Using Your Voice

People often ask me why I write letters, emails, and phone 800 numbers. I believe that when you have complaints or encouragements, you should voice them.

Recently, I was experiencing a strange problem: one channel, and only one, was exceptionally bright. Didn’t matter if I watched the channel using the TV input, through TiVo, or through the VCR, that channel was much brighter than all others.

Many people wouldn’t make a comment on this to their cable company. Many would reason that it might be on their end, or that it is just one channel, so why bother. “Someone will figure it out,” may be what these people would say.

Well, I went online to Cox Cable and sent in an email to their support department. It was not important enough to call and wait for a live consultation when I knew if the problem was on their end, it would be something a telephone jockey couldn’t help with. But it was important enough to contact someone and have it checked.

I received the following response today from Cox’s support:

Hello John,

Thank you for your email. Please accept our apology
for the time it has taken us to reply back. We thank
you for bringing this problem to our attention. Without
your feed back we would have never looked in to this
matter. Once we received your email, we had our
maintenance department see if this was a problem at
the headend (the main system that provides cable and
audio to your area). We did just received confirmation
that we were able to identify the problem and it has
been corrected. 

We hope that we have been able to provide you with the
information you requested.  If we have not, or if we
can be of any additional service to you, please do not
hesitate to contact us again.

Thank you.

Michelle

Cox Communications Online Technical Support Team

So, as you can see, voicing the complaint was important as it turned out to be a problem on their end. I just checked the channel in question and it is finally clear, under control, and the same brightness level as all the others.

And, since this problem was on their end, I just helped improve the reception for many thousands of other viewers in this area.

Sometimes, it pays to voice your opinions.