I bet you thought our cable saga was over? Oh, no—there’s more.

Yesterday we got an emailed change order from the ISP confirming the time the tech was supposed to get here to install the new modem … and it turned out the rep told me a wee porkie over the phone. She offered me an internet bundle with a phone line for $140. I said we didn’t need a phone line—she said, “Oh, it’s free for a year.” By that point I had been on the line for 75 minutes and was tired so I said fine, we’ll take it.

Until I saw the change order. Yeah, no. According to the change order this “free” phone line is $19.99 a month, and that’s a promotional price that goes up after a year. So I went back to the ISP storefront to talk to the folks who handled the cable equipment (steam may have been coming out of my ears). I knew they had nothing to do with this so I wasn’t going to get mad at them, just the company.

Turns out they were confused as well while checking my equipment back in because they knew all I wanted was internet, no additional phone line. Also, apparently the phone reps are known for this kind of crap and that I am to come directly into the office if we have any more problems (it didn’t hurt that the manager I was speaking with was named Fletcher and his family came over on the Mayflower so it’s quite possible that he and Lyndon are related. When he found out what I’d been quoted for just the internet he said, “Uh, no. We can do better than that”).

Long story short: the new billing cycle had already started and they don’t prorate so we’re locked into the stupidly high cost for one more month, but after confirming that 1) we already had a wifi modem, and 2) I was married to a telecoms engineer who could install a modem on his own, they blew away the rep’s service change, handed me a modem, and set up a new service change with no additional equipment charges and no tech visit. Total price should be $89/month, which is about a third of what we’re paying now.

Oh, and after Lyndon installed the modem our download speed is now 280 mbps, up from 80 mbps. Muuuuch better. And yes, I know other people have 1 gbps down but we don’t download movies or do anything that needs that kind of bandwidth. Frankly, the 280 mbps makes us perfectly happy.