Fucking Comcast

[BerenTebogo]

Seriously, I mean, I know they're bad...but are they really this bad?

Our HD cable box went out like 2 weeks ago, whatever, we don't watch a /ton/ of TV since the internet exists. We finally got around to calling about it, they wanted to send someone out to fix it but fuck that I hate having underpaid repairmen in my apartment, so we opted to drop off the broken box and pick up a new one.

Cue 24 hours later we get around to setting it up, Caiti calls the number to activate the new box, etc, guide/tivo/ondemand/info all don't work. No button but channel up and down work on box or remote. No captions, no last channel, no nothing.

Dealt with it, whatever, I know where and when my shows are on.

Tonight, 20 minutes ago during a rerun of White Collar the signal starts drifting in and out, fine, whatever. I change the channel and OH NO! Now the box is 100% broken, guess I shouldn't have dared to change the channel.

Nothing works, no amount of resetting or jostling or anything, and I really, really, really am just pissed the fuck off. The tivo holds less space than my phone does, the On Demand is terrible and slower than a 1998 computer (HD version) and we pay out the ass for their TV service which is just honestly shit.

Does it get better? Is there anything I can do to lean on them? I refuse to switch out to Verizon or anything because honestly, the effort of having someone take all the comcast business out and the verizon shit in...I'd just rather have nothing, but fuck me, I'm pissed.

Is it possible to only get internet service from Comcast? Or internet + basic cable? I refuse to give them this much money if the shit isn't going to work.

[Jonny]

i fucking love Directv had them for 5yrs after being with cable television and im soooo much happier, i only use cable for internet since its the fastest internet out here.

[antihero]

^cool story, bro.

and sath, yeah; just 86 the cable as a whole. they really turn the screws (or at least in atlanta) for basic cable, it's $30 a month for channels 1-27, the FUCK? my girlfriend and I just have internet from comcast, it depends how readily you can access TV shows I guess though. sites I use have shit like burn notice up 10 minutes after airing, but comcast really is/has always been bullshit :/

[Jonny]

sorry bro im half sleep didn't mean to ramble lol

but what anti said. do that stuff >.>

the package with Directv for $60 a month gives you 150 channels and even local channels

[BerenTebogo]

Can't have satellites on my apartment building or I would have DirectTV.

We have the Triple Play premier bundle (the expensive one, don't ask me why) and I spent some time looking into their "faster internet speeds" bullshit. Turns out it's between 8mbps and 16mbps, when they offer a 30mbps service for $60 a month. Triple play is like $160 all told.

I'm seriously pissed now. We don't use the phone, we tried to have it taken off the plan months ago and they said they couldn't, we don't watch any of the movie channels. I'm gonna downgrade to the $25 basic cable I think. We have 3 TVs, I can't imagine just having ZERO tv, unless there are better alternatives?

[antihero]

Our situation is unique I guess, I have their/our apartment wired for HDMI/a network drive with HD movies/shows that I keep up to date (newsgroup RSS feeds for all shows so the HD version gets downloaded as it gets uploaded), as well as backlogs of shows like all 3 seasons of beavis and butthead, first 3 seasons of burn notice, shit like that. If she or her roommate want to watch anything they just play it from the network drive. At home I have the same setup, with a projector in the living room, but the only time I used to 'watch' TV was I'd leave my old shitty CRT TV on while I was going to sleep :z Tbh the $25/month for basic cable would be better spent on a newsgroup subscription with 700 day retention, then you could just do what I do on a smaller scale.

[BerenTebogo]

I wish I understood more than half of that. Fuck. I think I need to educate myself.

[Bethany]

Sath, Comcast is the devil. Me and my husband have had nothing but horrible experiences with them on every level.

As much of a hassle as getting a different provider is, it's well worth it. Do yourself a favor, take a couple of minutes and research your options. Switching to whatever alternatives your area has will be an improvement no matter who you choose. Personally, we went with U-Verse from AT&T. Despite it having a less than stellar reputation we love it, and have been nothing but happy. I can honestly say I never was happy with Comcast ever.

Whomever you choose, they will be worth the change from Comcast in the stress department alone.

[RPGTyrant]

To be honest, it might be the area you're in, because as much issue as I had with their customer service to get set-up at a new house. The line to the house was apparently cut when the landscapers came and did their work since the coaxial lines are the most shallow. I went around and around with comcast for like 3 weeks until they randomly showed up and bored me a new line. None of their customer service reps had put notes on my account and I was seriously calling every day. I ended up getting a call from an executive in philly and being given like 150 bucks worth of account credits for my trouble. Once that was all over with I've had no complaints with the actual service. I have the triple play bundle as well, the one without movie channels.

