Comcast, oh how I love thee...

...let me count the ways.

[Rant]

My wife sent me an email a week or two ago with a link to some story about the worst rated companies in the US as far as customer service goes. I can not for the life of me remember what the top three were, but I definitely remember number 4: Comcast. Way to go guys! Well earned recognition.

Yesterday I get home from work and fall into the somewhat usual routine: help the wifey with supper, eat, play the Wii for an hour or so (Have any of you played the target shooting game on Wii Play? I absolutely can not seem to beat my wife at that game. Frustrating!), pop some popcorn, and watch Deadliest Catch. The show ends and the wifey heads for the shower and I get ready to fire up some CoD4. The box fires up and I notice it does not automatically sign me in to XBL. Hmmmm, weird. So I go to the blade try to sign in and it gives me the normal error connection of not being able to connect to the internetz. Weird again. So I get up and go check the modem. Even weirder. It isn't getting a signal. So I reboot it a few times, check all the wires, and go outside to check the connection to the house. All appear to be in good working order.

[Flashback]

We signed up with Comcast when we moved here because we do not have, or want, home phone service. Trying to get DSL without home phone service absolutely confused the mess out of the lady I talked to at AT&T, even though I was only calling for an accurate price quote. We went with Comcast mostly because of the faster connection. We lucked out and signed up at a time when they were doing some special deals for new customers. We were supposed to get a $100 rebate as a new customer as well as a $75 credit on our bill since we have our own modem. Well, after three months we had seen neither of those, so I called Comcast. Bla bla bla about rebates and credits being handled by different divisions and companies, three Comcast reps and two hours later, we finally get things settled. The rebate and credit special had ended and they had no way to get either to us in their system. So they worked out a deal with us. We would receive a one-time "special credit" on our bill for the $75. Cool, no big deal. Instead of issuing another one-time credit, they wanted to do a a $10 credit over ten months instead of the other rebate. Once again, no huge deal. But, to do that, they had to put on our regular bill that we had signed up for basic cable service ($9 a month) and the give us a $19 credit. Why? It was the only way at the time to issue more than one credit on the bill. Why did they not just wait until the next month to start the $10 credit? Because the system would not allow the to issue credits for more than one month without an appropriate reason (code). The set-up they did for us, was part of a regular deal they run to get more people to order cable TV with their internet, or vice-versa. [/Flashback]

In the time since we got the service, I have had to call Comcast 7 times due to service dropping. Each time I go through the same bla bla bla of resetting my modem and checking the cables on the phone with them before they finally agree to send a tech out. Then, I have to take half a day off because they refuse to schedule a specific time and will only give you the "before noon" or "after noon" window. Each time the tech comes out. Goes through the same crap with the modem and computer. Reruns my interior lines. Checks the exterior lines. Then runs a new line to the house or replaces the line that runs to the line outside the house. I really think they have probably replaced something along the lines of 500 feet of cable in the 7 times they have been out to the house. Why they can't do regularly shceduled line maintenance is absolutely beyond me.

A couple of weeks ago, we got our most recent bill and noticed the $19 credit was suddenly gone from it. This wouldn't have been a big deal except they left the TV service on the bill. So I call again and after an hour or so of talking with three more reps, I finally get things settled. The next time I fire up the comp for the wifey, she notices it is taking quite a bit longer for her to download TV shows from iTunes. So I hop on and go to the normal speed testing sites. WTF?!? My download speed is now half what it once was(10-12K) and my upload speed is a quarter of what it was(1-2K)!

Once again I hop on the phone with Comcast. They are absolutely clueless as to what I am even talking about. After an hour and a half and five different reps, I give up for the night. The wifey and I leave town for the weekend after that and get home Sunday night to once again discover we have no internet. I go through the normal rigamaro with the poor idiot on the other end of the line from Comcast and again plan a half a day away from work waiting for the tech to show up and spend 45 minutes going through messing with my modem and comp (the best part of all this is that same look I get when they ask me the brand of my comp and I tell them I built it. for whatever reason that blows every single one of them away.), checks the interior line, and then checks the wall jack. Low and behold the problem was actually inside my house this time. Apparently the house was hit by lightening over the weekend and it completely fried and melted the jack. Thankfully I always unplug and unhook everything when we go away for the week (during the stormy months) and it didn't affect anything else. But man, that jack was jacked up. So he replaces the jack and reconnects everything and we are good to go. Before he left I asked him about my connection speed dropping. He asked if we had TV or phone service with Comcast and I told him the whole deal with having but not having TV. He said that was the reason in the drop in speeds. He informed me that Comcast does not advertise it and that the phone reps are told not to speak of it, but Comcast has a teired speed system. He als informed me that they use this teir system as an added bonus to those that order other services with them. No one mentions it and the reps do not even know about it, but if you have internet and one other service, your speed get bumped up a notch. If you add phone service, it gets bumped up again. So, with the TV service getting dropped from our bill, we got bumped back down. He said there wasn't anything I could do about it outside of adding back the TV service. What the crap?!? At the very least give me a heads up about this.

So now I am down to being a borderline host for matches, at best, and have real issues in 9v9 rooms when I never had issues before. But it gets better. The wifey and I go out of town again this weekend. We come home to a very slow connection. I call again and they run through a few things over the phone and whatever they did seemed to work. For a day. Get home Monday and it is out again. As I sit on hold for a few minutes and as the rep asks me for my account number the connection comes back. The rep recommends having someone come out again, just in case. At this point I was fed up with all of this and tell him the tech is going to come out to our house Tuesday afternoon after I get home at 5 and he better fix the problem immediately or I am going on a negative PR rampage like they have never seen. The poor guy tries his best to calm the agitated customer down while explaining that they do not schedule specific times for home service. So I set up the "after noon appointment" for Tuesday and the rep agrees to note on the work order that no one will be home until 4 (I compromised a little).

So I get home yesterday around 3:45 and notice the connection is completely gone again. So I sit and wait for the tech to show up. And I wait. And wait. Finally at 5 I am boiling mad and pick up the phone and once again call Comcast (I now have their 800 number on speed dial on my phone). The rep I talk to tells me the tech cam by our house yesterday and no one was home. I ask what time he came by. 1:15. I absolutely exploded on this poor fella. After a minute or two of literally screaming at him I regain my composure, explain to him the history I have with Comcast, and again request that a tech come by some time after 4. He gives me his personal garauntee that the tech will not be at our house today until after 4. We'll see. If not, look for TV, radio, and print ads in a city near you denouncing Comcast and their horrible customer service.

I hate Comcast. Time to look at DSL again.

[/Rant]