The cable line was supposed to be underground, but a weak signal meant running another line. The new line wasn’t just above ground, it was down the street.
GREENSBORO, NC — Damian Vaughan is a pretty reasonable person. Vaughan won’t get upset if the grocery store is out of milk for a week, won’t yell and yell if his trash can is the only one in the neighborhood that won’t be emptied on garbage day, and won’t even do noise if a neighbor’s party has gone on a little too long and kept them awake.
So when his cable provider did the unusual, he didn’t sweat at first.
“They told me it would be temporary,” Vaughan said. “They said the line from (my) decoder to this decoder was emitting a low charge.”
The temporary solution to the problem was to run a new line from the box on his property to the box in his neighbor’s yard. The line couldn’t be buried though, so it ran along the gutter in front of his driveway and a neighbor to a box in another neighbor’s yard.
“It’s a long road,” Vaughan said. “I know the kids were playing with it, we had to tell them it was dangerous.”
It certainly wasn’t ideal to expose and crush your cable line every time you or your neighbor wanted to get in or out of the driveway, but it was temporary so he wasn’t too worried.
The unusual solution made mowing the grass a bit difficult as Vaughan had to move the line from one side of the grass to the other as he mowed the yard. One week, while mowing the grass, he got a little too close to the line and cut it right through.
“It took the whole street, everyone had a breakdown that day,” Vaughan said.
As you can imagine, he wasn’t the most famous person on the block that day, but that wasn’t entirely his fault. This temporary problem had not yet been solved and it had been a long time.
Vaughan and his neighbor would call and ask when the line would be buried, or some other solution found but never seemed to get a clear answer.
“We called a lot, but they seemed to forget about us,” he said.
The problem continued to drag on and Vaughan was starting to get a little upset. Remember, he’s a man with more than a fair amount of patience, so for him to get a little frustrated, it took some time.
Eventually, he had had enough, and he and his neighbor contacted WFMY News 2. By this point, this temporary line had been in front of his driveway for over two years.
“It’s frustrating because when we go through other neighborhoods they don’t have that problem,” Vaughan said.
The Greensboro neighborhood is nice, but it’s not littered with million-dollar homes or surrounded by gates.
“They didn’t seem to prioritize us,” he said.
After calling us, we were able to contact the cable company and speak to an executive at head office. Within a week, a technician came to the house and diagnosed the problem. The technician opened a ticket and apologized to Vaughan for the delay.
“His manager sent him here, he immediately apologized saying it shouldn’t have been like this,” he said.
Shortly after, another technician came to fix the problem and remove the cable from the street. It took way too long, but after calling WFMY News 2, Vaughan was finally able to enjoy the service he paid for without having to have cable draped over his house and neighbors.
“Thank you, News 2, we’re watching you all the time,” he said.
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