Cablevision Of Long Island Harasses Former Customer For 2 1/2 Years

This is going to be one of those rare times when I use this blog for personal use. This post will have nothing to do with Ghostbusters, so feel free to ignore it if that's all you came here for. However, if you live on Long Island in the state of New York, you might want to read this.

My family was a customer of Cablevision Systems Corporation (aka Cablevision Of Long Island) in the 1980s, and again from 1994 to March 2007. Their cable television service was good during the analog years, but got really poor after they made the transition to digital in September 2001 (their ironically-named "Optimum" service). Channels constantly froze-up and digitally broke-up, especially expensive wrestling pay-per-view broadcasts (like the $55 Wrestlemania each year). They sent tons of technicians to our house, but the problem never got permanently resolved. Their prices were never good either. Since they had a cable monopoly on Long Island, they overcharged their customers for their lousy service, made every On Demand channel a separate charge even though many were supposed to be free with their related broadcast channels, and there was really nothing their customers could do about it. There was no alternative, except over-the-air broadcasts. (Satellite television is incomparable to cable television, and from what I've seen of it, it's far worse.)

That all changed in early 2007 when Verizon launched their FiOS television/internet/phone service in our area. Even without having seen it for ourselves, we jumped at the chance to get off the Cablevision Titanic for the (hopefully) safety and reliability of the FiOS Carpathia. The FiOS television service has very rarely froze-up and has been overall very good. That's not to say that Verizon is perfect. The only complaints we have about it is that it's not really cheaper than Cablevision (with taxes taken into consideration, both companies offerings pretty much even out), and that Verizon forces us into a contract in order to get the cheaper bundle price. But at least what we're paying for is of a quality that's worth paying for. (If Verizon really wants to get a leg-up on the competition, they'd drop the contract requirement, and lower the prices so as to offset the taxes.)

It didn't take long for Cablevision to start sending sales reps to out house begging and pleading with us to go back to Cablevision. If they would have only sent a few during 2007, all would be well. But they've sent about a DOZEN (that's a rough "thinking back" count) sales reps at all hours of the day, and are still sending them TWO AND A HALF YEARS later! The most recent visitation was a couple of jokers who came today. Every rep that has ever come to the house has been told "NO", yet Cablevision still sends them because they are so desperate to win back the customers that they've clearly lost, that they don't want to hear "no" for an answer. A walk down my block and around my town, shows MANY houses now hooked up to FiOS, including my next door neighbor whose tenant works for Cablevision. I wouldn't say "yes" to Cablevision even if they offered it for free for the rest of my life. I'd rather pay to get good service than get crappy service for free.

The fact that Cablevision has continually sent so many sales reps to our house, in spite of them all being told that we're not interested, and that Cablevision is still sending them two and a half years later, constitutes harassment in my book. Is Cablevision looking to be sued for harassment?