Pain came knocking at my door, and its name was Comcast

[Der_Trihs]

@Hal_Briston

Always keep in mind, when you call Comcast, you’re dealing with your local Comcast. Some are good, some are bad. And in all call centers, some reps are good, some are bad.

This. My personal experience with Comcast has been good; but i’ve heard more than a few people who live elsewhere complaining how awful Comcast has been for them.

@FoieGrasIsEvil

Also, cable will never be a public utility like water, gas, electric, even phone service…because those are perceived as a need, whereas cable TV/internet service is a luxury.

And at one point gas, electricity and phones were all considered luxuries. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if internet access eventually becomes considered just as much a necessity as phone service. Although I expect conservative, backwards America to lag behind that for a decade or two or three like it does with most things besides military hardware.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@Sacrilegium

After a few more fumbled calls, they’ve now come to a new conclusion - they can’t come out and fix it. Their tech cut some of Verizon’s wiring when he installed Comcast’s Xfinity service. (Cut it. You know, with scissors. Snip snip.) They refuse to be responsible for putting it back the way it was, since it’s “not their job” to install a competitor’s service.

Verizon charges around $150 to come out and repair the things that Comcast destroyed. ($91 just for the tech coming out, and $46 per half hour) If I want my service hooked up by Monday (and I do, since I work from home and need Innernets), it’s coming out of my pocket. Comcast refuses to fix it and refuses to pay to have it fixed.

Thanks for the suggestions of places to complain. Rest assured, complaints will be made through multiple channels. Hopefully I can get my repair money back. I’m not holding my breath.

Oddly enough I’d had mostly-positive experiences with Comcast in the past. I wasn’t a current customer, but I didn’t really have a negative opinion of them. Now that’s changed.

That’s just weird. If you chose to switch to Comcast and they set up their stuff for you and for them, how can it not be put back to the way it was if you were sold Buffalo nickels on your package?

I’d definitely keep complaining up the chain. Someone will help you. You shouldn’t have to pay to “undo” services from a company that was fraudulently representing themselves.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@Der_Trihs

And at one point gas, electricity and phones were all considered luxuries. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if internet access eventually becomes considered just as much a necessity as phone service. Although I expect conservative, backwards America to lag behind that for a decade or two or three like it does with most things besides military hardware.

Yes, but that point has passed. People need water, electrcity and heat during winter months…they don’t “need” internet access AT ALL in order to survive.

ETA: and they only need 911 service as a modern survival tool.

[Der_Trihs]

@FoieGrasIsEvil

Yes, but that point has passed. People need water, electrcity and heat during winter months…they don’t “need” internet access AT ALL in order to survive…

But more and more it seems likely they’ll need Internet access in order to function, as more and more things are available only on the Internet.

[mhendo]

@Sacrilegium

After a few more fumbled calls, they’ve now come to a new conclusion - they can’t come out and fix it. Their tech cut some of Verizon’s wiring when he installed Comcast’s Xfinity service. (Cut it. You know, with scissors. Snip snip.) They refuse to be responsible for putting it back the way it was, since it’s “not their job” to install a competitor’s service.

Small claims court.

[gonzomax]

@FoieGrasIsEvil

I’m not fond of big corporations, but…if the cable company absorbs the HUGE cost of laying cable lines, fiber optic, whatever so you can get service…then good on them.

Also, cable will never be a public utility like water, gas, electric, even phone service…because those are perceived as a need, whereas cable TV/internet service is a luxury.

I have Comcast, and I have a 16Mb download internet connection speed, cable TV with three boxes and HDTV on one of them, HBO/Encore, lots of “free” on demand content and their unlimited long distance digital phone service…my cost is $170 per month.

I think that’s pretty reasonable. Yeah, cable companies have slow, incremental increases in their rates over time…but ALL media companies do that, whether its Comcast cable, some other cable company, satellite, cell phone providers, etc.
I’m pretty okay with it.

For many iinternet is not a luxury. Nowadays, companies have to have it. A lot of people work at home ,pay bills and shop from the computer. I don’t think we can back up again.
Comcast has no push to offer great service or really fast internet . Where you going to go. So our internet is slow compared to other industrial countries and they are getting better all the time. Comcast exists to make money . Competition, which is not the American way, is the driver of service and innovation.

[eleanorigby]

I’d rant, but I don’t know where to start. 3 times in the past 10 days, Comcast has screwed up our phone and internet (and once our cable TV). It went out again today, after the guy came out and reinstalled splitters and god know what else.

