BRISTOW, Va. - She was fined and got a suspended jail sentence, but Mona Shaw says she has no regrets about using a hammer to vent her frustration at a cable company. "I stand by my actions even more so after getting all these telephone calls and hearing other people's complaints,'' she told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. Shaw, 75, and her husband, Don, say they had an appointment in August for a Comcast technician to come to their Bristow home to install the company's heavily advertised Triple Play phone, Internet and cable service. The Shaws say no one came all day, and the technician who showed up two days later left without finishing the setup. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all their service.
At the Comcast office in Manassas later that day, they waited for a manager for two hours before being told the manager had left for the day, the Shaws say.
Shaw, a churchgoing secretary of the local AARP branch, returned the next Monday - with a hammer. "I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor ... and I went to hit the telephone,'' Shaw said. "I figured, 'Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.'''
Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, disputes Shaw's version of its customer service record and calls Shaw's hammer fit on Aug. 20 an "inappropriate situation.'' "Nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior,'' Comcast spokeswoman Beth Bacha said.
Police arrested Shaw for disorderly conduct. She received a three-month suspended sentence, was fined $345 and and is barred from going near the Comcast offices for a year.
The Shaws did eventually get phone and television service - with Verizon and DirecTV. She said many people have called her a hero. "But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit,'' she said.