So I am a Cablevision customer. So are my parents. None of us have any real choice in the matter, as Cablevision/Optimum hold an effective monopoly on internet/television service in our respective communities. Both of these incidents were really annoying and wasted significant chunks of my Sunday and Monday, but by Wednesday everyone in my family had their service up and running. It was still deeply annoying, made doubly annoying by the near-constant stream of condescending and misleading information pushed forth by Cablevision employees. My attempts to find an appropriate place to express my displease at these practices led to an entirely new level of frustration, though.
Cablevision is incredibly secretive about their employees’ contact information; over the past few days I’ve been told repeatedly that management have e-mail accounts available only through their intranet, or that they have phone numbers inaccessible from outside lines. Both of these things happen to be untrue.
My frustration reached its peak with a series of tech support chats last night, which inspired a couple of tumblr posts about their persistent references to legal action and the tortured syntax employed in their exchanges.
One of these posts found its way onto the screen of Jim Maiella, VP of Media Relations for Cablevision, who followed me on Twitter and offered to help resolve the issue. Jim provided me with his e-mail address, and I will respect his wishes not to offer it to the public. But I will say I was able to communicate with him without being on the Cablevision intranet, and there’s something seriously flawed with a company’s workflow when the only way to get a contact address from a massive corporation is to bitch about them on Twitter and hope that one of their vice-presidents notice. What follows is the e-mail I sent him. It’s really long. Did he help me resolve the problem?
TO BE CONTINUED
Read more »



















