Reading This Time Warner Cable Customer Service Transcript Is Elevating My Blood Pressure

All of this talk about a Comcast - Time Warner Cable deal has many wondering if customer service will get worse.

For some folks, it couldn't get any worse.

Back in 2010, I was in the market to upgrade my cable package to include premium channels like Showtime and HBO. One day, I logged into my Time Warner Cable account with credit card in hand ready to pull the trigger.

I thought this would be a pretty simple exercises. But I was wrong.

I found myself webchatting with what seemed to be an unending series of analysts who could not tell me how much it would be to add a channel.

I distinctly remember my heart-rate going up and my breathing becoming uneven. It's doing it as I re-read this.

By the end, I changed my mind about the whole thing, and I didn't sign up for the extra channels.

Here's a transcript of the exchange, which I had saved in a Word doc:

I should note that I've had better experiences with Time Warner since then.

But I still don't have those premium channels.