I hate Spectrum. I’d probably hate any other TV provider, too (because they’re all a pain in the ASS), but we feel cable is a little better than a dish, especially around here when the weather gets bad (I’ve seen what happens to those dish providers during a storm).
We have three DVRs. Before Spectrum took over Time Warner, we used to have a whole house system. Where we could watch any show recorded on any DVR from any DVR. It was great. We weren’t forced to watch it on the DVR that did the recording. Then Spectrum took over.
They didn’t support whole house systems. They don’t have anything that sophisticated. Why would a company get rid of the BEST FEATURE of DVRs???? We only got to keep the one we had because we were grandfathered in. Then we moved.
Yeah, we lost our whole house system. So we’re stuck with three separate DVRs and we have to go to that DVR to watch the shows we had recorded, which is another pain in the ASS. We moved the bedroom DVR into the Great Room so our TV can use both DVRs (and because we didn’t want to have to watch our recorded shows in the bedroom).
Problem was… the bedroom DVR didn’t record all that well. I’d set it up to record a show and sometimes it would record it all and sometimes it would only record five minutes of it. We couldn’t rely on it for our series, but we had shows on the DVR that had recorded correctly. Daughter and I finally watched the last show last week. The DVR was now ready to be replaced.
You’d think this would be a joyous time. Nope. I followed the INSTRUCTIONS that the clerk at Spectrum HANDED me when I exchanged DVRs. I spent all day waiting for the DVR to show the time so I could call to activate it. Waited for the message on the TV to say it was ready to be activated. I unplugged/plugged it several times. Reconnected the cables. Nothing was working.
Hubby called Spectrum, which is something we really hate to do. I think they purposely use that recorded voice to repel callers. I know I think long and hard before I have to call them.
After answering all the questions and telling robot lady we needed technical support, the recording said that we had an outage in our area (we didn’t) and kept telling us there wasn’t anything they could do. You know, if we could have talked to a real person, they would have KNOWN why we were calling.
Hubby almost had to start over, but managed to get in line for a real person. And then we find out… the INSTRUCTIONS WERE WRONG!!!
You see, their DVRs don’t have clocks on them anymore.
And that right there really pisses me off. Used to be all the electronics had clocks on them. Now, NONE OF THEM DO!!! What, don’t people like to see what time it is? I certainly do.
I hope our older DVR never dies (it’s the one we use the most). I will not be happy without a clock. There’s nowhere behind the TV to hang one (since there are three windows there).
By the way, do the other TV providers have clocks on their devices? That would be a big selling point to win me over.
Anyway, both boxes are now working, but I don’t know if I want to use the new one. It has a completely DIFFERENT menu system! Why?????
I was going to set up to record Season 6 of SHIELD on that one (since we haven’t seen Season 5 yet—have to get that on Netflix). I may still do it, but gee whiz, why does Spectrum have to make everything so complicated?
Oh, and the real kicker after all this? The guide on the old box now has a stupid advertising line between the channels. An ADVERTISEMENT! I pay a lot of money for cable. I don’t think I should have to be forced to see an ADVERTISEMENT on the stupid GUIDE!
If I didn’t like watching TV so much, I’d give it up.
Thanks for letting me rant. I just hope I don’t write another ranty post on Monday. The appliance repair person is supposed to come by today and find out why our dishwasher keeps blowing the circuit breaker. The electrician already said it wasn’t the wiring. And yes, it’s still under warranty. So at least we have that going for us.
Stacy
6 comments:
We've had Direct TV forever. Sorry, no clocks on those boxes either. But the cost keeps going up and up and they want to charge us ten bucks for each box (we have four) even though we've never had to pay for them before.
However, we do have the Home Genie System and we can record on one DVR and watch it on another.
As you know. we just recently canceled Netflix. I might try Hulu. There's the Fire Stick too which is pretty cheap, and lets you stream all sorts of things. I've yet to figure out all it can do though. LOL!
As for your dishwasher, our coffeemaker used to blow the circuit. It turned out it was on the same circuit as the microwave. Greg moved the circuit and now we can run both.
Do you know if anything else kicks on while the dishwasher is running? It might be worth checking.
Alex - The cost keeps going up on all the services. If you don't call and threaten to leave, it'll probably keep going up, too.
Maria - The dishwasher is in the island, which has two outlets and the garbage disposal. That's all that is on that breaker. Nothing is plugged into the outlets, either. It's a mystery since the breaker blows sometime after I open the dishwasher door and it's been left open.
Spectrum sucks. When they switched from TWC, they left us on the old billing plan, which kept going up, and up... I finally had enough when our bill hit $235/month, with no premium channels, and 20MBS Internet. Turns out the new Spectrum billing plans offered 100 MBs Internet, and the same TV for less! They couldn't have switched us without me having to spend hours on the phone (which I love as much as you do)? They offered me a customer retention package when I said "DirectTV is starting to look really good."
One thing I'm not looking forward to with our move is that the only Internet provider in our neighborhood is Comcast, which I've heard sucks as much as Spectrum, if not more.
Jennette - I don't think there is ANY TV provider that is 100% good. There's always something. Just have to pick and choose which you can live with, I suppose. And that's why I pick cable. I don't think I could handle DirectTV or Dish. It storms too much here!
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