# Comcast called me a thief and left me SDMB-less for 24 Hours! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 27, 2003, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248 "2003-07-27T12:26:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tanookie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/48db29/32.png) [@tanookie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanookie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/1 "2003-07-27T12:26:05Z")
Not directly (yet) but their actions of late have clearly imparted upon me that do not care one whit for their customers and they feel that I am stealing from them. The scene: Friday afternoon. I am merrily perusing the SDMB looking for fun threads to post in while the munchkin plays quietly on the floor and the hubby works at his desk (across the room from me.) The conflict: A Comcast truck pulls up to the pole in front of my house. Our dog alerts us to the interloper’s arrival. Hubby remarks that they better not fuck up his internet. _key suspenseful music_ Internet goes out. Comcast man climbs down from ladder and hubby goes to ask him why his internet is out. The confrontation: Comcast man says he put a trap on our line because we are only signed up for internet and the line was giving us TV as well (Translation - you are stealing cable.) He just installs traps and I need to call someone who ‘knows about the internet.’ (Translation - call someone who cares) Exit Comcast man. The phone call: So I call technical support where they merrily inform me the best they can do is have someone out tomorrow afternoon to look at things. If our problem is not the trap we will be billed $49.95 for the service call and we need to have someone here that is over 18 and speaks English. (A miracle in itself that we only have to wait approximately 24 hours for a service call) I also ask to speak with the support person’s manager as that’s the best you can get on their 800 number call center from hell. He gives me a $5.00 credit for my inconvenience and notes on my account that I am disappointed by the way the whole issue was handled. Resolution: New Comcast man arrives the next day. He discovers the trap is on wrong and fixes my internet. Yay. But I am still angry. My biggest problems with this whole scenario: 1 - I know now that they think I was stealing from them. 2 - They were willing to deprive me of a service I pay for in order to make sure I couldn’t steal from them. 3 - When Comcast man one was told he broke my paid for service his response was essentially ‘not my problem’ even though it was he who made a mistake and deprived me of services. 4 - my husband missing half a day of work is apparently worth $5.00 What I wanted was for trap man to remove the trap and restore my service until they could put the stupid thing on the right way. Or trap man should have called someone else on the road that day that had a clue to come look at it. Instead he left. So now that I feel a little better I hope I can compose a nice letter to Comcast to bring their policy some attention. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/2 "2003-07-27T12:29:32Z")
What’s a trap in this context? ---
**Author:** ![tanookie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/48db29/32.png) [@tanookie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanookie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/3 "2003-07-27T12:31:33Z")
A trap is some kind of filter to keep us from getting the TV part of the signal. Apparently we could have hooked a cable ready TV up to the cable outlet in the wall and have gotten free cable until the man came Friday. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/4 "2003-07-27T13:57:53Z")
I would have done everything possible to not let Man 1 leave, if the Net was down while he was still there. And then I would send a formal invoice to Comcast for the day of lost service at my consulting rate of $1200 plus expenses (you can even invoice the local phone calls at $0.50 per call). Yeah, they won’t pay it (especially if your TOS says that no service is guaranteed), but they should know they are in the wrong, and may give you a free month. Plus, unlike complaint letters, very few companies have the legal cojones to just toss an actual invoice away without consideration and kicking up to a higher power for a decision. I’ve done similar things resulting from a series of outages that lasted over a month and got 3 free months. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/5 "2003-07-27T14:13:53Z")
I’m not one to defend Comcast (I had to break down and get my cable modem from them, as well), but the guy they sent out to install the trap is just a service tech. He is performing his assigned task and does not (nor has to) give a damn about your situation. He is also unlikely to perform any additional service not assigned to him since he COULD get into trouble. Best bet is to bitch and complain until they give you some sort of restitution. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/6 "2003-07-27T14:52:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mr. Blue Sky \* > \*\*I’m not one to defend Comcast (I had to break down and get my cable modem from them, as well), but the guy they sent out to install the trap is just a service tech. He is performing his assigned task and does not (nor has to) give a damn about your situation. He is also unlikely to perform any additional service not assigned to him since he COULD get into trouble. > > Best bet is to bitch and complain until they give you some sort of restitution. \*\* Yes, but he performed his assigned task incompetently. I agree with the go for restitution, but be prepared to have to call and ask why the agreed on restitution is not credited to your bill. Twice I’ve gotten free days, and twice I’ve had to call to actually have it credited. I think they hoped I’d forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![Hanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b3f665/32.png) [@Hanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hanna)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/7 "2003-07-27T14:54:39Z")
Same exact thing happened to me, but with attbi/Roadrunner. I panic everytime I see the cable truck now. We just switched to Comcast (involuntary) a few weeks ago, I hope it doesn’t happen again. We pay for cable (TV) but only get basic. One thing I have learned, the different divisions (TV, Internet) don’t know what each other are doing, apparantly they don’t communicate much with each other. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/8 "2003-07-27T14:55:52Z")
I’d also look into competing services in the area. ---
