Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Was traveling for the past few days, as one does in September, in Bulgaria. It was nice. The telephones worked.

No such luck at home, where my wife has been haunted by the Ghost of Comcast.

As you may have read, we were the victims of an incomplete, haphazard and faulty installation of phone-cable-broadband service, and then we were victims of an indifferent, dishonest and hostile "customer service" process. At one point, with my blood pressure spiking and an episode of tachycardia, I feared for my health.

I don't wish to die of Comcast.

But because I blogged about this, and because I am a major, major multimediocrity, Comcast executives fell all over themselves issuing press releases, having vice presidents call my home, sending supervisors to fix what was broken and basically giving me all the attention you'd never receive, because you can do them no harm. While I was gone, my wife reports, she was practically harrassed by phone by Qualmcastic employees looking after our wellbeing.

But the phones still don't work. Whenever we hang up on a call, a few seconds later the phone rings again -- with the connection that was never closed. Our house sounds like the back set of a telethon.

But today I got yet another call from Qualmcast. It was a young woman named Michelle doing what seemed to be a random customer-satisfaction survey on our (nightmare) "Comcast Triple Play" installation.

"On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being best best how would you rate your service?" she asked.

"Zero," I said. There was a prolonged pause.

"May I ask what the problem was?" she continued, and I explained. She apologized and offered to connect me to someone who could help. Why not? I was curious if the routine follow-up would yield any results. "You will be on hold," she explained, "and it will be silent on the line for a moment."

"OK," I said. "Thank you."

What followed was 20 seconds of silence. Then, a rapid busy signal. Qualmcast, apparently for reasons no more sinister than its utter incompetence, had hung up on me.