Dear Altice

At 5:16 am, the internet died. Not for you, perhaps, but at Casa de SJ. No reason. It was just gone, which wasn’t exactly shocking as it disappears three or four times a week, for an hour or so, regularly. It’s been this way since Altice USA purchased Cablevision in 2016.

They still call the service Optimum, but the name is aspirational. It’s not a matter of a cable company being callous toward its customers, as was the hallmark of Cablevision’s service, but that they no longer deliver. The downside of a connected world is when the company you pay to provide the connection simply fails to deliver regularly, there isn’t much to be done.

I’ve called Altice about this many times. The initial call gets a recording, after the requisite 17 minutes of voice tree branches, irrelevant dialogues and self-promotional nonsense, that informs you that they were experiencing higher than normal volume and offers you the choice of either waiting for a customer service representative or having them call you back when a CSR is available. I’ve tried both.

When they tell you the wait time is 17 hours, 43 minutes, they’re underestimating. When you get the call back the next day, the answers are still unavailing. After running through the normal reboot advice and explanation with either a Bangalore or Philipino accent about how it must be something you did, you finally get to the nitty gritty: “Well, we tested your line and everything appears to be working fine now.”

You call the first time.You call the second. If you’re really bored, you call a third, but then you realize that this isn’t a good use of your time. The alternative, at least around Casa de SJ, is Verizon FIOS, On the one hand, FIOS is more expensive. On the other hand, FIOS is similarly unreliable. Do not tell me how much you love them. I used them for a while, and that’s why I now use Altice. There is no other alternative here.

How is it possible that there is no serious competition to provide internet service? It’s a good question, to which the only answer I’m aware of is that by internet providers not poaching each other’s customers, each gets to enjoy their cash machine unmolested. Everyone needs internet access, and it’s not as if most of us can manage without it. In any event, I need it, so even if you can, I don’t care.

Accordingly, there are no posts this morning because Altice failed to provide me with internet access during the period when I read about things that are happening in the world. Then again, there isn’t much happening of interest aside from nonsensical claims of vote fraud by Trump, petulant firings of dubious purpose and vapid cries of conspiracy by hysterics. They will pass soon enough, sound and fury signifying nothing.

But in this void, I can offer this open letter to a company whose only consistent skill is billing.

Dear Altice,

You suck.

Your pal,
Scott

If you have nothing more productive to do with your time, feel free to use the comments to discuss why mail-in voting violates the Equal Protection Clause. I would add “wrong answers only” but there are no other kinds of answers. It’s dead.