Four years. For four long years I’ve been getting this hick-town-quality cable service. For four years I’ve paid them for really bad cable. Very few channels. Almost none of the good channels. For four years I’ve filled out and sent in those questionnaires about which channels they should get, and for four years they’ve consistently gotten nothing but the bottom of the barrel. Before I went to all the trouble of switching to satellite, I even asked them, point blank, when is there any chance of even one or a few stations getting changed. Nowhere in the foreseeable future, they told me. Not going to happen, they told me.

So I went out and paid about $300 to get the satellite installed. Just today I gave them back the cable tuner, closing my account (it had been prepaid until this date). And just today I open the new cable TV guide in the mail that arrived yesterday–they sent it to me for next month despite my cancelation. And now guess what?

That’s right. From November 1st, just a month away, they’re going digital (with an analog converter supplied), and they’re adding every single channel I wanted. Seventeen new channels, in fact. And they’re reducing their rates on top of that.

Do I have the worst timing you’ve ever heard of, or what?

Well, it’s not a complete loss. The Toshiba DVR/DVD recorder I got wouldn’t have worked with their service–probably–and the fact that it auto-records everything is something I have really started to appreciate.

But still, this couldn’t have happened one month earlier, or six months later? No one could’ve mentioned to me when I asked directly about this huge change which obviously they have been planning for a long time? I mean, for crying out loud.