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

The BBQ Pit
41

Yes, you can rent their modem or buy your own.

We did originally have a modem issued by them. We had one for cable internet and TV. When we downgraded to a basic package, we no longer needed the multi-service modem and they swapped it out for an internet-only modem.

We began having major problems with the walljacks, which they insisted was the modem. They wanted me to wait a week for them to come replace it, and they said if it turned out to NOT be the modem they’d make me pay a housecall fee. So I went and bought my own new modem.

And still had the same problem, so it wasn’t the modem. I was able to get the internet to function by changing which wall jack it was hooked up to, since they were insisting that it was my problem and if I couldn’t fix it they’d have to charge me to come do so.

Then that jack failed. It worked, and then suddenly it did not work anymore. Then, a third jack failed, in the same way. We are currently using the last of four that we have in the apartment, and if this one fails we will have to pay them to come back out and look at the connectivity again.

Every time a jack has failed, I have noticed a Comcast van outside. I don’t know if them working on something else is interfering with the lines for my apartment, or if there was some kind of problem elsewhere they were called in for, but it has happened that way every time. The last time our building had an outage, the tech that came out disconnected all but the current jack we are using in order to get it to work at all. He tried the others and couldn’t get them to work, either.

Long story short, instead of returning my own modem, I just gave them back theirs, since we were paying a rental fee on it anyway at the time, and buying our own eliminated that fee.

42

I live in Chicago. Comcast in Chicago sucks.

Shortly after moving into a new apartment I made an appointment for a Comcast installer to come and set up my cable and internet. The installers were so busy that my options were to wait 3 weeks for a weekend appointment or take off a half day of work for a week day 1pm-4pm window. I elected to take the week day. Naturally, the installer never showed. No phone call. Nothing. I called Comcast back and was told I needed to make another appointment. I thought that the fact they hadn’t shown up would give me priority for the next available install. Nope - I was told I’d have to wait another 2 weeks. The second time he actually showed up. The install went fine and equipment worked, but what really pissed me off was the installer’s comment as he left - “Man, I’m scheduled for four more installs today. Ha, I think I’m only gonna do one.”

Oh, and on top of all of that, in their infinite wisdom, Comcast has their phone system set to look at your area code and automatically direct you to your “local” branch. My cell phone number is out of state. So, for every call I would have to wait on hold, tell the person I needed to be transferred to Chicago, then wait on hold again. About 50% of the time I was transferred to the wrong department on the Chicago side, which meant another 10-15 minutes on hold. None of the reps were able to provide a number I could call to reach Chicago directly.

I also think they can get away with this because of lack of competition. They know people have no other options, so it really doesn’t matter if they piss people off. How many people are actually going to go without TV and internet? Luckily, AT&T is moving in to my part of the city.

43

Comcast is the evil – happiest day of my life when I dumped them for satellite TV and DSL.

The thing that always killed me would be when I was on the phone with them because our internet was out – which was about once a month. They would always try to sell me their phone service. Here’s a clue Comcast: if I’m calling to complain that you can’t provide the service I’m already paying for, it’s not a good time to sell me another service. I would always point out that if their phone service was as reliable as their internet, how the hell would I contact them when it went down?

44

I stand corrected, Tinkertoy. And on this same note, am not sure about the legalities concerning pre-attached comcast wires to newly purchased homes. My legal connections are lacking and I live kinda out in the sticks of MI.
I go through more trial-and-error than I would prefer to experience and info can be hard to come by - that’s why I turn to the SDMB so much, have learned lots in my decade of lurking. There’s a lot here to offer.

45

The automated message whilst on hold keeps telling me to go online to Comcast.com for my service question. The irony… it burns!

It went out again early this morning, but is back up now. Husband called and service guy will be out between 1-4 tomorrow. I am beginning to hate Comcast. I never paid them any attention–we’ve been customers since 1990-something. I have no idea WTF is up now, but 4 outages in less than 2 weeks? This is shitty service. Grrr.

46

Wow, that sucks and doesn’t mirror my experience with them at all. Its not like I love them or anything, because I’ve gotten, uh, uninformed customer service from them before over the phone when discussing upgrading/downgrading packages (not to mention phone wait times…yeesh!!), but aside from my aforementioned periodic and puzzling outages, their equipment has always worked well and I have no complaints.

WTF is up especially with that phone deal you’re talking about? I’ve never heard of that. My digital phone service is unlimited long distance and where I live I have three area codes all very nearby (the southeasterly confluence along the Ohio River of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky). No issues at all.

I wonder how much merit your assertion about lack of competition holds as a reflection of the quality of customer support. When I first bought this house I tried to get Direct TV as many of my neighbors have but due to my house’s positioning in relation to the mature woods behind my house, the dish can’t get its signal.

Fortunately Comcast was available (and my only other option…a’course I didn’t tell them that) and its been…about what I expected from a cable company over the last three years. A few hassles but nothing major and not even close to some of these horror stories I’m reading.

Amazing disparity, likely due to a large combination of factors, not the least of which is Comcast is so fucking big now that some areas are going to be better than others all around.

47

I just know it because I spent 3 years taking calls for Directv. The local stations kept trying to get me to switch to Dish Network to get local channels, like I would give up $120 a month free service just to get locals.
Oh and if any of you had a service problem called Directv tech support and got an idiot, that wasn’t me.
No Really

48

:slight_smile:

49

More irony: the phone miraculously started to work this morning and I have 2 voice mails, one of them from… Comcast. It was automated and was trying to confirm our appt. (hello? the phone doesn’t work–DUH). I tried to call them back, but got… Direct TV (I called 1-800, not 1-888). :smack:

Anyway, I am MUCH happier now. 3, count 'em 3, trucks appeared in my driveway. 4th service call is a charm, I guess. :rolleyes:

Here’s the sad thing: the first guy came and went into the basement to check out the modem. He was down there for quite some time. I went down there to get something and told him I was impressed with the three trucks outside. *He knew nothing about the other two… *

It all works now, but the true test will be tomorrow morning.

