Charter Communications: The Worst Fucking Company On Earth

Motherfucker piss shit ass fuck twat.

Wednesday evening, I arrived back in Madison from California. I tried to get online to do something and my internet wasn’t connected. I fought with my computer for 45 minutes before I realized that hey, my phone didn’t work either. I went into the living room: my cable tv didn’t work either. It was late, so I resolved to call Charter (i.e., the worst motherfucking company on earth) in the morning.

Thursday morning I called (CALL NUMBER 1) Charter (REMEMBER, THE WORST FUCKING COMPANY ON EARTH) and was told there was an outage in my area. I asked how long and they said someone had been dispatched to fix it and it shouldn’t be long.

Friday morning: still no service (tv, internet, or phone) so I called back (CALL NUMBER 2). This time the utterly fucking idiot “cable tv tech support” person dispatched a technician to come look at my TV & Internet setup. The date and time for the service call? Saturday, between 1p and 5p. This becomes important later on, folks. She then transferred me to the Phone Division, where they set up a separate, Phone service call for the same day (Friday) between 8a and 5p.

Friday comes and goes, no one ever shows up or calls (MISSED SERVICE CALL 1). I would later be told that someone came to my house but I wasn’t there. Funny, I work from home; I was there all fucking day. My cell phone has this feature where I know if someone called. No one called.

Friday night I stayed at spacebee’s, because I didn’t have to be back home until 1p (when the service window was supposed to start) on Saturday.

Saturday I awoke at 11a to find 3 messages on my phone:

9:30a – “This is charter, we’re trying to confirm your service call today. The tech will be there in 20 minutes.”

10:10a – “This is Bob, the charter (the worst motherfucking company on earth) service tech, I’m outside your building.”

10:20a – “Sir, this is charter communications. You were not home so we are canceling this service call. Call back to reschedule.”

(MISSED SERVICE CALL 2)

I was about 4 shades of fucking enraged purple. However, I also know that “customer service” reps these days are trained such that if you yell and scream, they just say “Sir, I don’t have to take this abuse.” and hang up. So I called up (CALL NUMBER 3) charter (the worst motherfucking company on earth) and was angrily saying how badly I’d been treated and how this and that (no swearing, no yelling) and the guy interrupted me, put me on hold, then disconnected me. Motherfucking fuckwads at charter communications (the worst fucking company on earth). My call back was picked up, handled by a lady in South Carolina. I was then transferred to the Madison office, I was then transferred to someone in the repair department. She informed me that I had missed my appointment on Friday (news to fucking me, I was sitting in my apartment the whole day) and the one that morning (never mind that they said “in between 1 and 5″ and, where I live, TEN FUCKING O’CLOCK IS NOT BETWEEN ONE FUCKING O’CLOCK AND FIVE FUCKING O’CLOCK.)

In the end, after 60 minutes and 5 transfers or hang-ups, the repair department woman said she would schedule an appointment for me between 8a and 12:30p on Monday. So, I dutifully wake up this morning and start my now-tiring hobby of WAITING FOR MOTHERFUCKING CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS (THE WORST FUCKING COMPANY ON EARTH) MOTHERFUCKERS THAT NEVER FUCKING SHOW UP. At 12:56p I called (CALL NUMBER 4) charter (the worst fucking company on the planet) and inquired when a service tech would be at my home. I mean, they wouldn’t wait at my home for hours until I got there, but apparently I should wait all goddamn day. The woman (in North Carolina this time) looked at the service order and asked, “They aren’t there yet?” I responded “No.” She said, and I fucking quote, “Well, I suggest you just wait a little longer, they be running late. Call us back in an hour.”

Wait for it… wait for it.

(MISSED SERVICE CALL 3)

I just called back (CALL NUMBER 5) and was told that my appointment wasn’t for today! It’s for tomorrow, Tuesday! It says it right there on the order! It must be true if it says it right there on the order! What? They told me it was on Monday? No, no, no sir, I must have heard them wrong. It couldn’t be the fault of charter communications (the shittiest fucking service in the entire industry!) (and the employer of some astoundingly stupid fucking humans).

