So I finally come here for help. FUCK COMCAST

[The_OG_Nelta]

For about 3 weeks, i've been having my internet stutter starting at 10pm, ending in the morning about 8-9am..

When I say stutter, I mean go on and off. R0'ing in FFXI and shit. It goes on and off for about 10-20 seconds.. Sometimes it goes out all together, longest i've seen is 1hour.

No problem, called up a comcast rep and got a appointment with a rep, he comes checks things, replaces wires blah blah. Nothing was changed, still losing internet in the evening. Replaced modem hoping it would work, and nothing. I got another tech appointment on the way, but I would like to get /b/'s techs opinions on this.

FUCK COMCAST

[Pyro]

My parents have been dealing with with this same sort of shit from Comcast for about a year now. Constant tiling on the television and the internet just dropping in and out constantly all day long. I'm pretty sure they have called Comcast out at least a dozen times during which they have replaced the cable from the street to the house, added an in line amplifier and replaced the modem. They even told them that there is an issue with one of their amplifiers down the street but they refuse to replace it. Every time they end up giving the same story and claim it is the wiring in the house which is no more than 2-3 years old after it was all replaced with RG6.

[Minions]

Have this same issue, seems pretty random when it happens. It happened for 2-3 weeks. Comcast says nothing is wrong with my connection. Lately *knock on wood* it seems to be somewhat reliable, but for 2-3 weeks I was using my cell connection to play any games online.

My problem my connection would randomly cut out, lights on the modem would blink and eventually come back within 2mins - 2 hours, then repeating this at random intervals.

[Ksandra]

your answer is to probably just switch to another provider if possible. My parents have a comcast bundle and haven't been able to use their home phone in 2 weeks with reps coming in trying to figure out and can't seem to get things working, so they're going to switch.

fwiw, we have at&t, and we had a similar problem (going in and out all day). They were able to see it on their end, came over replaced the router, and the box outside and wires n' everything and fixed it. Some people hate them though so I think it greatly depends on the area.

[Callisto]

I've had a similar issue twice in the past. Once it ended up being the outdoor wiring at my apartment that was the issue, they replaced the wiring/connector at the source that led into the building and it was fine. At the place I'm currently at it took a while and a couple of trips for a technician to find the issue, it ended up being that whoever had changed the place over from DSL to cable a few years back had kept the satellite splitter in place instead of using a proper cable splitter, he swapped that out and everything's gravy. It can be anything from a bad wire to a slightly loose connector, compared to cable TV the internet needs a very firm connection to stay reliable, if something's just a little loose somewhere it can fuck the program up a fair amount.

If it's always at the exact same time it could potentially be them overselling their bandwidth, but that's an odd time to be hit with a peak rush. As far as just changing providers, that's your decision, but in my experiences it's not going to make the difference outside of if the new provider lays brand new wiring because that was the issue to begin with. Comcast is too expensive and their business practices are shady as shit but as far as their actual physical product goes they're just as if not more reliable than any non-FIOS competition you'll have in the area. U-Verse isn't really any better, and their service isn't really a relative bargain for the internet, only for their TV which is mediocre.

[Tymon]

I probably got farther than most (maybe any) of you in dealing with this with Comcast, so here's my story.

Basically I would, at random intervals during the day, get intermittent disconnections like what has been explained. Not latency, disconnections.

Easily detected by pinging your modem's gateway IP, you could get about 4 out of 10 pings to time out. So, 40% packet loss.

I would go anywhere between 10 and 30% packet loss for an evening. Anything over 2% is considered by their tech support to be an "issue" worthy of resolution.

So begins my battle with their support, it ended up lasting 10 months. Thankfully, it was all free.

First call, support came over, but since they came during the afternoon and my connection only went out in the evening, they noticed no issue, made up a bullshit line about my modem being bad, replaced the modem, left.

Called back a week later, got a new guy to come over, he replaced my modem, this time with a Surfboard (These are incredible modems; I wouldn't let them take it back after I got this one) and checked the signals on all of the cable lines in the house. Came to the conclusion that there could be a problem at the home's hub, which is a small splitter box usually out by the gas meter.

Replaced the splitter box, replaced the plug that has the main cable line in the garage (a power outlet), this GREATLY improved my overall latency, at any time, but didn't fix my disconnections.

What it did do is cause them to happen all day long, but with less packet loss. Went down from 30% to about 5%.

Finally the head manager for their support force came over, by a stroke of luck at the same time as I was having an outage, and was able to observe the packet loss directly from the line.

We decided to try to find the node for our block (the small green cylinders you see outside homes sometimes) that gave cable to the 3-4 immediate homes in our little cul-de-sac

Found it in the neighbors yard, the top was blown off and destroyed, the main lines were completely exposed, rusted, had bugs all in the enclosure and it was half full of water.

Ended up uprooting the line, replacing it, cleaning it out, and putting all new cable lines in the node, then covered it up with a new enclosure. I thought for sure that this would fix it, since it was such an obvious issue.

Unfortunately, no. After about a month it started up again and I personally checked the box to make sure nothing had gone wrong before calling them again.

