Occasionally I feel the need to rant about some perceived injustice or failure that is inflicted on me in daily life and this morning I had another humdinger.  I think it is typical of the reason people hate their cable companies and the reason I hate the very oddly named Charter Communications.  The reason I think the name is odd is that the one thing they consistently fail to be able to do is communicate.

This morning I logged into my account online to pay my monthly bill as I always do but the system wouldn't allow me to get to the online bill pay page.  Each time I tried the link to that page I was returned to the log in page again and again.

Initially I tried to resolve this with an online chat agent who, after 20 minutes had not grasped what the problem was at which time as she was asking me for my service address, the chat session froze and would take no more input.

Then I called customer service.  This is something I have learned to dread because it is so consistently awful but I could see no other choice unless I was willing to drive to their office and stand in line with a bunch of people who were there to argue about why their service was cut off when they hadn't paid their bills in months.  I think they should have a special line for people who aren't deadbeats.

The shockingly condescending Customer Service Agent took quite awhile but eventually said that the system was being "upgraded" and that some things weren't working at this time.  No shit!  Since my bill is due tomorrow and they would charge me a late fee if I didn't pay by then I asked her what she suggested.  She offered that I could go to the office and pay there, pay with their automated system for free, or pay and extra $5 to talk to an operator.  I opted for the free automated system with some dread.

Charter's voice recognition system is one of the worst in the industry from my experience and it took endless repetitions of information and answers to finally get through the process but eventually the credit card I offered was accepted.  Once a confirmation number was given the automated voice asked if there was anything else I needed.  I said no and was transferred to a customer satisfaction survey consisting of 5 questions.

This was my favorite part.  Here I was almost an hour into trying to pay my bill and the first question asked was about the degree of competence and professionalism of the agent.  You are given the choice of 1-5 with 5 excellent and 1 awful.  I chose 1 and the system immediately want to the old rapid busy signal.  "Perfect", I thought.