Gah. I’m getting ready to move, and there are two primary ISPs in my new location: Comcast and Dish Network. Both have awful customer service reputations, and I’d rather use neither, but them’s the breaks.
To help me choose, does anyone have something positive they can share about the service provided by either company?
I have Dish, and the customer service has been great. When I’ve had problems and called their help line (based in the US) it gives me a very reasonable list of things to try first, but lets me get to a person as soon as I want to. And their people have always been friendly, and, more importantly, when I’ve told them what I’ve tried already they believe me and don’t treat me like an idiot. (“Are you sure it is plugged in?”) Up there with the very best customer service I’ve ever experienced.
We dumped Comcast when we had analog cable a long time ago and the guy who came in told my wife that she shouldn’t expect both sets of channels to work at the same time.
I suppose that if you couldn’t live without TV in every room and on your tablet, Comcast probably offers more product. We watch only a few shows on the air, and Dish has been great. And cheaper too.
Thanks, Voyager! That’s encouraging – maybe the complaints about Dish I’ve heard were outliers.
I’ll never have satellite again. My last house every time it rained, snowed or was windy my satellite went out plus the internet is horribly slow. Comcast is reliable and when my rates went up on schedule with 1 year left on my contract they renewed me to a different 1 year contract at a lower then original contract with faster internet. All and all I’m a big fan.
From a cursory once-over of the Dish website, it appears their internet service is satellite based. I’m pretty sure you don’t want that, especially if you now have cable internet or even DSL. Comcast’s customer service may be terrible but cable internet burns serious rubber. It’s. fast. Really fast. How fast is fast? You know those old NASA pictures of the guy in a rocket sled whose face is being literally pulled back by the massive G-forces he’s undergoing? It’s that faster than that.
In my experience Comcast has excellent internet, HD quality is so-so but then again satellite compresses the hell out of their channels too. I’ve never had a problem with customer service. Their rack rates appear to be high, but they offer all kinds of bundles, and you can get more discounts by telling them you’re thinking about cancelling your service (choose the “I want to downgrade my service” option on the phone, those people have access to better deals than the regular sales reps… Comcast charges per box, so if you have a lot of outlets it can get expensive. They also nag you with junk mail and phone calls about add-ons like home security or digital phone, once they actually sent a salesperson to my door.
Thanks again for the information, everyone! I’m moving to Rockford, Illinois, at the very northern end of the state, so weather there can be very snowy in winter, and windy year-round. For that reason, I’m leaning toward not getting Dish, but I’d heard so many complaints about Comcast’s customer service, I was hesitant about them, too. From the comments here, it sounds like Comcast’s not too bad – at least no worse than any huge company.
And Spectre of Pithecanthropus, I’ve been spoiled by cable Internet for a few years now – 1.5 Mps upload speeds on a typical day! I don’t give a rat’s patootie about cable TV service, but I’d miss the Internet speed if I had to give it up, so it sounds like Comcast’s they way I’m headed…
oops - I misread your OP. I have it for TV - never have had a problem. I don’t use them as an ISP. I thought satellite internet was very expensive and only useful if you were too far from a central office for DSL and didn’t get cable. But I don’t know why their service as an ISP would be worse than their service as a TV provider.
This. I have Hughesnet at home, and it stinks (but there are no other options other than dialup where I live). Playing WoW is all but impossible, bad weather means no internet. I have Comcast at the office, and other than going down for maybe 3 days in the last 9 months, it rocks hardcore. Fast, smooth, easily handles anything I want to do online, from legal research to 40-man world boss raids. Video loads almost instantly.