I just spent the last 20 minutes on the phone canceling my qwest service at our house. Those many minutes on hold led me to start thinking about customer service, or the lack thereof. Can you think of a place you’ve been recently that has offered you terrific customer service? All I can think of is places that I refuse to go because they’ve treated me so poorly (Circuit City!) I understand that working in retail can have it’s difficult moments, but I also understand that every human being is entitled to a certain amount of respect. And I don’t feel bad about expecting it.

I’ve been thinking about this because of my recent debacle with my internet, phone and television service. We decided to stop paying for both home and cell phone service and go cell only. Because of that, we thought we’d just switch over to cable for our television and internet (hence the canceling of qwest.) I was in California when the cable guy came to hook up our service. I asked Jim to record Grey’s Anatomy for me because I’d be flying home when it aired. He thought that he got it recorded, but when we got home, we couldn’t figure out how to access it. So the next day I called Bresnan to ask them how to access my show and discovered that we don’t even have a DVR.

Apparently they’re out of DVR’s. Of course the installer didn’t bother to tell Jim that we weren’t getting a DVR. Wasn’t that nice of him? I have to admit that I felt really silly about throwing a fit about my television service. It’s not like we’re without heat or something. But if I’m paying for it, and if I’m told I’m going to have a service, I expect to get what I’m paying for. It’s not that hard. They did offer minimal compensation, but in the meantime, we’re without a DVR.

The biggest problem is that I haven’t watched Martha all week and I’m starting to go through withdrawls!