I’ve found Comcast to be a mixed bag, but the positives generally outweigh the negatives.
Sattua mentioned one communication gap, but there’s a bigger one. Comcast apparently has two separate sales groups: the sales people you reach on the phone (usually associated with the local office), and a separate national Internet sales department. By the latter, I don’t mean a sales department for only broadband Internet but rather a sales department that’s only accessible online. The thing is, the left hand doesn’t have any idea what the right hand’s doing!
I saw an online-only Comcast ad in 2008 that offered two years of 12 Mbps Internet if you bought one of their Double-Play packages with either TV or phone service for a combined monthly total of only $39.95, which was a tremendous deal. The total bill for that particular Double-Play package was considerably cheaper than buying just 6 Mbps Internet alone, so getting both was a no-brainer, even though I never actually used their TV service (I didn’t even rent a STB).
Comcast delivered even more than they promised, which is quite a rarity these days. SpeakEasy and SpeedTest.net consistently reported from 32 to 47 Mbps download and 5 to 9 Mbps upload speeds! Sure, their PowerBoost feature exaggerated those DL results, but even when I used the maximum size file from TestMy.net it still reported 28 Mbps or better.
But when the special offer ended, the price skyrocketed to about $80//mo and the speed dropped considerably. When I phoned Comcast to see what other offers might be out there, they told me that Comcast doesn’t even OFFER 12 Mbps speeds and never has! They said their records showed that I was only getting 6 Mbps and essentially suggested I was stupid for thinking otherwise. (That’s another complaint: You can’t tell what service level you have by checking online or reading your bill!)
When I explained that I saw the ad in 2008 and signed up for the higher speed Internet online, the phone sales agent told me about the two separate sales departments and that she has absolutely no way of knowing what the online department does or offers! When I asked her the URL for the online sales department, she said she had no idea. I called back two more times to speak to other agents, but neither of them could tell me. I can’t find a URL now either.
WTF?
Because of the jump in price when the special offer ended, I checked into AT&T Uverse high speed Internet. Uverse advertises “up to” 18 Mbps for $55/mo, which would be another great deal. But unlike Comcast, who guarantees at least the speeds they advertise but actually delivers much more, AT&T only says you can get “up to” a given speed. And when I looked into Uverse user’s complaints, it turns out most people get a significantly less than the rated speed unless you’re one of the lucky ones who are serviced by fiber optics, and also that Uverse’s system is highly prone to bugs and equipment failures. So it seems risky to switch.
Has anyone switched from Comcast to Uverse? If so, what do you think?