So what will I be doing to tomorrow? Sitting right here, HOLDING MY FUCKING DICK and waiting for someone at charter commui-fucking-cations (i.e., the worst company I’ve ever had dealings with) to walk in and say “damn, you don’t have any cable, phone, OR internet.”

Honestly, I haven’t been this enraged since The Steve Misrack (The Worst and Scummiest Landlord on Earth) Incident. This one is going down in the record books, folks.

Day 25: We Won! kind of

I am pleased to announce that I picked up a Certified Letter from the Post Office this morning from Steve Misrack. Inside was a three or so sentence letter and a check for $186.18. He considers the matter closed.

[soon to be a picture of my triumphant check]

However, with every win comes a loss, as he made the check out to “Zach + Erin Moneypenny AND Michael Kristopeit”. As those who have dealt with banks can attest to, I am going to have one pain in the ass of a time trying to deposit this goddamned thing. I’m sure Steve is laughing in a corner somewhere about how he screwed us over, Vince McMahon-style. I think we’ll find a way to cash the thing eventually, but in the meantime I’m glad for the following reasons:

1. He now can’t send our names to the collection agency for $1237.81 and ruin my credit rating.
2. He is not getting a single additional penny out of us.
3. We actually get to see some of our money returned to us.

The only bad thing is I wish I could have been in court to see him get reamed by a judge for dicking us over so badly. Eh, you take what you can get. I consider this equal to a $1423.99 swing in poker or craps, and you can’t get much better than a roughly $1500 gambling swing in your favor.

An additional benefit is that I am now quite knowledgable about California Tenant/Landlord Law, so come to me with your questions on procedure when you get dicked out of YOUR security deposit.

–whazz on, and on and on and on

Day 19: Sent The Letter Demanding Payment of $186.18

Don’t have a ton of time right now to paste the whole thing, but it is basically a minimally-edited version of the draft I had up on Whazzmaster some time ago.

I included a list of the items that I thought were unreasonable and will upload that when I have some spare time. The bottom line was that I added up $1,423.99 in unreasonable charges (including the crazy floor estimate). If you subtract that from the $1,237.81 that Steve says we owe him, it leaves $186.18 due to us.

I sent it Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. I didn’t want to have him sign for it because in all likelihood he will refuse any further mailings, thinking that he is being served with a lawsuit.

So, next steps: if he pays us our money everything will be right in the world. I doubt this will happen, so the question becomes: how will he respond to the threat of litigation in small claims court. My best guess is that he will ignore the letter and send the amount to the collection agency anyways. If he thought he could win in court, he would have just threatened to sue us for the balance anyways. The fact that there was no explicit or implicit threat of court action (he instead just said that he would turn over the amount to a collection agency if we didn’t pay) means that he probably knows his bogus “estimate” wouldn’t get far in front of a judge. I’m guessing he will not respond in any way to the letter, leaving the onus on myself to initiate court action. If that is indeed the case Mr. Misrack, I’ll be seeing your fat ass in court.

As an aside, I was walking through the Oakridge Mall parking lot when I saw a cream Lexus SUV with gold trim. Steve drives a car like that. In addition, the car had a license plate that said “REALTOR”. Steve is a realtor. I was very close to kicking a large dent in it for good measure, but chose to keep on walking.

offtopic: i will be posting a video game review of Donkey Konga real soon. the short take: it is awesome as awesome can be.

–whazz on

Day 14: First Draft of Demand of Payment Letter

Hello everyone. Here’s an update on the Fight Against Evil. I’m awaiting a mail from Sandy Adams & Associates (the property management company) that includes all of the orginal receipts for the repair work and cleaning. In the meantime, I’ve made a first draft of the letter that I must send in order to have a right to sue Steve in small claims court. If I don’t send a letter demanding payemtn, my suit can be thrown out. So here goes, let’s see if Steve responds to my threat to play hard ball.

