MediaCom

I am a longtime Mediacom customer, more than a decade. Our neighbors are new mediacom customers and wanted to have their cable buried. Two guys in an unmarked truck showed up with a trencher and said they were going to dig in our yard, under our driveway. We greeted them and said Iowa law dictates you must call before you dig. They postured and said no they didn't. They went away. A week later, Iowa Utilities showed up and marked with red and orange flags where the utilities are located, they marked up to the utility/cable box on the neighbors lawn. Two weeks later, the same two, in an unmarked, out of county truck showed up with their trencher and dug, where it was NOT MARKED, in our yard to the utility box where we have our cable connection. Please know that they neighbor is connected to a different box, which is further away, on the other side of the neighbors house. For the neighbor to connect to our box they must cross our property and bury the line under our driveway. The flags were marked indicating it was safe it connect to the cable box on their property. There were no flags indicating it was safe to dig or to connect to the cable box on our property. Here's the catch, it's a shorter distance to connect to our box, that's what the contractor said. He said he's not going to hand dig a long distance, he's going to do it quick and connect to our box whether it's marked or not. He said he doesn't have to call to dig, he's absolutely going to dig, he has all the authorization. I said show me what authorization. He didnt. My husband called Mediacom, who didn't stop him. I called the police who didn't show up until they were gone. For over an hour we had NO IDEA if they were going to HIT A GAS LINE. I stopped by the Mediacom office. Waiting for a response from Medicacom as to (1) why their contractors show up in an unmarked vehicle, (2) why they did not dig where the work order had marked was safe to dig (3) why they disregarded the work order and the safety flags and dug where they did (4) and most importantly why they disregarded Iowa law that indicates you MUST call before you dig. I was worried all morning that they might hit a gas line. This is a public safety issue. Eventually the police showed up and said it's civil not criminal, so they were not able to help. Mediacom, please take your customers and public safety more seriously. You should have called your contractors immediately when we called you and asked them to wait until it was clearly marked before they dug. If this would've gone south I'd hate to think of the consequences.