From our experiences with the satellite providers it takes forever to change channels and loses signal with the wrong breeze direction.(Sister has it, parents can't stand watching T.V. there when they watch my nephews) The issues you had sound like it deserved a service call, because that it not par for the course using their television service. There may be an issue with the signal strength in the lines which a technician can correct. It is possible to get double play, with just internet and television, in my area it's around 100 dollars a month for that. From my research they were, unfortunately, the most reliable option to get internet and T.V. from. Haven't had a single service outage in the 8 months I've been in the house.

[aers]

It's possible to get both internet alone and basic cable+internet from Comcast.

Never had any issues with them, btw.

[Ashira]

Always have the option to choose your products; they may cost "more" when you don't bundle, but you're still saving over what you'd be paying for more than the one product. And their pricing for their bundles is almost never the highest speed internet; typically when they post those bundles they go for general public, who'll be more impressed with super cable and 2 free months of movie channels, as I figure.

I started off with just the high end internet from Time Warner up where I am personally, as the house I was in already had DirecTV; when I moved to my own place, I just plopped the Basic+ on top of that. I don't need the digital phone crap.

Also, once you get everything set up, besides just complaining enough until they hand you free stuff... call customer service and ask if they can find any deals or promotions you currently qualify for. I got $20/mth off my service for 4 months, and another $5/month off for 6 months on top of that just by asking them to see if my services qualified for anything.

[Mistress Stowastiq]

Seriously, I mean, I know they're bad...but are they really this bad?

Our HD cable box went out like 2 weeks ago, whatever, we don't watch a /ton/ of TV since the internet exists. We finally got around to calling about it, they wanted to send someone out to fix it but fuck that I hate having underpaid repairmen in my apartment, so we opted to drop off the broken box and pick up a new one.

Cue 24 hours later we get around to setting it up, Caiti calls the number to activate the new box, etc, guide/tivo/ondemand/info all don't work. No button but channel up and down work on box or remote. No captions, no last channel, no nothing.

Dealt with it, whatever, I know where and when my shows are on.

Tonight, 20 minutes ago during a rerun of White Collar the signal starts drifting in and out, fine, whatever. I change the channel and OH NO! Now the box is 100% broken, guess I shouldn't have dared to change the channel.

Nothing works, no amount of resetting or jostling or anything, and I really, really, really am just pissed the fuck off. The tivo holds less space than my phone does, the On Demand is terrible and slower than a 1998 computer (HD version) and we pay out the ass for their TV service which is just honestly shit.

Does it get better? Is there anything I can do to lean on them? I refuse to switch out to Verizon or anything because honestly, the effort of having someone take all the comcast business out and the verizon shit in...I'd just rather have nothing, but fuck me, I'm pissed.

Is it possible to only get internet service from Comcast? Or Internet + basic cable? I refuse to give them this much money if the shit isn't going to work.

It is possible to get Internet alone but it costs more than Internet + basic cable. This is because they want people to have cable so that they can call and add things later. ($$) So a bundle of Internet + basic is cheaper.

They (in my area they do) have this service called Comcast Xfinity TV which is 18.45.
Xfinity Internet is 47.95
Tax is 2.15
Total monthly bill for basic + highest speed Internet is 68.55


If you call and ask for management to assist you and refuse to be assisted by anyone but management, explain what happened with dates and names of reps and insist on re-credit on your bill for every single fuck up that they did.

They have a tier for refunds and the amount they can give for each fuck up. If you are insistent, you should be able to eventually get some one who actually knows what they are doing and has the authority to set you up correctly with refunds.

Also with tech department, you need to do the same thing in order to get some one who actually knows how the equipment works and why yours was not working. They will go into a routine customer tech call procedure unless you interrupt them and ask for a higher tier support rep.

Warning, they might try and blame it on you installing it and they will try to suggest having some one come in to do it "correctly". Having their reps install anything is very unwise unless you yourself have no tech knowledge. When they insisted on coming in, my husband had to follow the guy around and ended up schooling him on how to do his job, which ended up in an uncomfortable power struggle. You can still insist on doing it yourself, but talk to a knowledgeable higher tier rep who will discuss it with you to make sure everything on their end is working properly.

As long as you maintain your calm, you can usually get good service, it is when a customer starts being rude that they get the upper hand and can screw you.

