One of today’s first world pusherman is Comcast, aka Xfinity (we aren’t fooled with rebranding… or are we?).

We switch over to Comcast from AT&T back in August of 2016, and they offered us some kind of package with a 2 year contract with however many hundreds of channels, that which we watch only a handful of. One day, out of that handful of channels we do watch, one disappears. The error is, “channel unavailable”. Wife says she loves that channel and that we must call Comcast and get to the bottom of this.

I call Comcast and after a few minutes of waiting, I am greeted on the phone by Comcast Representative, Doing-Gods-Work-Kenny, who I can only imagine took this job to make some extra money while looking for another job or is finishing up some college credits to get his degree in Computer Science or something in an attempt to get into a more fulfilling career in order to save his soul. Kenny asks me what the problem is, or more accurately, how can he assist me. “Kenny, one of my wife’s favorite channels has disappeared, please save me”. Kenny replies that sometimes the channels change their prices, which causes Comcast to have to move them to other packages.This comment does not help my frustration or my disdain for humongous corporations and their lack of common courtesy and care for their customers. Next, Kenny tells me that he understands my frustration and that he’s going to put me on hold just for a minute to see if there is a better offer that he can give me. I then tell Kenny that I understand he is just doing his job and that having to change packages doesn’t sound like a reasonable solution, but I will hear his solution out. I also beg him to add a note to the ‘ticket’ that says this customer wants the bigwigs to know he is not happy with them changing channel packages especially with the excuse of throwing the channel company under the bus. He agrees to add the note. Small victory, I know.

Kenny-God-Bless-His-Soul comes back on the line and gives me two solutions. The first solution is that I can change packages, which will give me 60 more channels (including the lost channel) and be approximately 9 cents less per month than what I am paying now. The catch is that I need to sign another 2-year contract. Note, that we just past 1 year on a 2-year contract with Comcast. The second solution also involves a new 2-year contract and, frankly, I can’t remember that deal as it was more complicated than that first and I tuned out.

I picked the first option because television is crack.

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. ” ― William S. Burroughs