Comcast Blows

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JVD_X

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Alright - so I call Comcast because working from home I need to decent internet connection and during the hours of 8AM to 3PM my internet connection is running at the speed of dialup.

They finally send someone out who looks around and makes a determination that there is a faulty signal outside the house due to a bad signal booster or whatnot. He replaces it. Keep in mind that the box he is working on serves the whole block in our home owners association. Now I call BS on his determination because signal boosters don't just decide to work and then not work on a regular schedule. I am 99% sure that their local DNS server is bottlenecked.

In any case -we just get a bill from concast and they stuck a $29 service charge on it. WTF? First - this is in THEIR box and they were not providing the service we were paying for... after complaining about it they removed it. But still...
 
Anyone else feel that there is no competition anymore? Because if there were, these big companies couldn't afford to be playing **** the customer all the time! :mad:
 
To make matters worse... the comcast bill is built into our HOA fee. You pay for TV and computer whether you want it or not. The builder signed a 15 YEAR contract with Comcast.

So even if you want FIOS - or DISH - which a lot of our neighbors do, you still pay for Comcast.

Yea - competition is dead.

Living in the DC area I am a member of a professional group that has embassy events about twice a month. At the Dutch embassy the Emissary (great lady BTW) was saying how surprised she is by the lack of high speed internet n the US. She said back in the Netherlands they had many companies to choose from, the speed was over 100 mbits and she paid about $10 a month.
 
+1, fought with Comcast for 2 years until WOW came in. The picture would tile out and lock up on the premium channels when? During the Soprano's, Deadwood and other high-demand times.
The internet connection would grind to a halt when? 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. When everyone's checking email before work and surfing porn after work.
We had techs out to the house 9-10 times replacing the line, burying it, disconnecting, reconnecting, resetting, replacing, connectors and splits. Never worked to my satisfaction.
Add to that the 20-30 min. wait each time I called unless they were really under staffed when I would get "your call is important to use and will be answered in the order that it was received. Current waiting time is 60 minutes, please use our online toolbox at www.comcast.net". Particularly helpful when the server's down.
Add to that the endless "teaser rate" game; $70/month, jumps to $130. Change package, add/delete services, getting back to $90/month. Only good for 3-months.

I took great joy in calling them and cancelling the service. Of course they had the last word by keeping me on the phone for another 20 min. as I shuffled between agents, managers and sales reps. "We're sorry that you won't have as many Hi Def channels with WOW, we can match their package and guarantee it for 2 years..." Maybe if they'd been that responsive to begin with I wouldn't have felt the need to change.
As it turns out, switching to another supplier took 15 minutes for the tech to drop off the boxes, disconnect from Comcast, reconnect to WOW and check the boxes for functionality (I trenched the line). Had I know that it would be that simple I would have switched long ago.

Chris
 
Yeah I live in an area where the only provider is Verizon. I mean come on, did the other companies just decide to let Verizon "have" this area. They couldn't be bothered to show up to the dance or what?
 
Anyone else feel that there is no competition anymore? Because if there were, these big companies couldn't afford to be playing **** the customer all the time! :mad:
I agree. These scumbags have it worked out so that if you try to save $$$ by iliminating channels you dont want or dont want your kids to have access to, you cant or you'll lose most of the channels you do want. We need a competitor that will provide us with what we want and dont force us to keep package payments we only keep because of the loss we face.:mad:
 
To make matters worse... the comcast bill is built into our HOA fee. You pay for TV and computer whether you want it or not. The builder signed a 15 YEAR contract with Comcast.

So even if you want FIOS - or DISH - which a lot of our neighbors do, you still pay for Comcast.

Yea - competition is dead.

Living in the DC area I am a member of a professional group that has embassy events about twice a month. At the Dutch embassy the Emissary (great lady BTW) was saying how surprised she is by the lack of high speed internet n the US. She said back in the Netherlands they had many companies to choose from, the speed was over 100 mbits and she paid about $10 a month.





That alone would have been a deal breaker for me when buying the house.

