Cocks Communications

After moving back into my house once electricity had been restored to my neighborhood, I had patiently waited a few days before calling Cocks (Cox Communications) because I figured that the their crews were working hard to restore cable service to the city and that my neighborhood would be one of the neighborhoods next in line to get service restored, especially since friends that lived only blocks away already had cable service. However, my patience grew thin and I finally called to Cocks to see what the deal was. I was told by the Cocks representative that she "wasn't seeing any outages in my area". I thought, "Does she realize that there was a huge friggin hurricane that just tore everything up?". But apparently cable had already been restored to my neighborhood so she put me in the system but warned me that she didn't know when they would be able to get out to my house. "Someone will call you" she said.

After a week of no calls from Cocks, I decided to call again to see what the progress was. After waiting a hell of a long time with that muzak buzzing in my ear, I was informed that they still didn't know when they were going to get out to my house. Great.

Over a week later I'm pissed, still no call from Cocks. I Call again and have to battle though about 8 redials because apparently there were so many calls to Cocks that their phone system couldn't even put me on hold. Finally I get through and get in the hold cue. This lasts for 25 minutes or so before a Cocks representative comes on. Then we go through the typical security BS:

What's the Name on the Account?
What's the phone number on the account?
What's the Address?
What's the last 4 digits of the Social Security Number?
What's your mother's maiden name?
What's your dad's nickname?
What's your underwear size?
What's your favorite color?
What's the average airspeed velocity of a swallow?
Do I have permission to access your account?

YES, OF COURSE YOU DO, THAT'S WHY I'M CALLING!!!

OK, so after the Fort Knox security checklist, I let her know that I'm pretty pissed and that I haven't heard from Cocks since I originally called and that I'm about to switch to DirectTV. She gives me the same "I'm not showing an outage in your area" bullshit so I let her know that I and my neighbor do not have cable service. She tells me that at least 6 people need to call in for it to be considered an outage. Great. She also tells me that my work order is "in the system" but that the 2 week schedule is completely full and that she does not know when they are going to get out to me. Great, so I'm exactly where I was when i first called over two weeks prior to this.

The funny thing is that I get the feeling that Cocks is restoring cable service to Mid City, Lakeview, and Gentilly - you know, places that currently aren't habitable. I hope that's not the case.

update: I called again today and finally talked to someone who knew what they were talking about. He explained that I am in fact in some sort of outage, a designated "Katrina zone". The reason could be that a node which services 800-1000 customers is out. The reason why they couldn't schedule me in the first place is because I was in this "Katrina Zone" - no point in scheduling individual appointments when the cable doesn't work for the area. I just don't see why it took me 4 calls to Cocks to get the correct information.