Monday

Weekends = disappear like magic.
Poof, they're gone.
Well, so it is.
Drive to work today under dark, overcast skies.
Too bad it doesn't bring the temps down any, it is muggy and nasty feeling outside right now.
Our company announced merit increases as of - this morning when I got in and saw an email about it. I'll take anything I can get right now, the increase starts in August.

Well, anyway, I was on the phone with Direct TV last night - for like 2 hours. I don't really like to put up with their bs, so, sometimes they hang up on me. I talked to - 5,6 don't really remember how many different people I talked to, I kept asking for an American IN America, I didn't want to talk to India, Philippines or Mexico, thank you.

I had no idea they had opened call centers in Tijuana. The manager I was speaking with there lives in San Diego but works in Mexico. Long story, it always is, my desired end result was a reduction in the amount I am paying the company.

My premise was the deals that they had on their website: $34.99 for the same amount of channels I currently have per month; $39.99 for even more channels. I am currently paying $68.99 per month plus the receivers. I FINALLY got to an American manager - it took quite a while and a lot of persistence to get to this person, the conversation was probably 40 minutes just with this one guy.

I did not know that Direct TV was charging me (and everyone else) $7.95 per month for "recording priviledges". Meaning if you have a DVR, you have to pay that fee to be able to record on your DVR. Further, they said that since I had "only" been with them a little over 2 years, I couldn't get the same deal as if I had been with them much longer. Yes, I said, I HAVE been with your company, at least a decade now on 2 separate accounts.

Cutting off the account and starting a new one also, according to them, cuts off your "tenure" with them. Even IF the reason the contract is cancelled is because of a minor little thing such as your house burning down.

Whatever. I removed the "free"movie channels that were no longer free, got the $7.95 fee removed, but only for 6 months (the man adamently stated that was as long as he could go with it, that's all the computer would give him) and then decided to start looking into Dish Network. Dish Network does not require as many receivers as Direct TV - but - the man at Direct TV claims that even though that's true, they charge $14.95 per month for the single receiver. Yes, this conversation went from the depths of the sea to outer space in it's broad ranging aspects of topic.

Oh, and I did get 2 months of other channels free - Showtime to be precise, though I doubt Showtime is any better than Starz. But, free is free, so who cares.

I expected a long, drawn out ordeal to get the information I wanted and I was not let down in that particular aspect. One guy was being cocky and a smart-@$$ - in the Philippines, I wanted to speak to an American representative - so I asked him how his nation's cannibal tribes are doing. Yes, they have cannibals, yes, they eat humans. He replied that one lives at ....and read out my address plus Phoenix, AZ.

Whatever. I got some sort of reduction, I am now going to hone in on Dish Network, get into some conversations over there and ask some pointed questions.

However, I can't do that right now, cause the work day is here, and though there is nothing to do in the truck routing system, I must be offa here.

G'day.

ben