Good luck, we had to deal with comcast too.

[CoronA1979]

I wish I had a better choice for an ISP other than DSL from AT&T. I'd drop fucking Comcast so fucking quick and I've even considered dropping it and just going to DSL, but I think I may regret that >.>

My HD boxes (One in the bedroom and one in the living room) has issues also. Sometimes, I can't gey any HD channels or they pixelate often (No, it's not the TV's lol).

Not to hijack your thread but just how shitty is DSL, anyone?

[Mjd]

Cablevision's "Guide" is terrible too.

Love it when I go to the in laws with there superior Time Warner cable.

[RPGTyrant]

Warning, they might try and blame it on you installing it and they will try to suggest having some one come in to do it "correctly". Having their reps install anything is very unwise unless you yourself have no tech knowledge. When they insisted on coming in, my husband had to follow the guy around and ended up schooling him on how to do his job, which ended up in an uncomfortable power struggle. You can still insist on doing it yourself, but talk to a knowledgeable higher tier rep who will discuss it with you to make sure everything on their end is working properly.

I agree with this for the cable box installation and simple things like that aside from one caveat. If you are having an issue after you install it with pixelation, slow loading, intermittent signal, and disconnects I think I can reliably say that you can not fix that yourself. It should definitely be a call to their customer service, which is now much better with scheduling to come out and compensating you if they miss their appointment. They have the equipment to check your signal strength, the codes to test things back to the source, and can make necessary corrections to fix your problem. When I lived with my parents we started having a lot of problems with the T.V., internet started going out etc. We had to have the tech come out and check all the lines, ended up having to put new stuff in from where it enters the house and change how it splits. After that it was smooth sailing, no more issues with the internet and all 6 t.v.s we had it split to came in fine.

[Caiti]

To continue with where Sath left off, I made the call a little while ago and was given a total of roughly $114 which includes their top quality internet service, along with the $30 basic cable and two additional boxes. Is this a good deal? The rep I spoke to was helpful, didn't nag me to buy other things and actually listened to what I wanted, unlike other experiences we've had with them in the past. He said they would have to send a guy to come and physically restrict our cable settings for this downgrade. I'd rather not have someone come here, but it doesn't sound like we have any other options. That price still seems a bit high noticing the other responses here. What is the Xfinity service that was mentioned? I apologize if my questions seem a bit stupid, but I am unsure and both Sath and I would like to get the best deal available.

[Callisto]

We have basic digital cable for like $18 a month that gives us at least 90 channels, not sure if we just got it via bitching or what but Comcast does tend to bend when you throw a fit, at least by us.

I'm not sure why it seems so different in different regions, but the customer service by me has gotten much, much better in recent years and I rarely have any service issues aside from an occasional internet hiccup for a minute or two every couple of weeks.

Edit: also @ Caiti, Xfinity is the exact same thing as their previous Comcast service, more or less they just changed the name because 'Comcast' was so ingrained in peoples' minds as being associated with shitty customer service. Same actual product, different name.

[Caiti]

This $30 cable deal seems like shit, honestly. I had him list off the channels included, and frankly we'd be paying $30 to watch Burn Notice once a week along with catching the occasional episode of Mythbusters if we are home while any of this is on.

Previous encounters with Comcast have been a nightmare. A few months ago, I had a woman spending 10 minutes trying to convince me to keep Showtime because they had that Jackie O movie coming out soon, and surely I wouldn't want to miss that.

This was the first rep who didn't argue with me and say "well are you sure?" A thousand times and just helped me get what I said I wanted. I told him I would have to talk it over with my husband and that I would call back. He gave me his name and direct number. Seems to be a step in the right direction, price just seems high.

[BerenTebogo]

Upgrading to 50mbps speed and getting rid of the TV entirely. Going to attempt to set up a situation similar to what Anti has. We have 2 TVs able to hook up to HDMI inputs and our 5th computer (my new laptop) will be arriving within the week. Not to mention the 500gb mini external HD I have and can buy more of for $50. I think this is honestly the better option. Keep externals of TV / movies / etc and run a laptop through to the TV when we want to watch in HD and play off of the external.

Streaming TV / movies should be much better too since upgrading from 22mbps to 50mbps.

[BerenTebogo]

Also, this change saves us like $45-$55 a month. The 50mbps is expensive but I bet anything we'll still be happier than with TV.

Fuck commercials and fuck OnDemand showing nothing but Twilight trailers 24/7.