My DVR is losing its mind, switching on and off randomly and losing the guide menu in the process. I called Comcast on Friday and got an actual person in fairly quick order. I explained the problem and she said “Yeah, it’s a hardware problem. I’m sorry, but the earliest I can get somebody there will be. . . .(I’m waiting for her to say October). . . .Sunday.”
“Ummm…Sunday?”
“Yes, I’m sorry there’s no earlier appointment available. Will between 10-12 work for you?”
I’m thinking: a two-hour window, not sometime between 0800 and never? I fully expect the rapture to occur sometime next week.
They seem to be (finally) trying to address some of the customer service complaints that people are constantly levelling at them. A few years ago I was moving and went to return my cable box. The Comcast office was a rundown hole-in-the-wall with minimal hours at the edge of town with one overworked clerk and a huge line. Given that I was just trying to give them back their hardware, I was pretty annoyed that I had to sit in line in the stinky office for most of an hour.
A few years later I tried to do the same thing in the same town, and found that the office had a few weekend hours, the inside had been redone to make it nicer, there was more then one person working at the desk and they had a “take-a-number” system so you could sit down while you wait.
So at least on that end, they seem to be taking peoples criticisms into account and spending some money to fix things.
Holy shit, the guy showed up on time, replaced the old DVR with a snazzy (and smaller) new one with a 500GB hard drive, and was gone within 15 minutes.
Holy crap. If they’d done that when I used their service, I might not have dropped them for UVerse like a hot potato after being a loyal customer for several years.
(I had the Internet service drop on Mother’s Day morning - called UVerse and they came out the same day within an hour and a half, and the guy ended up replacing a bunch of outside wiring, which took at least an hour. I nearly fell over at the difference in service response between them and Comcast.)
Comcast doesn’t charge for service calls. Or, have never charged me, anyway. The last time I called them, my broadband service was extremely slow. About 1.5 Mbps or worse. The tech came (on time), checked my connection, then gave me a new modem. My speed increased to at least 10 Mbps, even reaching 14 or 16 on occasion. He had me set up in about 10 minutes and there was never a charge on my bill for the service call.
Before I dropped their service, they were starting to threaten charges for their service calls. I suspect it might depend on what the problem actually is, though.
For anyone disappointed in the OP’s smooth resolution, here’s my 2010 Comcast odyssey, in which the cable guy never shows up for the initial appointment, which Comcast admits it had secretly cancelled. Continue reading for more hilarity, in which a series of technicians are all completely stymied by my extremely simple setup.