Last week I called because I came home from work to no internet or phone. I used my cell (which does not work at work and I’m not allowed to use it at work). I got this guy who seemed nice enough. The service call was set up for the next day between 4-7. I told the guy that I would be hard pressed to get home by 4. Didn’t matter. :rolleyes: I got home at 4:10 and called them to make sure they were still coming (a woman had left a message on my cell asking me to confirm the service call. She said it was the second notice–I never got the first call. Or the third–apparently, they call 3 times. Or not. See below).

The snippy chick on the phone was a bit much. Get this: when your phone goes out, the guy assured me that they make the service call regardless of contacting you for your “confirmation” call. Snippy woman on the phone said NO–that’s not how it works. I said how can they call me if the phone doesn’t work? She insisted Comcast always gets a second number. She also asked me why I needed to talk to a supervisor, because, “he’s just going to tell you the same thing I am.”

Well, he didn’t. He went into a long song and dance about how the original guy shouldn’t have told me that the service call would be made anyway, and since I didn’t confirm the service call by pressing 1, no service person would be showing up, but they’d be happy to reschedule me etc. As he was explaining all this to me, the service man rang my doorbell. :rolleyes: And of course, the phone and the internet worked. Don’t ask me how. Service guy gave me his card; told me to avoid the 800 number and to just call the local number (or his personal cell, which he wrote on the back of his card) in case it went wonky again. Nice!

It went out again Thursday of this week. I called the local number–got voice mail. Called his personal cell–got voice mail. This time, my husband got to deal with them–he called the 800 number. Different service guy came out. Rewired and re-splittered the entire set up.

It died again today for 2 hours. :rolleyes: We called. It fixed itself (again).

And I hear you on the fee creep. It’s all sleight of hand and a con. I have no idea why our Comcast bill is so high. We don’t even get HBO etc. But (for some reason) we have to pay for all the Spanish, Korean and Polish channels. Why? I have no problem with them being available, but why do I have to pay for them? Why can’t I do some kind of ala carte choice and only get the channels we most often watch? All the foreign language ones would go, as would all the variations of ESPN, MTV, VH1, and god knows what else.

[kaylasdad99]

eleanorigby, has there been any rain in your area lately? My DSL comes in through the phone line. Across the street there’s a large junction box with several telephone trunks tied in. A couple of years ago, a car ran into the junction box and destroyed the housing. Service was restored pretty quickly, but they still haven’t replaced the housing. Instead, they’ve got plastic sheeting draped over the frame.

So now, sometimes after it rains, we hear a tell-tale staticky buzz on our phone that tells us our terminals got wet again, and have corroded enough that they’re about to fail.

[Ostrya]

I too hate Comcast.

Bought a house that already had Comcast cable attached. Being a happy satellite subscriber, wanted ugly cable wire removed, learned I had no legal right to do so, that once a cable is attached it’s the option of the cable company whether they choose to remove it or not.

Not the fault of Comcast you say?

A tree blew down in a storm, stretching to the ground the elec lines as well as the Comcast cable line. Elec representives arrived soon to fix their wire, informed me they could not fix the Comcast line. All that was needed was a tightening of the guy wire which would tighten the now sagging Comcast wire. I understood the Elec company’s stand, called Comcast about problem.

Since I was not an actual subscriber, Comcast didn’t give a shit. It took numerous customer service calls over period of over 7 months, finally got “cable guy” to show up. The guy seemed folksy enough but ended up shooting the shit with me and making conversation so long (almost an hour) that his service truck ran out of gas in my driveway.
I used my own gas can to help the guy out who claimed to have not even one dollar on him to pitch in for the gas costs. This was okay by me, I was cool about it - after all, he promised to be out there again the next day and once and for all, fix the sagging teat-wire.

The next day came and went, no cable guy. Nor did he show the next day, or the next.

I finally called the manager again, left another voice mail message along the line “look, you don’t really want me to keep calling you and I don’t want to keep calling you” and as a result, finally, the same bumpkin showed up and fixed the wire. This after almost 8 months of hassles.

Guess what now? Their wire, being at half mast, vs. the elec wire which spans the top of the pole, is now being encroached by my grafted trees - trees that would never get so tall as to bother the elec lines at the top of pole. So, the assholes at Comcast, the ones when out randomly cking the wires turn around by backing into my lawn with their service truck, want to “trim” my grafted trees - this for a wire I have never contracted for nor requested and will never utilize.

Can’t stand Comcast - they’re a worthless, dead donkey dick company run by rusty crusty camel cocks.

[Leah_M]

I have to say, every time I have had a Comcast tech out to our house, they have been really nice and pleasant and wonderful. Calling them up on the phone, though, sucks.