Suggestions on revisions for tone and rationalness are requested. I want to ensure that some of my outrage comes through, but I don’t want to harm my case by making completely outrageous statements. Please comment with any suggestions.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

Day 7: We Got A Response

On Friday I stopped to pick up some packages at the post office and found a certified letter waiting for me from Steve Misrack. Inside the envelope was a letter from him re-iterating what we owed him, a copy of the “estimate” (more below), two pictures of the damaged floor, and a two-sided copy of the move-in checklist. In my first letter, I had stated that the movie-in checklist copy we had received was only one page and described only the family room and kitchen — the bedrooms, dining room, and living room were not described. In this letter, he chided me that he would “enclose another copy of the only inspection made upon [my] moving in from the leasing agent Sandy Adams. It is on two pages and maybe you did not see the reverse.” I double-checked the original copy in the Day 0 Mailing and sure enough only one side was there. This fucking asshole is trying to call me stupid as if I didn’t have the original sitting right in front of me.

The big news story of this update, though is that I finally got a chance to see a copy of the estimate for $3,300 in repairs to the damaged wood floor. I can see now why he didn’t send it originally and why he is fucking us around so much. As an aside here, I was wondering why he didn’t sue us for the money he felt was owed and instead just told us it would be sent to a collections agency if we didn’t pay. I’m thinking now that he knows his shit wouldn’t stand in small claims court so he tried to work around it via the threat of collections. Uh-uh Steve. Silly monkey, you don’t fuck with me to the tune of $1,237 and expect to get away with that shit. But back to the “estimate.”

The first line of the estimate said the following: “as per description & measurements taken by Mr. Misrak [sic] here is the estimate to replace laminate in the above jojb location.” It took me several casual readings before I realized what was being said there. I called Step Ahead Carpet & Flooring to speak with the gentleman who did the “estimate” for Steve. Edward was very nice and answered all of my questions definitively. As it turns out, no one ever went to the house and inspected the floor. No one determined that it was “not repairable damage.” No one (except for Steve) decided that to replace a 6 ft x 6 ft area of damage, at least 330 sq ft of floor would have to be replaced. Steve looked at the floor and decided himself that it couldn’t be repaired. Then Steve, himself, decided that the only way to fix it was to replace 330 sq ft. Then Steve went to Edward at Step Ahead, and asked something along the lines of, “Hey, if I were to replace 330 sq ft of hardwood floor, how much would that run me?” Edward gave him the estimate that I have now in my possession, and Steve halved it and sent us the bill with no intention of ever having the work done (by his own admission).

This will not stand. This asshole thinks he can get away with this shit? Fuck this. I’m drafting a letter which will directly tell him to give us back the money from the security deposit that he owes us, and it will go out soon. Then it’s fucking on. No abdominal stretches, no irish whips, no sleepers: just a fucking Dudley Death Drop through the Table of Small Claims Court for Steve Misrack. He ain’t gonna no-sell this one.

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

Day 4: He Probably Has The Letter

I’ve created a new category to track all the (presumable) posts about the ongoing effort against our former landlord: Steve Misrack.

To summarize where we are at this point: Steve Misrack sent us a bill for $3,237.81, minus our initial security deposit of $2000, which leaves us “owing” him $1,237.81 within 30 days. He claims $3,237.81 is the total cost of cleaning and repairing damages to 1371 Norman Drive. Personally, I claim two things:

1. He was a horrible landlord who was lax to attend to things we brought to his attention (such as cockroaches in the house).
2. We did a helluva job cleaning up the place before we left. I sat on my ass for hours and scrubbed the walls clean, fer christ’s sakes. I swept and mopped multiple times in the week leading up to the move out. I touched up spots on the walls with the paint provided in the garage. I spackled nail holes and touched up with paint afterwards. I scrubbed the carpet for hours before my wife steam-cleaned it. After all this work Steve Misrack has the gall to charge us $810 in cleaning fees and $500 in repair fees for such things as “sweeping the side entry”, “cleaning the fireplace”, “changing exterior light bulbs”, etc.

