Comcast is full of idiots

JokerGirl · #1 10/29/2007, 09:11 AM

At our house, we didn't have any cable TV (or internet) until about 2 years ago. Comcast ran lines through when they put the Vinyl Village in behind us.

For the first couple of years it's been great, but this past year we keep having the same thing happen over and over again. Our service has been out since Wednesday, and because of it I couldn't get a bunch of my homework done for one of my classes. It requires you to pick up the homework and submit it over the net.

Anyways.... this same thing happened in July as well. The jist of it is, is that whenever they do maintenance up the road, someone keeps switching our service off! GRRRRRRRRR Yeah okay... we may be the only ones in our 5 house town with Cable, but damn...

The guys came out to the house Thursday. I walked outside and told them "Your problem isn't the house, it's up there" and pointed at the pole. They give me this look like are you kidding me? They get their ladder up and go up the pole to test the feed coming through. Dead as a door nail. They come down and say, "well we can't help you with this right now. If it was before 1pm, we could have called the guys to go to the station and flip you back on, but at this point they are useless."

Friday goes by.... still no service. We called Comcast AGAIN when Matt got home, only to be greeted by a lady on the phone that was not very nice and even lied to us. She also refused to let us talk to her supervisor. I called back to get a different lady and told her what was going on. She said that unfortunately they weren't going to be able to get anyone out to the house until MONDAY!!!! I told her it was unacceptable, although I knew there wasn't much she could do about it because the mechanical engineers are different than the usual guys that come out in trucks.

So, needless to say, we've gone 6 days with no internet or cable television. If Comcast wasn't the only one with cable in our area, we would've dropped them so quickly on Friday. We had Dish Netowork before and they were even worse.

dinoman · #2 10/29/2007, 09:24 AM

Can you get DSL? Or are you in a spot that doesn't offer it? Sounds a lot like our phone company, fortunately we haven't had to call them for a long time

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JokerGirl · #3 10/29/2007, 09:28 AM

We had DSL when we first moved into the house, but it was HORRIBLE! The closest DSL box is about 3 miles away from us, which means very poor reception. We would constantly get disconnected from games and such.

Sk8r · #4 10/29/2007, 10:08 AM

OUR local comcast would take the missed days off your bill. Start demanding it, and if they won't, start going to the regional and national people.

Another source of internet, if you don't mind brushing snow off the dish occasionally, is DirectTV. Interfering with that takes a solar flare or micrometeor.

onereefnotenuf · #5 10/29/2007, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sk8r

Another source of internet, if you don't mind brushing snow off the dish occasionally, is DirectTV. Interfering with that takes a solar flare or micrometeor.

I bet a macrometeor would do it too!

Altpers0na · #6 10/29/2007, 11:50 AM

its solar flare season, or at least its supposed to be..

sat internet is slow compared to dsl/cable and costs the same ...

i would resort to dial up... maybe a pay per usage account to supplement your cable service... and comcast may have a dial up partner for just such occasions...

crab0000 · #7 10/29/2007, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sk8r
Another source of internet, if you don't mind brushing snow off the dish occasionally, is DirectTV. Interfering with that takes a solar flare or micrometeor.

We had that several years ago and the service was the worst we ever experienced! Our internet was out for 6 weeks and we couldn't get anyone to come out and fix it. We finally just cancelled it. The equipment was very expensive then too. This is not to be confused with the TV service. We have had good service on that front.

dinoman · #8 10/29/2007, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by crab0000
We had that several years ago and the service was the worst we ever experienced! Our internet was out for 6 weeks and we couldn't get anyone to come out and fix it. We finally just cancelled it. The equipment was very expensive then too. This is not to be confused with the TV service. We have had good service on that front.

I think I'm starting to find it depends on your location as to how "good" it is. I've heard lots of stories like yours that basically say it isn't worth it, and others that just flat out love it. Makes it hard to decide because we have been going back and forth on weather to get it or not for close to a year now. We live way out, out far enough that in 20 years there STILL won't be anything besides dial-up.

Our friends just got it so we're waiting to see how they like it before making up our minds.

A.T.T.R · #9 10/29/2007, 01:10 PM

i love comcast in myarea ( just hate they are now starting to block torrents just to charge for them later ( my guess) )

but dsl here is terriable

you could use your cell phone i used mine when i went on vacation and was getting 220 kbps ( aobut the speed of dsl) its a pita to do with most phones nowadays.. google for a how to.

hogpark7430 · #10 10/29/2007, 02:41 PM

Try paying your delinquent bill.

Comcast

j/k

crab0000 · #11 10/30/2007, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dinoman
I think I'm starting to find it depends on your location as to how "good" it is. I've heard lots of stories like yours that basically say it isn't worth it, and others that just flat out love it. Makes it hard to decide because we have been going back and forth on weather to get it or not for close to a year now. We live way out, out far enough that in 20 years there STILL won't be anything besides dial-up.

Our friends just got it so we're waiting to see how they like it before making up our minds.

It may be better now. That was 5 years ago. We didn't have access to DSL when we got the DirectWay, but it was made avilable while we were having all the problems, so it was a no brainer for us. Definately talk to people in your area before deciding on it.

2fishy · #12 10/30/2007, 08:28 AM

I would demand a credit for the time that your service is down! There is no sense in paying for something that you didn't receive!

dinoman · #13 10/30/2007, 08:30 AM

Basically what we've been doing, along with just waiting it out to see what happens with it. Back a few months ago when the parents were seriously looking at it I was reading gobs and gobs of reviews, and a lot of it sounded like a lot of "new" technologies. Everybody ran to it to try it out and it just couldn't keep up with the demand, sorta like when cell phones really hit off around here. They weren't ready to have so much demand to there was huge problems.

JokerGirl · #14 10/30/2007, 08:31 AM

Well our internet/TV is finally back on. I just can't get over the fact that it took them nearly a week to come out and flip a darned switch.

After the problems that we had when we had Dish Network, we will never go with satellite ever again. The customer service was great, but our house was doomed with it.

At the time, the dish couldn't have been in a better, clearer spot. Not a tree or anything to obstruct the service. For whatever reason, the main satellite would go out all the time and we'd be stuck with HBO. It was always the same guys that would come out to the house. They rewired our entire place 4 times, we had 3 new dishes, new receivers... everything had been replaced multiple times and our service still sucked. I do give props to the customer service and repair guys though. The last time the one guy came out it was 2 days before X-mas, was 15 below outside, with 20mph gusts of wind. He was out there freezing his poor butt off, and kept denying our offers of warm coffee with a smidgin of irish cream added.

JokerGirl · #15 10/30/2007, 08:32 AM

Oh they've given us a credit both of the times that this has happened. Honestly, we deserve more than that because it's their mistake both times.

VoidRaven · #16 10/30/2007, 01:04 PM

Yeah, that's when you have to contact the regional or national folks and explain the situation, your poor satisfaction level, and politely (at first anyway) demand action and a larger credit. A lot of time they don't know how the smaller centers are responding to customers.

I had a similar problem when we had a cabel modem and we *both* were working on our Masters degrees via distance learning. I flatly told the company "you are putting $5,000 of my money at risk with not being able to provide service. You WILL get me a supervisor who WILL get a crew out here or I WILL switch providers and seek legal action for the damages of loss of education and breach of contract."

Sure it was a bold-faced lie (except for the $$$ amount. Grad school ain't cheap!) and they could have told me where to go.....but it worked!

Cubman777 · #17 10/30/2007, 02:08 PM

the people at Comcast drive me crazy.

Scuba_Dave · #18 10/30/2007, 07:27 PM

FIOS