We have had constant connection problems. We are always told that our modem is the issue. I have replaced it several times, as well as the router. Once, the actual problem was a hardware failure in our apartment complex, but we were told multiple times we should go buy a new modem.

Or, we could have a tech come out and charge us for a housecall. Then they tried to sell us a service plan to reduce the housecall fee (but had monthly charges). Even though any of those charges that are not directly because of something on the fault of us (say, if we broke a jack or cut a wire) should be sent directly to our building account, not to us, because we live in an apartment complex that has an account with them.

We have not had connectivity in three of the four wall jacks in our apartment for the last six months. They all worked when we moved in, and three of them failed, one after the other, very quickly. They had to then disconnect those three and wire and resplit us directly into the one remaining one to get anything to work at all. That tech was lovely, and did not charge us or submit any charges to the building manager, as he said it was definitely a problem on their end. Thank goodness for nice techs.

But it’s always our modem’s fault.

I know the phone reps are really limited as to what they can do, but seriously, why do you have to blame the customer/hardware when the real problem is you cannot figure out what is wrong?

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Leah, why would you have to buy a new modem? Isn’t the modem theirs? If it fails, they just swap it for another one. Same with their cable boxes.

[Sacrilegium]

I really have to give some respect to Verizon here. Their guy just left. He got a photo of what Comcast did to their equipment and said that Verizon’s legal department would handle the ticket and getting payment from Comcast for it. He didn’t charge us anything.

[Bosstone]

@FoieGrasIsEvil

Leah, why would you have to buy a new modem? Isn’t the modem theirs? If it fails, they just swap it for another one. Same with their cable boxes.

I don’t know Leah M’s specific situation, or general Comcast policies, but in Cox’s case, you have two choices: pay a monthly fee (about $5) to use their modem, or buy your own and skip the monthly fee. The latter is cheaper in the long run, but they’ll only consider modem problems their responsibility if you pay the monthly fee.

The problem is, shitty tech support will almost always try to pin the issue on your stuff so that it doesn’t become their problem. If it wasn’t the modem, it would be the computer itself.

[eleanorigby]

@kaylasdad99

eleanorigby, has there been any rain in your area lately? My DSL comes in through the phone line. Across the street there’s a large junction box with several telephone trunks tied in. A couple of years ago, a car ran into the junction box and destroyed the housing. Service was restored pretty quickly, but they still haven’t replaced the housing. Instead, they’ve got plastic sheeting draped over the frame.

So now, sometimes after it rains, we hear a tell-tale staticky buzz on our phone that tells us our terminals got wet again, and have corroded enough that they’re about to fail.

There has been rain lately, but the service didn’t die during the practically monsoon weather in past summers or in the ice storms of previous winters etc. Apparently yesterday all that was needed was a modem reset. To me, it seemed like more evidence of shitty service. We never had staticky buzz–it was completely dead air on the phone, and of course, no internet connection at all.

I did note (while power washing the front porch yesterday) that the service guy did not remove some old wires coming out of the box on the wall of the house. As far as I can tell, they aren’t connected to anything–would if have killed him to just take them off entirely, instead of leaving unsightly wires hanging off the service box? :rolleyes:

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@Bosstone

I don’t know Leah M’s specific situation, or general Comcast policies, but in Cox’s case, you have two choices: pay a monthly fee (about $5) to use their modem, or buy your own and skip the monthly fee. The latter is cheaper in the long run, but they’ll only consider modem problems their responsibility if you pay the monthly fee.

The problem is, shitty tech support will almost always try to pin the issue on your stuff so that it doesn’t become their problem. If it wasn’t the modem, it would be the computer itself.

Yeah, that’s the route I go. I’d rather all the equipment belong to them so its just replaced rather than buy it outright.

The only issue I’ve had with Comcast besides a few untimely internet/phone/cable outages (which is what sucks about cable service…if one thing goes down, ALL the services go down) is a strange internet slowdown that seems to happen every four months or so. I have to call Comcast and have them “refresh” my modem, and things speed right back up. I wonder what causes that?

[eleanorigby]

The weirdest thing about 2 of our 3 recent outages has been that the phone and internet don’t work, but the cable TV did. The guy 'splained it to me–something about the TV works on a lower frequency or some such. I suck at electronics and physics, so I have no doubt I am remembering it incorrectly.
But I likened it in my old brain to when the power would go out when I was a girl and yet the phone still worked. Those seem like such good days, now–when Ma Bell and ComEd ran the world.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@eleanorigby

The weirdest thing about 2 of our 3 recent outages has been that the phone and internet don’t work, but the cable TV did. The guy 'splained it to me–something about the TV works on a lower frequency or some such. I suck at electronics and physics, so I have no doubt I am remembering it incorrectly.
But I likened it in my old brain to when the power would go out when I was a girl and yet the phone still worked. Those seem like such good days, now–when Ma Bell and ComEd ran the world.

