Wednesday, July 22, 2009

RCN Sucks

I only have about a week left in my apartment, and mercifully, I will soon be rid of RCN as my cable provider. With some good fortune, I'll never have to deal with them again.

Of course, I couldn't just run out the clock on my cable plan without another example of how completely inept and ridiculous this company is.

I commented over a week ago about how my cable bill shot up to well over $100/month. I figured I had been on a promotion, and RCN, being a sneaky company that doesn't genuinely care about its customers (at least until they come perilously close to churning) just opted not to remind me.

I was wrong about that, they did remind me...today, a good 10 days after I got my 'enhanced' bill.

The letter I got today, which is dated July 13th, included the following:

Dear JC,

We want to thank you for being a loyal and valued RCN customer. As a valued customer, you deserve the best services at reasonable prices.

This letter is to inform you that the promotional pricing you signed up for is scheduled to end on your next billing cycle. We'd like to offer you the opportunity to keep all your current services for only an additional $20 per month.


Blah Blah Blah...All of us at RCN appreciate your business.

They appreciate my business and respect me so much that they waited until after I paid a higher bill to inform me that my bill would be going up...Gee, thanks guys. I sure can tell I'm a valued customer.

I also love that I have the great 'opportunity' to pay an extra $20/month. I can't wait for other great opportunities they might have like getting gouged for a premium movie channel, extorted into equipment 'rental' fees, or just having RCN thugs grab me outside my office and steal my lunch money.

This only adds to RCN's rich history of providing poorly functioning cable boxes, providing disturbingly inferior VOD interface, and let's not forget the six months I spent trying to get my internet fixed because my modem needed "re-provisioning" (note: Re-provisioning just means some worthless call center employee in either Bangalore or Salt Lake City types a 3 instead of a 2 on their computer...it took a number of visits from technicians and calls to figure it out)

So to Tom McKay, Senior Vice President of Operations & General Manager of RCN...I'm going to decline your generous offer of having me pay you more money. I look forward to returning your equipment, washing my hands of the whole affair, and never doing business with your organization again, unless it's to acquire your firm, torch the headquarters, and desecrate your remains.

Peace.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like you needed to read the fine print before you started the service.... not RCN's fault

Anonymous said...

RCN is the worst company I have ever encounter and will never never ever use it again in my life!!!!!

The New York Crank said...

RCN is terrible. After they raised my rates and I complained that I was paying more than I paid my old provider, while now getting fewer channels, they offered me, in writing, a fuzzily-written offer of an "upgrade" service for less than I'm paying without the upgrade. I called to confirm that my price would go down if I bought the upgrade. (It didn't seem likely, but that's what the note to me seemed to be saying.) That was a simple question that required a yes or a no. Instead, I got somebody double talking and clearly not answering my question. I repeated it several times. He double talked several times. My guess is, they'd add the price of the upgrade to what I'm currently paying. However, they didn't say that and wouldn't acknowledge it. I finally hung up on the jerk at RCN. But I no longer trust them and will switch away as soon as I can find another "come on" rate for a year or two.

What RCN needs is a good regulatory kick in the teeth.

No wonder I'm so damn cranky!