Customer service horror stories (cable and Home Depot)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Forgive me if this falls into tl;dr status…but this is therapeutic.

  1. I just bought a house. Yay, me. I called my cable provider (Comcast) to tell them I was moving and set up an appointment for the installation. I said (or actually typed…this is all done via online chat) that the house was not presently wired for cable (apparently the prior owners went straight from rooftop antenna to AT&T). The Comcast operator said “I’ve made a note of that”.

Installer shows up for the appointment, Saturday March 30, and I point out where I need outlets installed. He said “hmmm…got a problem. My drill doesn’t work. Have to reschedule.”

Appointment #2 on Tuesday, April 2. Different installer arrives. I point out where I want the outlets, and he says “hmmm…got a problem. We can’t drill through your wall. Gotta reschedule.”

Appointment #3 on Friday, April 5…(I’ve been without TV and internet for a week now. No TV and no beer make Homer something something something…) Different installer arrives. He says “hmmm…got a problem” but this one is an honest man and gives me a straight answer: Comcast does not do “wall fishing”. If I want nice pretty wall plates installed, I have to find my own contractor to do it (and he thoughtfully provides me a much-xeroxed handout with the names of 2 preferred contractors…neither of which actually answered the phone, but that’s another story). We did come up with a plan, though – he was able to drag his cable through a pre-existing hole in the dining room floor, and get one TV and a modem up and running. Meanwhile, my fiancee got Comcast customer loyalty on the phone and reamed them a new one. They acknowledged that their communications may have broken down just a tad, and said to call them back when my installation is complete, and they’d “see what they could do” about recompense.

I’m switching to AT&T.

  1. Since we have more vehicles than the previous owners, we needed an additional garage door remote. Went to my local Home Depot and bought one; came home and programmed it; worked like a champ. For 2 days…and then it went dead. No lights. Apparently a dead battery.

Since it had appeared to be working fine, I had thrown out the packaging and the receipt, but I thought I’d take my chances with Home Depot anyway. They were reluctant, but my fiancee (who is good at expressing herself with customer service personnel) convinced them that it was obviously defective, and they could find the transaction details based on my credit card, so they grumbled and asked if I wouldn’t mind finding a packaged one on their shelves, so they could scan it.

I complied and went back into the bowels of Home Depot, and found something very interesting:

There were 6 of these clickers on the shelf. All of them had been opened and re-wrapped (and not very well) with scotch tape and staples. I gathered up all 6 and brought them to customer service. The rep said “whoa, that’s messed up”.

So is Home Depot re-wrapping defective merchandise and putting it back on the shelf? You be the judge.

2

Home Depot has a very flexible return policy. I’ve taken items back for years with no questions asked.

But it does typically go back on the shelf unless the item is obviously defective. Once in awhile I’ll see stock that looks like its been opened. Heck, I’ve carefully put items back in the package myself and returned them. Sometimes I don’t realize its the wrong tool or part until its been opened.

3

Yeah, but…every one??

I suppose given the nature of programmable remotes, it’s conceivable that every customer has gotten frustrated with trying to get it work, and thrown it back at HD, who just puts it back on the shelf.

But you’d think they’d go back to the manufacturer.

4

Because of user error???

5

Just to get repackaged, so it doesn’t look used and beat up. If you pick up something on the shelf that looks like the dog has been playing with it…it’s going to stay on the shelf.

6

The Comcast installers lied to you. When you contact Comcast for cable installation, they do it all, for a price.

7

It does sound like a badly designed remote if that many people returned it.

HD does need some way to catch this problem. Six remotes opened and stapled closed on the shelf doesn’t sound good. We have 4 HD’s in my city. So sometimes I’ll go to another one if the stock has been opened. Depend on the item. A screwdriver or wrench in a damaged package doesn’t matter that much. Electronics better look unopened or I won’t buy it.

8

That was my impression until this week, when apparently a massive conspiracy by the local sub-contractors (none of these were Comcast employees, btw) occurred to divert business away from Comcast.

9

AT&T doesn’t fish either, but that may not be a problem.*

Assuming you’re talking about Uverse - my experience with their installers has been iffy. My system was put in by Mutt and Jeff, and they left all of the wiring and equipment snarled up on the floor of one room once they got it to a base level of functionality. Took two or three more truck rolls and a few calls to customer disservice to get it all right.

Since then, I have fished over 1,000 feet of Cat5 through the house and learned more about Uverse than I ever wanted to. <g>

*They have newish wireless boxes. I’m told that they usually work all sorts of peachy-keen, and there’s no need to fish wires. My home environment is unusual, and unfortunately, the fire station next door appears to scramble the wireless. Rather than even think about asking the fire department to reduce their transmitting power, I just had AT&T set me up with wired boxes after I ran the lines.

10

gotpasswords, I’m glad you’re here. Just the man I wanna talk to.

So what does a AT&T Uverse installation look like – does it come into the house through phone lines, into a base station of some sort? How does it get from there to the TV? If wireless, are only some TVs compatible (mine range from 3 - 7 years old, all flat-screen)? If wired, does it come through phone jacks? Cable outlets?

11

UVerse: Cable-type line, to a wireless router, plus a cable box. Can’t remember right now if the cable goes into the cable TV box or the router. I think it’s the latter. When our installer showed up, for some reason he wasn’t allowed to drill through our floor to feed up the cable, but handily left his drill in the house and pointed to a good spot where us “finding” a hole would be convenient and safe, then stepped outside to check on something in his truck.

We only have one TV and it’s modern, so I don’t know what limitations there are. The cable box hooks up directly to the TV via cables, and you can get multiple boxes.

12

My installation comes in on the phone line, which is run directly to a box called the residential gateway or RG. The RG takes the incoming line and puts out one or two phone lines, four LAN jacks and wifi. In newer neighborhoods, Uverse is delivered on fiber, and there’s an additional device called an ONT or optical network terminal.

What I wound up doing was to put all of the wired set-top boxes on their own sub network using a Netgear GS108 switch. This specific model is important as the TV streaming uses very large packets that will get mangled in many ordinary switches. You should be able to get one for free from the Uverse installer. Two of the other three LAN jacks on my RG are connected to lines running to the home office and the family room. These lines go to switches, but as they don’t have TV streams, you can use ordinary Ethernet switches.

If you go with the wireless set top boxes, there will be a wireless access point dedicated to the boxes connected to one of the RG’s LAN ports. You can relocate this if needed.

13

I recall the tremendous satisfaction when I cut the Coax Cable off the side of my house. Then went to the pole and cut it off about 10 ft from the ground (I had a 8 ft ladder). I even went in the crawl space and dragged out that cheap ass Aluminum Coax Cable that they use. Total garbage. I had a hole in my hardwood floor where they ran the coax. Plugged that with a piece of dowel.

All my utilities were nicely buried except that damn City Cable line. It went right over my deck.

I’ve been using Direct TV since 1999.

14

I’m now open to the possibility of getting my TV from someone other than Comcast (I resisted for a long time because I’m a big Tivo fan, but enough is enough). Anybody know of a good site with side-by-side comparisons of pros & cons, prices?

15

They’ve been advertising Direct TV Genie a lot lately. A whole house wireless system. Lets you watch recorded DVR in different rooms.

I just have basic Direct TV. But this new Genie system sounds pretty good. I’d suggest comparing prices with your local cable company.

limited time offer with Internet for $54.
http://www.directstartv.com/?s_clid=a6de164b879ea3ba55be6ab080ec7427&gclid=CLX85aqJvLYCFa9aMgodnSsAjg