**Author:** ![insomnia4AM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/4bbf92/32.png) [@insomnia4AM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/insomnia4AM)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/9 "2003-07-27T15:30:13Z")
We had the same issue with Comcast, but it started with ATT. ATT told us that even though we had a satellite dish, we still needed to have the cable coming into the house in order for the modem to work. Ok, fine. No extra charge? Great! Problem…when Comcast took over, they did the same thing to us that they did to **Tanookie**. After going internet-less for almost a week, we ditched the DirectTV and signed up for digital cable. Well, this didn’t resolve the problem right away because they had to “make sure” it was a legal connection. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/10 "2003-07-27T16:51:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Comcast man says he put a trap on our line because we are only signed up for internet and the line was giving us TV as well (Translation - you are stealing cable.) Could this possibly be translated as “we made a mistake in routing cable signal to you” rather than “you are stealing cable”? > [@](#): > > 4 - my husband missing half a day of work is apparently worth $5.00 I’m assuming Comcast is an LLC, and so are not liable for any income its customers may lose based on service being unavailable. Agreed that they should have given you more than $5 in credit for the inconvenience but your potential loss of income doesn’t enter into the scenario on their end. That being said, I’m happy to raise my voice in solidarity to say that Comcast sucks! (no personal experience with them myself so this is purely moral support) ---
**Author:** ![tanookie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/48db29/32.png) [@tanookie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanookie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/11 "2003-07-27T17:17:53Z")
What Comcast man 2 said was that the trap should have been put in when the original installer came out to install the internet service a few months ago. I wasn’t looking at his missing work as a loss of income problem but an inconvenience of time and annoyance. Hubby gets to make up work this weekend and I had to cancel some weekend plans to accomodate the second service call and for him to make up work. The way I understand cable to work is that they run the lines to your home and you plug various things into them to get the signals. We have our modem plugged in to get the internet signal. Since I am not signed up for TV I did not plug any of my TVs in to any of the outlets. The fact that they came to expressly block the TV signal is fine - I didn’t want it anyway. But that it was so important that they block it (lest I plug in some TV and get free signal) at the expense of my legitimate services is what made me feel they thought I was stealing their product. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/12 "2003-07-27T17:38:12Z")
Not that I like Comcast overly much (if at alll); however, that company has no way of knowing if you’ve not plugged anything into the fittings. If the fittings are active (i.e., have the signal shunted to them), then they’re active and available as far as that company’s concerned. I don’t see where the service tech did his assigned task incompetently. ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/13 "2003-07-27T18:20:29Z")
We had all kinds of problems with our cable modem from Comcast going out, but they never charged us for a service call. I’ve had no problems with my SBC DSL by comparison, and I’d always heard DSL was more trouble-prone. ---
**Author:** ![Mockingbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mockingbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mockingbird)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/14 "2003-07-27T18:23:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SanibelMan \* > \*\*We had all kinds of problems with our cable modem from Comcast going out, but they never charged us for a service call. I’ve had no problems with my SBC DSL by comparison, and I’d always heard DSL was more trouble-prone. \*\* I had more problems and less dependability with DSL. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Tiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Mama\_Tiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Tiger)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/15 "2003-07-27T18:35:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Monty \* > \*\*I don’t see where the service tech did his assigned task > incompetently. \*\* Apparently you didn’t read **tanookie’s** later comment: > [@](#): > > New Comcast man arrives the next day. He discovers the trap is on wrong and fixes my internet. In other words, it wasn’t just the fact that he installed the trap, but that he installed it WRONG was what upset her. Because obviously it was possible to install it so that she could still get her internet service while blocking the TV, since the next tech was able to do that very thing. She also pointed out: > [@](#): > > When Comcast man one was told he broke my paid for service his response was essentially ‘not my problem’ even though it was he who made a mistake and deprived me of services. So he did his work wrong, refused to fix it, and acted like she was the guilty party in the whole mess. And this is somehow supposed to be her fault? I’d be pissed, too. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/16 "2003-07-27T18:53:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mockingbird \* > \*\*I had more problems and less dependability with DSL. \*\* You are right in a lot of cases, and DSL service can be very variable. My dynamic IP DSL was very problem-prone. My static IP one, from the same company, same building, same room even, has been rock-solid stable for 2+ years. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/17 "2003-07-27T19:01:27Z")
Comcast may suck, but Cox sucks even more…nonetheless, you have my sympathy, though I am longing for the good Comcast service I used to get in Georgia. God DAMN but I miss the Game Show channel… ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/18 "2003-07-27T19:08:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by whiterabbit \* > \*\*Comcast may suck, but Cox sucks even more…nonetheless, you have my sympathy, though I am longing for the good Comcast service I used to get in Georgia. God DAMN but I miss the Game Show channel… \*\* Lousy Cox suckers… ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/19 "2003-07-27T19:44:48Z")
Thanks, Mama Tiger. I missed that. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248/20 "2003-07-27T20:49:06Z")
I guess these things vary by market, because when Comcast took over where I used to live, the cable service improved noticeably. They added some decent channels and shuffled them all into a logical lineup. But the first repair guy was undoubtedly an ass, since he broke your internet connection but refused to accept responsibility for it. I guess Comcast doesn’t get many internet-only customers, huh? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comcast-called-me-a-thief-and-left-me-sdmb-less-for-24-hours/191248.md?page=2)