Comcast sux

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tuesday night when the power went out, I was online. Since I have an APC power supply, I finished what I was working on, maybe 8 or 10 minutes, and the Comcast cable was still working. When the power came back Wednesday morning, the cable was dead...no TV, no ISP.

I called Comcast, went through the phone menu and got to the, “...calls will be answered in the order they are received...”, part. Waiting my turn is fine, I can handle that, but having to listen to a recording extolling the wonderful features Comcast provides, or will provide for an extra few jillion dollars a month, while the cable doesn’t work at all, is annoying.

Then the recording tells me I don’t have to wait on hold, I can just go directly to there website. Helloooo...no I can’t...the damn thing doesn’t work!

But the most annoying of all, is every recorded message, and each live person, starts with, “Thank you for calling Comcast.” Duh.... it is a monopoly. Who in hell would I be calling when my Comcast cable doesn’t work? Screaming Verizon, at orgasm, while being screwed by Comcast, is bad form.

Anyway, I finally get a live person and explain who & where I am and tell him the power’s back, but the cable is dead. He responds, it shouldn’t be, there’s no outage in my area and they’ll send a tech out. Cool.

Four hours later I get a call from the repair office asking if my service has healed itself. No.
Four hours later I get a call from the repair office asking if my service has healed itself. No. (no, that’s not a repeated sentence)
One minute later I get a call from the repair office asking if my service has healed itself. No.

Wednesday, about 9pm, I called Comcast and after the phone menu and waiting, I got a live person. I explained what had transpired, she put me on hold and called repair. Five minutes later she said repair had her on hold and she would call me back. Twenty minutes later she called me and said repair was doing their best but the whole area was out and they didn’t know how long it would take.
Great! It wasn’t good news but it was finally the truth. Thank you!

Thursday at work, everyone I talked to said their cable had come back on. Two people told me their power was still off but they had generators and their cable was working. So, when I got home and my cable was out, I called Comcast and went through the dog & pony show again. He told me it should be working and they’d send somebody out. About 6pm the cable came on so I went outside but there was nobody there. Fifteen minutes later the repair tech shows up but doesn’t know why it hadn't been working.....or why it now was.

Friday, on the way home from work, I saw 3 Comcast trucks working on the line, a quarter mile from home. My cable was on, but as I started going through my email, it died. I walked down to where they were working, to ask if they had killed it, but they were gone.
After negotiating the phone gauntlet and recapping the week, Kenesha (sp?) tells me she’ll give me a $10 credit. I explained I wasn’t after a credit, I wanted to know why the cable was out and when it would be fixed.

She said there was a big storm and they were working to get everyone back online. Well duh, like I didn’t know that, but I had already been back on line for 24 hours and this was a new outage for me.

She said there were crews working in my area, so I asked her where they were working? She said she was transferring my call to her supervisor and after being on hold for 5 minutes I get the supervisor’s voice mail. Grrrrrr.

No choice but to vent to this person’s voice mail until the cable came back......40 minutes later. Yes, 40 minutes on voice mail.

Since the cable came back on Friday evening, it’s been going off periodically, for an hour or two at a time.

In fairness to Comcast, this was a very damaging storm over a wide area, and they had a lot of fixing to do. But, when you’re the 800 lb monopoly, making billions in profit, there comes the responsibility to be equipped to handle subsequent maintenance and repair in a timely manner.

That said, probably the guys in the field were working their butts off, understaffed, long hours under difficult and often dangerous conditions.

I have a number of issues with Comcast’s business plan of continually adding new “features and services,” I don’t want, but I’m forced to pay for because they are a monopoly. But ironically, this communications company’s biggest failure, is communicating. Don’t lie to me!

[MaggieL]

You mean you're not grateful to them like you are to billg?

After all, they're making it possible for a non-nerd like you to use the Intarweb. :-)

[wolf]

I didn't have any problems with Comcast related to the storm. I had internet and TV as soon as I had power.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

You mean you're not grateful to them like you are to billg?

After all, they're making it possible for a non-nerd like you to use the Intarweb. :-)

No, they aren't..that's the problem.