When I first seperated from my now ex, the apartment complex that I moved into didn't allow satelite dishes to be installed, so I had no choice but to go with Comcast.
After one year, my bill had gone up $7.50, and I had a half dozen FEWER channels ! At one point, when I was having trouble with my service, they sent out a tech to look into it, and I showedhim the box where all of the feeds came into for the building. He looked at it for about 5 min., shook his head, and said, "I'm never going to be able to figure all this out."
When I moved out of there, I brought my converter box to one of their offices, and told them I was moving, and to close up my account. The lady there tried to talk me into moving my service to my new place, and I told her that I already had an appointment to have a dish installed, and that I was tired of Comcast raising thier prices and taking away part of what I was already paying for. The woman mouths off to me that satelite was going to raise their price soon, also.
My ex had the dish that I had installed, removed, and went with Comcast's Triple Play bundle, or whatever they call it. Their phone has gone out three times in the last couple of years, for a week at a time, their cable service is poor, and my kids tell m that my DSL is a LOT faster than their cable internet.

I've had a dish for four years now, my cost has actually gone DOWN, and I now have twice as many stations as I had with Comcast. NEVER again !
 
I have been having some issues with comcast too. Our service would go out almost everyday. I would come home and and reset the modem and that would fix the problem. One day the reset did not fix it, I call for service on Monday. The earliest appointment they have is Saturday, but tell me to call back and maybe slots will have freed up. I call back the next day at 1:30 and they have open appointment 2-5. So, I leave work and rush home. 4:30 comes and no one has showed. Apparently they had to reschdule.

Me: "Why did you not call me? I just wasted my whole afternoon."
Operator: "Well, sir, it is our policy that a supervisor will call when they are not able to make it out. Is xxx-xxx-xxxx your current number?"
Me: "Yes, that is my home phone, the very service you provide and is not working.
Operator: ...pause...."Oh no. I am very sorry about that."
(On the original call the operator took my cell, but it was cleared when I called back to re-schedule.)
Then magically an appointment opened up the next morning.

The tech comes out the next day, but of course the service came back on the night before. He took one look at the modem and said it was recalled, blamed it on that, replaced it and left. That night the service dropped out again. I call back and the earliest appointment is Saturday. Of course on the evening before the tech was scheduled, the service came back on. The person who called Saturday morning was actually very helpful, said they had been doing a lot of work in the area, and gave me his cell so I could call him if there was a problem and hopefully he could come right over. It has been fine since, 2 weeks.

It sucks too because SWMBO could work from home a lot more but she needs a constant connection to the internet to work of a server from work. If the connection drops she loses all unsaved work.

I think AT&T are putting in "Advanced TV' near here. I will probably switch when that comes out.
 
A crappy apartment complex I used to live in (emphasis on CRAPPY) once put up notices stating "Cable bills are going down for residents!" Yeah, sounds good, but what it was was mandated basic cable with Comcast because they made some sort of deal. If you had cable, yeah it was a little cheaper, but if you didn't have cable or want it (like me - hadn't had cable in years) you ended up getting it anyway and subsidizing those who did want it. I blew that popstand not too long after.

Still ended up with Comcrap at the new place because there wasn't anything better at the time for internet service, although I didn't get plain TV service. Recently Fios came to the neighborhood and I haven't looked back after dropping Comcast.
 
That sucks. My cable company (I worked for them until a couple years ago) has a policy that they don't charge for a service call if the problem is theirs. If it's your house wiring, or you screwed something up with your router or something, then you pay. But if it's something on a pole, it's free.
 
Man they did the same type of thing to me! As I was leaving my apartment, I noticed a Comcast guy working on the cable box that connects the whole complex. I come back and realize my cable tv and internet are out, so I call and explain that they must have accidentally knocked mine out. Over a week goes by then they finally fix it, and yep they charged me for that week without service plus a service fee...
 
Man they did the same type of thing to me! As I was leaving my apartment, I noticed a Comcast guy working on the cable box that connects the whole complex. I come back and realize my cable tv and internet are out, so I call and explain that they must have accidentally knocked mine out. Over a week goes by then they finally fix it, and yep they charged me for that week without service plus a service fee...

That is insane - we need to have a national bill or rights for cable and internet consumers and a guaranteed service level agreement. I will take 99.9 percent uptime or an automatic rebate for service.
 
That sucks. My cable company (I worked for them until a couple years ago) has a policy that they don't charge for a service call if the problem is theirs. If it's your house wiring, or you screwed something up with your router or something, then you pay. But if it's something on a pole, it's free.

Yea well - I know he didn't do anything in my basement because I have a whole house network that drops into the a locked network cabinet in the basement. I am the only one with a key and he never came to ask for it so - what the hell did he do downstairs for 15 minutes?
 
