The lesser of 2 evils...

What are you supposed to do when you have 2 options, neither of which is all that appealing to you? Sometimes spending hours on the phone (like I have done) is not something that you want to do, when the end result is either poop dolled up on a plate or poop in a bucket.

I have a current bundle package for my cable, Internet, and home phone with a company I'll call Bombast. It's bombastic. Not only do we never really know what to expect as far as whether or not our cable will go out, we have features on our home phone we don't want or need, and we have TV channels we never watch. We want a DVR (we are spoiled with it and will probably have difficulty going without). We want few specific cable channels, but we don't need a lot of what is required to pay for in order to get what we want.

So, when realizing just how much we were paying Bombast to provide us with such unnecessary frivolity, we decided to see what other options are out there. That's when the phone calls started.

First I called Dur Heck TV. I spoke with a very persuasive salesman and was all ready to switch over to them, despite their 2 year contract that requires you to pay $20 a month for each month you terminate that contract early should you choose to do so and despite a couple other bothers (not to mention a satellite dish). In fact, I locked in to that deal by paying their $21.75 equipment shipping charge and was told I could call back and cancel the installation should I change my mind later.

Then I spoke with Bombast. I wanted to simply remove my cable from my package deal to shave off some money there. In trying to get me to stay with them, they went the route of it'll-cost-you-just-as-much-for-Internet-and-phone-because-you'll-lose-the-package-deal. This actually had an opposite effect on me. I started to think, "Well, then I guess I'll have to quit all my Bombast services."

So in came Jest. I called Jest to see if I could be hooked up with phone and Internet services. I don't know a whole lot about DSL versus high-speed Internet connections in a battle of annoyance/effectiveness, but I was willing to give it a try. Even knowing I'd have to pay $99 to have someone switch up some wires in my home so I could have a secondary line (that I already have) through Jest for work, and I'd have to buy a DSL modem and I'd have to jump through flaming hoops of fire, I was still interested, especially when they said I'd get a package deal because I was going to be going with Dur Heck TV for my satellite cable. It sounded like I'd be saving about $50 or more a month than what I was paying at the time for my Bombast package and even $15 or so a month cheaper than the cheapest comparable deal with Bombast.

I ran the information by Joe, and we decided Dur Heck TV and Jest were the companies we wanted to go with. I had already had an installation date for Dur Heck TV set up for this Thursday, so all I had to do was call back Jest and Bombast and I'd be on my way.

I tried to contact the Jest employee who had originally helped me, in case they work off commission, twice. He was nice enough to give me his email address and told me to email him when I was ready to sign up so he could then call. But when I emailed him at first to ask him a quick question, I got no phone call and no reply. Then I emailed him later telling him, "We have decided to sign up and I want to give you the commission (if' that's how that works), so please call me." No call. Then we went out of town.

So yesterday, I decided I'd better hop to it, hoping everything could be taken care of on Thursday. On my lunch break, I called Jest and talked to an incompetent woman. That call lasted about 35 minutes (5 minutes longer than my lunch break) and had me on hold quite a lot of the time. Even though Jest said that we'd have to switch our home phone #, I decided to stick with the plan. I even got a cool new home phone # from them. She gave me a confirmation # for my order and said I'd be getting a call from someone about setting up the phone lines.

So I called Bombast later and spent some time talking to a very competent and persuasive person there who didn't want to lose my business. She explained ways I could stay with them and save money. Plus she pointed out different reasons WHY I should want to stay with them. And when she knew there was an issue with their computer system, she asked if she could call me back instead of putting me on hold for several minutes while trying to figure out what was going on there. She called back and made the changes to our services, matching the offer with Dur Heck TV and Jest if not beating it because of extras and not having all those installation/equipment fees, etc.

Then I had to call Dur Heck TV and Jest back to cancel the upcoming installation and services. I spent a fair amount of time doing all this. But the thing that was most annoying and baffling was that Jest apparently didn't even have anything on my file indicating I wanted anything other than the phone line I already have for work. Apparently, the incompetent woman I spoke with never issued the work order, even after giving me that confirmation. Or so the 2 people I spoke with yesterday afternoon who were trying to figure things out said. That made us very happy that we chose to stick with Bombast, currently appearing to be the lesser of the 2 evils...