why I hate my cable company

Four visits from a technician.

Two trips to the Spectrum store.

Multiple calls to Spectrum, varying in hold time from nine to 25 minutes.

Multiple calls to Spectrum with many many different people with every single one of them  giving me conflicting information.

And the outcome?

I turn in my DVR cable boxes and DVR service saving $35/month.

I cancel my HBO service and buy it instead directly though HBO, saving $100 for the year.

I add a DVR cloud service for $5/month (I record a lot).

The result?

The app loads slowly.

The interface is just okay.

And the DVR service doesn't work on my bedroom TV.

I call again and spend about an hour on the phone with the most senior level technical supervisor.

He has me signing in and out. Plugging and unplugging. All sorts of useless activities.

Still, it doesn't work. I schedule an appointment.

A technician comes to my house. While very nice, he says, "We only handle equipment problems. This is an app problem."

I call Spectrum. 

Twenty minutes later I reach someone, and ask immediately for a supervisor.

This time, I am lucky. 

I get Carlus. 

The only one in the entire company who happens to know Spectrum's cloud DVR service is not compatible with Samsung TV's made in 2016 (that's my bedroom TV, not my newer living room one). 

I guess this is a big secret at Spectrum that only Carlus has been told about.

Carlus is fantastic. And Derick the technician who has come to my house twice is too.

But they are only two people in a company of over 93,000.

Good luck sorting through all the misinformed and rude people to find the few hidden gems.

Addendum, only for those who care about getting rid of cable: 

I end up buying a great little ROKU for $40 and can now DVR shows in my bedroom. In addition, I can now watch Apple TV and DIscovery Plus which I couldn't before because my 2016 Samsung Smart TV was, I guess, not smart enough. 

I also buy a digital antenna so I can get NBC, CBS, ABC etc. with the hope of saying a complete goodbye to cable. The set up is easy. But, I don't like the interface and it's far too unwieldy, so I return it.

But just by doing the things I did do, I cut my cable bill by $50/month without much of a compromise.

So yes, it is worth it. But the process is a big pain, unless you have a better cable company than I do.