I've had nothing but nightmares with Comcast.

Their service is TERRIBLE. 99% of the time I know more than the tech they send
out and they just replace a splitter or give me a new modem, only to have to come
back out in a week because that's obviously not the issue.

Their phone support is unwilling to help with account issues. They even ran our
account under MY credit when it's not in my name. That one is still a mystery to
me.

If there were competition where I am I would switch immediately.
 
One thing that most folks don't know is that if you call and complain, 99% of the time those things will be taken off. It sucks that you'd have to do that on something obvious, but it never hurts to be the squeaky wheel.

You can go overboard on it though. There was a guy who called and insisted on credit because one of his channels was out for a day (we had a sat receiver go out and had to ship in a replacement). The supervisor finally gave in and agreed to credit him for that channel for a day. So... say a 100 cable bill per month (to make the math easy). Divide that by 100 channels gives you a dollar per channel per month. Divide that by the 30 days in the month (it was fine for 29 of those days after all) and the credit was (rounded up) $.04.
 
I used to live in an apartment complex that didn't allow satellite dishes. We bought into the cable plan that was offered through Comcast, and I hated it. At one point, our cable and modem went out. We called Comcast and tried to trouble shoot over the phone, and they kept saying that the signal showed that it was fine on their end, so it must be our tv and computer. It took us a week to get someone out to check it out. When the guy showed up he told us that apparently someone had recently moved in and ordered cable. So instead of doing the work properly, the previous tech just went into the box and swapped jumpers, therby taking our cable and giving it to the new tenant. Then we ended up getting into an argument over the phone about reimbursement after I had been out of service for two weeks. Their records showed that the service was just fine.

In my house, after the ex gf left, (she had Comcast set up) it actually took me almost two months to return their receivers. I called and set up a time for a tech to pick up the equipment three times and noone ever stopped by. Then I was told that they could send me boxes to ship them back to them at their expense, but all of the boxes were way to small. So I drove a half hour to the nearest service center to find a sign on the door that they were closed for the day for an all employees meeting. (Website and phone system never mentioned this). And when I finally went to drop off the equipment the lady got pissed at me for requesting a receipt with all of the equipment serial numbers.

I have DirecTV now and love it. The two times that it went out, I just walked outside and wiped the snow off of the dish. No worries.

And for internet, I have AT&T. Again, no worries. I once had my modem go out, they did some troubleshooting over the phone, within 5 minutes, decided it was the modem, told me that they had an issue with them and were recalling them, sent me a new one and helped me set it up. Total time, two days.
 
We actually had dish at our old house and didn't like it. The dish would in fact go out in winds. Then dish wanted us to pay $36 everytime they sent someone out to realign it. We finally said screw it.
 
hmmm... I never had any issues when I had comcast, I was paying for 6mbps and usually ran 10-18mbps along with tv for like $40 a month. I had charter for a while and they were terrible, $80 a month for 10mbps and I rarely saw higher than 7.
 
Yeah I live in an area where the only provider is Verizon. I mean come on, did the other companies just decide to let Verizon "have" this area. They couldn't be bothered to show up to the dance or what?

I tried to get their FiOS service, and their address finder (see if our service is available in your area!!!) kept finding a weird address. When I called them, they said my area was only serviced by Qwest. Well that was a huge waste of time! I thought the address finder was to, you know, maybe see if it was available? Another thing he said was that Qwest was only available for me because of anti-trust laws there has to be competition. Uhm... but if I can't get your service and only one is available, that's not exactly giving me a choice now IS IT?? I'm not moving just to get your goddamn internet service.
 
Well - my HOA is now exploring options to get out of the Comcast contract and I went and applied to get on the committee to explore those options. We'll see what comcast has to say. I am going to request that they supply QOS measures.
 
i find verizon fios worst then comcast, fios still cant get my bill right after 5months. they kept trying to charge me $225 just for the tv, then more for the phone and internet. im suppose to be getting the triple play package, and they were suppose to correct it right away after the first bill but still having problems
 
Huh, I haven't had any issues with FiOS service. I only have the internet service, though, I don't care about TV (if I want to see something I just find a torrent or use Netflix).

I've been doing over 300 GB / month traffic for several months and not heard a peep out of Verizon.
 
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