In response to his mailing, I sent him a letter demanding the missing estimates and receipts that he never provided to me. The letter went out certified mail yesterday, which means he received it today. I have had no calls or emails yet today from him.

ps– All day numbers in this series of posts are dated from the date I received his orginal letter demanding payment (i.e., Day 0 was Friday, December 10th, 2004).

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades

Day 0: My Rage Knows No Bounds

I came home from work on Friday to find a letter from our former landlord, Steve Misrack. In it I expected to find the return of our security deposit for the house we were living minus a few expenses. We had put down a $2,000 security deposit for 1371 Norman Dr. What I found when I opened the letter was a shock to say the least.

This man has billed us for $3,237.81 in cleaning and repair costs, minus the security deposit leaves us in debt to him for $1,237.81.

The list of costs associated include such delights as:

1. $300 in cleaning costs (cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, floors, etc.) I did this myself in the week leading up to the end of our lease. The list includes such ridiculous things as: cleaning fireplaces, sweeping the sidewalk out on the side of the house, cleaning the insides of windows, etc.
2. $410 in cleaning costs. You read that correctly. After having someone come in and clean the whole house for $300, he hired another person to come in and clean the carpets in the house (which were steam-cleaned by us prior to moving out) for an addition $513 (less a $103 “discount”.)
3. He claims we damaged a piece of flooring in the family room. He says it cannot be repaired and will cost $3,300 to be replaced. He did not provide us with a copy of the estimate for this work. He is depreciating 1/2 the cost and forcing us to pay the remaining $1650. He says he will opt not to repair or replace. He will just charge us half and keep it.
4. He charged us $504.77 for parts and labor of fixing up the house. There are no receipts included, just a word processor printout listing a bunch of materials that a handyman had to go buy. We are being charged for such things as: replacing mini-blinds, purchasing new light bulbs for the exterior and interior of the house, new mirrors, a new towel bar, and all of the associated labor of these things with no per hour breakdowns.
5. The final month’s utility bill of $373.04. The questionably legal upstairs unit (see below) pays 10% of the total utility bill while we payed 90% of the utility bill.

Now we come to the legal question. I know we have the greatest collection of legal minds on this site (and the only ones I know personally). My question is this: there are TWO living units at 1371 Norman Dr. There are separate leases for each unit. Yet there is only one utility bill for the whole house which goes to the landlord. He then divides the bill into 10% (upstairs) and 90% (downstairs) portions and forces us to remit payment to him personally. Often we would get the bill from him less than 2 weeks before he said payment was due (in one case we received the bill 2 days prior to the due date). My question is twofold:

1. Is it legal to have more than one rental unit at the same address? The upstairs tenant is not 1371 1/2 Norman or anything like that. He and us had the same address, with the same utility bill. Is that legal?
2. Building upon that, is it legal for Steve to have all utility bills come to him personally, and then force us to remit payment to him on his personal timetable?

I think we have been royally screwed here and I continually asked him about the expected state of the house on move out. I am 100% positive that he has acted in bad faith and I want to nail his legal nuts to the wall here by any means necessary. Please help me, Whazzmaster.com Legal Dept. I beg of you.

Here are some relevant links to California Tenant/Landlord law:
California Department of Consumer Affairs
Security Deposit Section of Above Site

Below is the draft of the LETTER OF DEMAND that I will be sending out on Monday via certified mail with receipt:

Anyone have any actionable advice? I’m fairly certain that this will end up in small claims court before the end of things, but I want to make sure I have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning before starting the process. Thanks in advance for anything that the Whazzmaster Army can provide. FLY MY PRETTIES! DO MY BIDDING!

On an unrelated note, can anyone give me sound advice about libel laws as they would pertain to, say, registering a website called www.stevemisracksucks.com and filling it with my point of view of this ordeal? I’d like a central repository of information about a landlord whose response, when told that there are cockroaches in the house, is “heh, I’m surprised they bother you. you know, in the south people just live with them in their homes!”

–fuck everything, we’re going to five blades…