I knew this day would come. With a well-known history of missed appointments and other inexplicable service disruptions, I should not have been surprised when, after calling Comcast to order the upgraded X-1 cable box with its “talk to it” remote, Comcast promptly terminated my cable service. What else would you expect? Service was, of course, restored when I called to report the outage. Later that day, or maybe the next (it’s all a blur now), my Internet connection was again terminated. This time the Comcast representative said it was a “glitch” in Comcast’s software but thank you so much for choosing Comcast as your cable company. As if I had a choice. A few days later there was another service interruption. No explanation offered this time.

Then came the coup de grace. A few days later, I stopped working on my iMac about 3:30 pm, leaving the computer to “sleep,” while I also took a nap. I returned at about 6:00 pm to find that my collection of 120 subject-matter folders that held old but important emails had vanished! The folders, and their contents, were replaced by a new folder entitled, and I’m not making this up: “lost-807fd53” (followed by a string of 23 additional letters and numbers – try to picture it). The catch was that this new folder was … EMPTY! Thousands of emails gone, disappeared. I checked the Xfinity/Comcast email website and the same empty “lost” folder appeared there as well.

You know where this is going.

I called my go-to, AppleCare, and was told this was a Comcast problem. I then called Comcast. I spoke with three people at ever-higher levels of technical sophistication in what can be loosely called the “Comcast support regime.” All three tech reps had the same response: we cannot find your lost emails; we cannot explain what happened to them; but have a nice day and thank you for choosing Comcast as your email provider and have a nice day, is there anything else we can “help” you with. After some back-and-forth, during which I confess to being less than patient and accepting, the third person in the chain reluctantly agreed that he would “advance the case” to the Fourth Level and someone would contact me within 72 hours … but don’t expect a happy outcome. Oh, and ‘no, you can’t talk directly to the Fourth Level now.”

By now you have predicted, correctly, that the 72-hour window came and went without a call from the Fourth Level. Or any other contact from Comcast. What is there to say? Comcast has a monopoly on cable service in Alexandria and my apartment building is apparently wired to connect only to Comcast. What can you reasonably expect from a monopoly? If there is good news in this … there is none.

Well, except for one thing, but it’s not about Comcast. In desperation, I called Apple again. Apple has never failed me in solving a computer issue that was within its orbit. After a bit of confusion about how Apple Mail application interacts with Comcast’s servers, I reached a “second level” of technical support and a very pleasant young man walked me through a series of steps to recover all of the lost folders, with the lost emails residing in them as before. This miracle was possible because I run a program called Time Machine that comes with the iMac and backs up everything on the computer to a separate hard drive. Apple reps know stuff and, in my experience, always find a solution.

So, despite Comcast’s total failure to perform its obligations, the story has a happy ending. The moral of the story is: if you are using Comcast and have your email and/or other files on an Apple computer, you can avoid a feeling of rejection, subordination and helplessness by destroying your own emails – just delete them all straightaway and never be subjected to Comcast’s ineptitude again. To be safe, deleted all your files. Then you have nothing to worry about.

OR, go on offense, by getting Time Machine running right away. And thank you for choosing ….