "Oh, by the way, you lousy thief, stealing from billion-dollar corporations is still stealing!" And so I called your marvelous customer service number, who verified that I was an active customer in good standing and told me that someone would be out to correct the problem that same night. Of course, that didn't happen, but I did get a recorded message on my voicemail saying that I needed to be home to receive service. Of course, this voicemail message was on my home phone line, which I had requested your serviceman not use, as it is a digital number and was not working at the time because you disconnected my internet. Ah, that is some hilarious irony, is it not? We finally did get that issue ironed out. If I recall, you magically were able to fix it while I was not at home at all, several days later. Though I was irate at the end of it all, I hoped that the fiasco was over and I could return to peacefully enjoying my internet service without interference from your audit department.

But ah, no. Because today I received a phone call from the Forsyth County Police Department while I was at work, saying that they needed to come in to my residence and physically stop me from stealing all that cable. I asserted that I continue to have an account in good standing, while the police deputy claimed that you, Time Warner Cable, had no record of my account at all. So while your technical representative fumbled, the deputy grilled my poor boyfriend who happened to be at my apartment at the time about the evils of stealing cable services. Meanwhile, I sat in my high-rise office with trepidation that somehow I was in trouble with the law. Finally, your humble technician got on the phone with me to tell me that I actually had no account whatsoever with Time Warner Cable, despite my having sent them checks for $44.95 every month for the past twenty-four months. Luckily, I had not been idle, and so I used the internet connection at my high-rise office to look up my account number. Your technician punched the number in and looked up my very, very active account to discover that, oh no! It's all been a horrible mistake, initiated by the fact that some clerk in your employ had neglected to put my apartment number on my account listing some two years back. So while someone with my name and phone number did have an account at my entire apartment building, the lousy crook living in apartment 4 with the same name and phone number was a dirty rotten cable thief.

If only you had some way of contacting me prior to harassing me and my boyfriend in order to work out this mess without bringing in the local authorities. If only you had left a friendly note on my door or perhaps given me a phone call. Luckily, you know my height, hair color, and three phone numbers where I can be reached now, so I assume you can use this knowledge in the future to avoid any more incidents. I also hope that you remember my apartment number, so that you can save your audits and your deputy speeches for people who are actually taking away from the 9.498 billion dollars you make a year.

Your thoroughly pissed off customer,

Sandra