I’m not dead
Hamilton woman told by cable company that she was disconnected because she was dead. (SPOILER ALERT: She’s not)
The cable company didn’t forewarn Joyce Huffman before it snuffed her TV, internet and phone service in one fell swoop. Of course they didn’t. Why would they? She was dead.
It sucks being dead — no TV, no internet, no phone, no “bundle” of joy from your cable company. It especially sucks to be dead when you’re not really dead but your cable company tells you that you are. I mean, they’d know, right?
At least if you’re dead, you presumably won’t miss your cancelled services. But if you’re not really dead, you’ll miss them very much, especially if they’re all gone together and your world’s gone media “dark.”
Meet Joyce Huffman of Hamilton — and don’t be scared. She’s alive, well and finally reconnected.
Joyce, 89, likes her internet, cellphone and TV. On May 10, her enjoyment of those delights came to a crashing, albeit temporary, halt — though it was a very long “temporary.”
The first sign was her TV went. “I thought it had something to do with the big windstorm,” says Joyce.
“So I went to use my phone,” she says. Guess what? No service. And no internet to boot.
When she finally got through, her server, Cogeco, regretted to inform her, in effect, that she was on the wrong side of the ground, as they say — a diagnosis that seemed counter-indicated by the demonstrably vital sign of Joyce herself speaking to them at the other end of the conversation.
“They told me that someone named Sue Phillips had contacted them to say that I was dead and so my service should be disconnected,” Joyce says.
Joyce tells me she doesn’t know of anyone named Sue Phillips. Maybe there’s another Joyce Huffman somewhere, now gone, who knew a Sue Phillips. But not this Joyce Huffman.
Joyce managed to get her phone service back. I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. Because the ensuing days were eaten up in agonizing endurances on hold or in fits of being bounced around, so prolonged that the very geology of the Earth seemed to be changing while she waited.
“One day I spent literally over 10 hours on the phone,” Joyce says. “And it was on my pay-asyou-use plan, so I didn’t know how much I’d owe.”
Over the intervening weeks, Cogeco restored Joyce’s cable, but only basic (she pays for extra) and without hi-def, which she’d had. They tried to restore internet but gave her the wrong modem, she says.
“It’s been nothing but a headache,” Joyce tells me. It seems, as we used to say, you have to scream until you’re blue in the face (but not too blue, it seems; they’ll think you’re dead).
As of May 22, she was still without proper TV and cable. I put in a call to Cogeco. The request gets up to Gabriel Beauséjour, public relations senior adviser with Cogeco Connexion, in Quebec, and he emails me back promptly saying the issue has been “escalated to our office of the president.”
Later that day, he tells me Cogeco would be sending someone the next day to fix the TV and internet, followed by a visit from a technician on Tuesday, May 29. By May 23, the technician’s visit has been bumped up to the 24th.
As of May 25, all is fixed to Joyce’s satisfaction and she has been offered three months free service, which she asked for. (The only deficit is that Joyce had managed to keep the same phone number for 50 years — 50 — but now she’s got a new one.)
I have to describe Gabriel’s response as exceptional. He and/ or his team made things happen, quickly.
He tells me, “We sincerely apologize. It was an unfortunate mistake made by one of our agents. This will be further investigated and used as training materials” in the future.
Of course, they have a huge volume of calls and inquiries. Somehow identities got mixed up.
Says Gabriel, “A mistake stays a mistake if we don’t use it to try to improve.”
We’re glad it worked out.