Look ma! I've been grifted!

If you just want the grifting part (not the back-story), skip ahead to paragraph 3 (this being paragraph 0).

So my exitement had been somewhat overwhelming to get my cable back. As you may know I've been living in the lap of luxury for most of this year, enjoying the high life of standard (perhaps even extended) cable with all the music channels and whatnot, while paying only for basic. Then on a stormy May night I flipped to channel something-or-other and it wasn't there. As the tears swelled in my immediately bored eyes, I looked through my mail to find a notice. Yes, Comcast had done an audit and, a mere 6 months after I downgraded service, realized I was getting more cable than I should be.

I figured it couldn't be too bad. I've lived without cable before. But this is the summer. I work out of my apartment. I take lunch when I want, make a delicious sandwhich, maybe some soup and watch some quality spongebob, yu-gi-oh, or at least an episode of roseanne. But I know how expensive regular old cable can be. So I lay in pergatory, not knowing which cable-setup will be my final cable setup.

Then the call comes, as-if-from above. I thought it was going to be another me-be-unusually-rude-and-hang-up-mid-sentence-to-a-telemarketer call, but this one enticed me from the get-go. The offer was: for $5 more than I pay now for Cable (it was Comcast, or say they claimed), I could have my regular cable back. That's right for 6 months (in 3, i'll be in singapore mind you), I can pay a mere $5 more a month for standard cable. Well, for the first time in my life-time career of hating telemarketers and trying to come up with clever ways of dissuading them from calling me, I accepted the phone-style invitation. "Yes," I said, "I think I'll do it."

So the lady gets all excited like no one ever says yes and she sends me to Bob or Phil or Juan or whoever it is that has to set up my installation. So I get this guy instantly and he verifies my information and sets up the appointment. He says make sure an adult is home on Friday May 3 from 12-4pm. "Ok," I say, "No problem." Little did I know, it would be a problem.

Let's recap. Things I told them phone convo:
* My name
* My phone number
* Maybe some other trinket (last 4 of the ssn or something)

Things they "gathered" from their "records":
* My address
* My current billing status (what cable I had, etc.)

Long story short (too late!)^*, some days pass, and my excitement grows. Enter the wee hours of the morning Friday. Atom, Tarnow, hospital, vacuuming, IV, CT Scan, buffing, Morphine!, Rx, and I'm spent. I get home at 8am and sleep until 4:30pm. Yep, asleep from the precious hours of from 12-4. I remember faintly hearing my answering machine pick up, though no message was left and the ringer was off on my phone, so I didn't wake up enough to care.

Last night, I'm on the phone and start exclaiming profanities when I realize the night was that of Friday and I still had but upn and one other channel. So I check (to make sure they didnt just upgrade me -- after all I didn't have to be home for them to downgrade my service). Wait, come to think of it, I didn't have to be here the last time they worked on it (since the install). Eh. I called 1-800-COMCAST. I described the problem to the guy who answered who seemed very surprised.

Guy: "You sure it wasn't $5 for HBO, Showtime, ..."
Me: "Absolutely not."
Guy: "Do you remember the offer."
Me: "Yes. And I told it to you. $5 for ."
Guy: "Ok, hold on."

The phone rings, I am transferred to another guy. For the purposes of this dialog (an excerpt), he will be "Gu" for sake of margins.

Gu: "Can I help you?"
Me: "I don't know why I am talking to you, but ."
Gu: "Hmm...let me look you up."

Gu: "Yeah we don't have any service being done to any time in the past few months. No notes on your account indicating an upgrade and I don't remember seeing that deal you mentioned."
Me: "Seriously?"
Gu: "Yeah, we have no record of that whatsoever."
Me: "I think I've been grifted then, sorry. I mean they called me."
Gu: "Yeah next time get a name or number."
Me: "Ok, I will. Thanks."
Gu: "Chao."

Ok, so Gu didn't say "Chao." But you get the point. How creepy is that?

Answer: rull creepy.


^* First person to name the reference in a comment gets a freeeeee quarter.