[Elspode]

I had a not-great Comcast experience this past week, and I'm not even a customer yet. I'm trying to be a customer, but damn if they aren't making it hard for me to throw a huge pile of money at them every month. Doesn't bode well.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

No, they aren't..that's the problem.

And yet you're posting. Amazing. :-)

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Elspode

I'm trying to be a customer, but damn if they aren't making it hard for me to throw a huge pile of money at them every month.

That's surprising...for those of us who are already customers (for "standard"-- not to be confused with "basic"--cable TV, in our case), the campaign to "upgrade" to digital (you know, where you get charged for every TV set, tuner card, PVR or VCR in the house and become a potential impulse pay-per-view, internet or telephone customer) cable is both strident and constant.

The most annoying commercials on Comcast TV are the ones for Comcast; they cannot be avoided (unless you're watching a premium channel, perhaps...but of course they've moved all the premium channels to digital).

And the next most annoying commercial is the one you either join in progress or is interrupted in the middle because Comcast has done a poorly-synchronized override of a cable channel's commecrial with one of their own.

We'll likely soon be replacing Comcast completly with DirectTV or similar...I'm expecting an AOL-like "retention" effort when they get that news...

[WabUfvot5]

Thank you for using AT&T about 12 times in a help call. If there was a choice I would have left them. Can understand your frustration.

[Tonchi]

I love it when Comcast sends me those customer satisfaction surveys after I have to call them, I get to use all kinds of word forms and vocabulary which I might forget otherwise However, there is one GOOD thing you can say about Comcast: Their customer service is not in India.

[Elspode]

Maybe not, but one of the three people I have spoken with so far definitely did *not* have English as their native language.

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Maybe not, but one of the three people I have spoken with so far definitely did *not* have English as their native language.

Then there's another good thing about living in Fresno if you have to be stuck with Comcast. For 5 years now I've had the pleasure of speaking with Americans, some of which actually managed to help me. But if I have to call or chat with my local ISP, Earthlink, I get Bombay's finest. Saturday night, on about my 4th reinstallation of my internet and email following the latest computer crash, I finally got somebody who was clear, fast and accurate. I was so amazed that I told him to be sure the recording was on because I wanted to make a speech for his bosses and beg them keep him!

[ferret88]

I have yet to have any issues with my Comcast internet connection (knock on substance resembling wood.) But I HAVE had joys dealing with them nonetheless. I have the whole digital package and the DVR, the video on demand, etc. Periodically my VoD goes AWOL. I give it some time to make sure it's not operator error (cuz that damn DVR box doesn't take kindly to commands thrown at it to rapidly.) If VoD is still AWOL, I call comcast and (I think every time) get someone in PHX. And the first thing they ask is "Did you try to power it off for a minute and power it back on?"

Now why didn't I think of that?!?!
Why should the damn thing have brain freezes alla time anyway?

Last time VoD went AWOL, it came back several days later (sooner than they could get a tech out to power off the DVR for me, i mean assess the situation.)

[MaggieL]

Good thing when your VoD goes AWOL there's a CSR in PHX to fix it PDQ. Otherwise you'd be SOL.

[Flint]

:::LOL:::@"G00d th|ng \/\/h3n y0ur \/0D g03z 4\/\/0L th3r3z 4 CSR |n PHX t0 f|x |t PDQ. 0th3r\/\/|ze y0u'd 83 S0L."!!!1!!1!1!

[Elspode]

So, the installer shows up today. First off, he wants $300 up front to do the install. I tell him, no, nothing was mentioned about paying anything prior to installation. He replies that he's just a subcontractor, and that's what he was told on the work ticket...collect for the new outlet installations, the modem and the first month's fee. Nope, I tell him. Call your supervisor, 'cause nobody said anything about that to me.

Twenty minutes later, he's installing and no money out of my pocket until I am billed. Fine. Then, he declines to install a cable leg to the barn apartment. Says that is "stealing cable". I reply, "It's my damn barn, and if I want to watch cable when I'm out there, how is that any different than you just putting yet another outlet in the main house?" He says he's not allowed. I say bullshit. In the end, he does it.

Still not impressed with Comcast, and I have yet to turn anything on or use their actual service.