It’s a Conspiracy—Bombastic

This entry involves a specific corporation, a large corporation that provides cable television, Internet access, phone service, and cheesy commercials to a huge swath of America. In the interests of privacy, politeness, and the avoidance of lawsuits, I’ll refer to them by a pseudonym. We’ll call them Bombast.
I have a love/hate relationship with Bombast. On the love side, I love having virtually limitless non-static-filled channels to surf through when I’m bored. On the hate side, I hate . . . well, let me count the ways that I hate.
1. I hate the plethora of ad-filled flotsam that they pump into my house. Here, I’m not gagging on the twenty-plus minutes out of each hour that the typical network fare carves out for endless Geico and McDonalds spots. It’s the sell-out of infomercials and home-shopping channels. Let me see if I have this right: I pay money to Bombast so that I can watch people who have paid money to Bombast to pitch products in my direction.
2. I hate the fact that I can’t get a decent signal on the channel numbers that correspond with local broadcast channels. Mostly I hate that when I complain of this to Bombast, they make excuses and eventually throw up their hands. “We can’t fix that problem, but that doesn’t change your billing status. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
3. I hate the constant bundles, specials, and promotions that the people at Bombast advertise 24/7 while never saving me a single dime.
4. I hate—and this is the one that sent me over the edge—this little bit of switch and bait. A month or so back, the geniuses at Bombast decided to move the Hallmark Channel from channel 31 to somewhere up in the digital domain. Why would they do this? Would it have anything to do with technical needs or artistic integrity? No. They moved Hallmark into the digital realm so that I would need to get myself a digital box.
“We can offer you that for free!” a breathless Bombast rep told me.
“Forever?” I asked.
Breathless then breathed. “Well . . . not forever.”
In short, Bombast offered me less product for the same price. It’s not that I watch the Hallmark Channel. It’s the principle of the thing!
That’s when I decided to pull the plug on Bombast. Calling them, I announced the death sentence. They invited me to bring my cable modem to their service center, which I did the next day. This was nine days ago. Here’s the killer. They still haven’t pulled the plug. The TV portion of my cable bill runs around $60 a month. They’ve now given it to us for free from around a third of a month. That’s a $20 gift. Should I love Bombast for that? Not just yet.
Here’s my prediction. Bombast will not send me a final bill. They’ll pretend that I never called in to cancel my service. They’ll conveniently fail to record that I returned the cable modem. Not to worry—I kept the receipt. Maybe I’m wrong—and if I am, I’ll admit it here—but I’m sticking to my prediction.