50

Chicago suburbanite who used to use Comcast - digital cable, 2 DVR channels at once (but if you were watching TV at the time, you couldn’t be watching a third channel during the recording of two other programs; you had to watch one of those recording channels), Internet service, no movie packages other than Starz, for a little over $150 a month. By the end we had at least one Internet signal drop per night (which sucks when you’re avid online gamers and get dropped out of the action), and frequent drops when it would be storming out. We’d call and be told there weren’t any problems on their end, they had to send someone out to look and that’d cost money, please take a day off work so we can tromp around your house. Oh, not to mention frequent digital pixellation on certain channels especially. Not their fault, ever. Must be your TV/your house’s cables/your computer/oh you aren’t using their ancient modem any longer just because it’d go offline when you barely wiggled the desk and you’d rather not take a day off to drive to their office and trade it in? - OK, then it’s your modem.

AT&T came by when my husband was home, and said, ‘hey, we’re rolling out UVerse in your neighborhood; we can do that plus 4 DVR recordings at once (one of which can be high-def) and high-def channels, for $99 a month.’ We jumped at it. It’s been great. No pixellation, no signal drops, beautiful high-def.

The Comcast rep sounded absolutely blindsided. We’d been with them for years, after all. He rather meekly said that he’d heard they have pixellation issues. He said he’d send over a shipping box so we could return the equipment - well, how nice of them. A few days later, a Comcast employee showed up to collect it, saying he’d been on a service call nearby and the company put this on his list as well. Cool. Signed a receipt and received a copy. The boxes showed up the next day, so I ignored them.

Yeah. I got three different phone calls asking for return of their gear. They weren’t around when I called so I kept leaving messages, including the receipt number. Finally they figured it out.

Then they sent me a bill for the following month. I called up, they claimed it was a quirk of their billing system and I’d receive both a corrected bill and a check for the remainder of the unused month for the time I paid ahead for. They managed to come through on those as well, thankfully.

Best yet we’ve been with UVerse for over a year and haven’t had a rate increase, so we’re saving over $50 a month without even considering the benefit of high-def and more DVR channels. Comcast sent out these panicky language postcards claiming rate increases with UVerse and oh please please please come back to Comcast… turns out the projected increase was a couple bucks at most, but they buried that in the fine print.

51

If you are far enough out in the boondocks or live in a gorge, you don’t need a waiver. When I got DirecTV, they gave me 2 of the networks with no questions, and then I had to whine bitch and complain for a year before I got the other 2, no waivers. The whining bitching and complaining had to do with my actual physical location, once they figured that out, it wasn’t a problem.

The nice thing is that you’re grandfathered. We now get locals and I still keep paying for the east and west coast feeds also. 3 prime times is nice and a pretty steady feed all night of The Simpson’s is nice also.

52

Every time I read this title I’m wondering why Palin would knock at your door.

53

Maybe he has a better view of Russia from his front porch than she has from hers.

54

Haven’t I suffered enough?

55

I have to laugh at this point ---- I just got a knock at the door. It was a Comcast tech, with an order to hook us back up to service. He seemed genuinely surprised that I hadn’t requested any such appointment.

sigh

56

We had service with one of the satellite providers. We moved, taking our old equipment with us. We upgraded our service at the new house, and gave the old equipment to the service tech at the time of installation. We specifically confirmed this when we made the appointment.

Cue several months of messages from the satellite provider requesting the return of the equipment. We call back, telling the phone rep the installer took the equipment with him. “Okay, we’ll check into it.” A few weeks later, same call. Just for variety, twice they shipped us empty boxes with pre-paid shipping labels to return the equipment.

Finally I called the installation department. I lay out the whole sad story, and a very longsuffering tech tries to gently explain to me that they do not handle billing. I will have to call this other number to get it straightened out.

He paid quite a bit more attention when I told him that I didn’t expect him to fix it. I just needed him to check his records and give me the name of the tech who had performed the installation and took my old equipment.

::Puzzled tech:: “Ma’am, why do you need the installer’s name?”

Me: “I need his name for the police report when I report the theft.”

::Worried tech:: “Police report?”

Very Patient Me: “Yes. He took the equipment out of my house. Obviously, he did not return it to you. That is theft. I need to fill out a police report. The police will want to know the name of the thief.”

::Worried tech:: “Ma’am, you don’t need to go to all that trouble. Let me try to find out what happened.”

Me: “I know what happened. I saw him carry the equipment out of my house. Your billing department has assured me for months that you did not receive the equipment. Please check your records for his name.”

::Even more worried tech:: “Ma’am, please, let me take your information and someone will get back with you soon.”

Two days later, another message on the machine that the whole mess had been fixed. No more calls from them asking for the equipment – no more empty boxes showing up to use to ship the equipment back.

:smiley:

57

Am I the only one who read the title here as "Palin came knocking at my door … "? I was really confused reading the OP; I thought it was going to be about how Comcast lies like Sarah Palin…

58

Apparently not.

59

I took mine to their office. i did it on my time and used my gas to hand it to them and they sent me letters saying I still had it. I refused to give them the 350 bucks for equipment I gave them. They gave it to a collection agency and it is on my credit report. Fuck Commiecast.

60

Same here. I don’t think it would be to announce that you’ve won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse jackpot.

More like the Seventh Day Adventists, only crazier.