Now that I think about it, the last two outages I had were like you describe. The cable still worked but the phone and internet went down together. But its happened with all three before too.

[kaylasdad99]

@the lone cashew

I too hate Comcast.

Bought a house that already had Comcast cable attached. Being a happy satellite subscriber, wanted ugly cable wire removed, learned I had no legal right to do so, that once a cable is attached it’s the option of the cable company whether they choose to remove it or not.

Not the fault of Comcast you say?

A tree blew down in a storm, stretching to the ground the elec lines as well as the Comcast cable line. Elec representives arrived soon to fix their wire, informed me they could not fix the Comcast line. All that was needed was a tightening of the guy wire which would tighten the now sagging Comcast wire. I understood the Elec company’s stand, called Comcast about problem.

Since I was not an actual subscriber, Comcast didn’t give a shit. It took numerous customer service calls over period of over 7 months, finally got “cable guy” to show up. The guy seemed folksy enough but ended up shooting the shit with me and making conversation so long (almost an hour) that his service truck ran out of gas in my driveway.
I used my own gas can to help the guy out who claimed to have not even one dollar on him to pitch in for the gas costs. This was okay by me, I was cool about it - after all, he promised to be out there again the next day and once and for all, fix the sagging teat-wire.

The next day came and went, no cable guy. Nor did he show the next day, or the next.

I finally called the manager again, left another voice mail message along the line “look, you don’t really want me to keep calling you and I don’t want to keep calling you” and as a result, finally, the same bumpkin showed up and fixed the wire. This after almost 8 months of hassles.

Guess what now? Their wire, being at half mast, vs. the elec wire which spans the top of the pole, is now being encroached by my grafted trees - trees that would never get so tall as to bother the elec lines at the top of pole. So, the assholes at Comcast, the ones when out randomly cking the wires turn around by backing into my lawn with their service truck, want to “trim” my grafted trees - this for a wire I have never contracted for nor requested and will never utilize.

Can’t stand Comcast - they’re a worthless, dead donkey dick company run by rusty crusty camel cocks.

You bought a house to which Comcast owned an easement for the attachment of a cable?

Isn’t that the type of thing a title search is supposed to reveal? I think I’d have a little conversation with the different people who facilitated the sale.

[Ostrya]

kaylasdad99 On a similar note to this, or what seems to be, several yrs ago when making a request to get any/all of the 4 major networks from satellite provider (directv), was told by them that they were required by law to submit a written request to any local affiliate provider - that they needed to grant me permission to get their major network somewhere else and not from them.

When experiencing the nonsense with comcast, was informed this was another one of the crooked lobbies that had been enacted here in the state.
The wire was attached when I bought the house. I was told by several people that they (comcast) were under no legal obligation whatsoever to remove it, it had already been “established”. This is such bs, comcast doesn’t help pay the taxes on my house yet have their unwanted wire attached.

Someone suggested “boltcutters”.

I replied and still feel this way, that if I did that it would backfire on me, I would end up in court and held liable for repairing the damn wire to my damn house. I don’t blame at all the sellers of the house, they weren’t in cahoots with comcast in some way. I blame the Michigan laws that allow this, somebody somewhere has a greasy palm.

But concerning comcast - if they had any integrity, they’d remove the damn wire at homeowner’s request. It’s common sense. None of these comcast folk (or anyone else) would want a wire of mine attached to their homes. And the repair, maintenance issue I went through with them was a nightmare of colossal time waste. They’re fucksticks.

[Tinkertoy]

@the lone cashew

kaylasdad99 On a similar note to this, or what seems to be, several yrs ago when making a request to get any/all of the 4 major networks from satellite provider (directv), was told by them that they were required by law to submit a written request to any local affiliate provider - that they needed to grant me permission to get their major network somewhere else and not from them.

When experiencing the nonsense with comcast, was informed this was another one of the crooked lobbies that had been enacted here in the state.

It’s not state law it’s federal (FCC) if Directv lets you have them without a waiver signed by the local affiliate, they could lose their licenses and be sued for billions. I am also in an area that doesn’t get locals and the affiliates here won’t sign a waiver. Unless I pay them each over $200 to come and check to see if I can use an antenna. Bastards! So fuck em download or I watch online instead.