Manager came back out and did what he explained was a static check for the entire neighborhood, not sure about the specifics here but he claimed that there was some upstream static on the neighborhood's main line and it was causing most people to have the same problem, and I was the only one noticing it because I was the only one in the neighborhood that played video games online, etc

They told me that there would be a big maintenance event in the neighborhood to fix it, and there ended up being trucks outside checking the poles and stuff for most of the homes for the next two weeks, fixed it, never had a problem again.

I'm not so sure every issue is as large-scale as mine was, but what you do need to understand is that most cable line installations are rather old, technology wise. Most Comcast installations were Cablevision or Time Warner first, so they were put in the ground in the mid to late '90s, maybe even earlier than that. Most of them need to be replaced, but Comcast won't do it unless there's a major reason to do so. I gave them one, so they did.


tl;dr, harass them until they fix it, but better hope you have the free service warranty, it's like $5 per month and totally worth it

[Cephius]

No offense Tymon (I think you went about dealing with them the right way) but paying extra money just for a service warranty? That should be included in what you pay for. You're under contract for a service, you shouldn't need to pay extra money to get the company to fix their own issues.

[Callisto]

I've never heard of a service warranty lol...and I've never been charged for a service call. Twice it's taken more than one time out for them to fix it, but one of them(the splitter issue described above) I couldn't really blame them on, would've taken me a million years to figure out myself and the guy was pretty damn thorough.

[Tymon]

Well, I know I pay a small service fee that makes all of their trips free.

I don't know how they operate elsewhere.

It's pretty bad practice to charge people to fix YOUR problems, but it's better than them making me pay >$50 every time. I would have been out a few hundred dollars if I hadn't had it.

edit: and yes, they do charge a lot; my step-dad had a cable issue and they charged him $45ish to come out and fix it. Ridiculous.

[The_OG_Nelta]

They are still trying to figure out the problem as of now. I asked to speak to a supervisor and still cannot, so when I do get a hold of one, I plan on raising hell.

[Tymon]

They are still trying to figure out the problem as of now. I asked to speak to a supervisor and still cannot, so when I do get a hold of one, I plan on raising hell.

If you get a supervisor, and he's in your area, GET HIS DESK NUMBER.

I got the personal desk number of the head support guy in the city. If you want fast, direct service, you call the motherfuckers DIRECTLY.

[The_OG_Nelta]

Yeah, called a supervisor and got him to send techs out to check the lines on Friday and a Technician to my house asap. Also said he would credit my bill to try to compensate for the loss of internet time.

[Seanr]

you should be able to get out of whatever contract without an ETF if they are not delivering what you are in the contract for.. right?

[The_OG_Nelta]

There is no contract, is more of a subscription. So I can cancel anytime I want.

The thing is that in my area, Uverse sucks. I don't think they have the Verizon FIOS in my area or else I would switch to that. But I want to see if they can get this fixed before I pull the bluff "I will cancel right now" card type deal.

[Ikith]

I've learned through the casino industry that if shit is billable they will milk it for all its worth. Essentially keep bugging them, if the one dude doesn't fix it and leave tell the person you speak to on the phone that they didn't finish the job, it goes on file (Trust me) and ask them for someone else. Keep bothering them and telling them that the last person (WITH NAME) did not finish the job until you get someone that does it correctly. If you have balls ask comcast if you can review that person or the grade of service they are giving you, put all low scores and most of the time they will call you to see whats wrong/why you put low scores be honest with them and this may trigger something to actually happen. Also escalating the problem (Asking for a manager to speak to) sometimes helps, if it doesn't keep climbing the ladder until you are at the absolute top of what you can get over the phone, if you call them and instantly ask for a manager it bothers the fuck out of them and they will ask what is wrong, if you are really pissed off just keep asking for a manager.

TLDR Grow some balls, you pay the fucking bill so do everything in your god damn power to get shit fixed!

[Pikarya]

you pay the fucking bill so do everything in your god damn power to get shit fixed!

Indeed, show the bitch who's boss.

[Jube]

I have had the same problem for about a year now. I just think they throttle back my connection at 10pm est. Thankfully it comes back around 4 am for me. To me it seems 10-4 is west coasts most active 8-2. But from what the info i have found the servers are regional so it shouldn't matter. Unless all their regions share bandwidth together for the whole country.

Never had much of an issue of a packet loss problem with comcast, but I did have and issue with the junction box and the wire going to the house and a bad router. Also not to mention those fk'n cable cards for my tivo. Think I went through 8 of them before I got a working pair. Never paid a dime for all the problems and work done, even got credited for 2 months once for poor service.

I just noticed my title got changed from when I donated. To bad I am an atheist, Camping would have loved me ><.

[cosworthrs]

There is a crack in your main line from the node routing to your house, ask your tech how many subscribers are on your node... I had the same issue for almost a year(they credited my account for like 6 months until we got it sorted out) basically it happens at night because of heating and cooling of the lines causing the aluminum casing in the main trunk line to expand and contract. Ping, ping, ping, ping etc etc etc etc and get them on the phone when you are having the problem, or get the head tech's number and call him at night so he can visualize it on his system. They can monitor every line remotely, even though they say they cannot... they just have to be high enough to have access to the system.

[The_OG_Nelta]

Tech came today and replaced wire on the box, said it was very old.. As of now, i'm disconnecting, but not as frequently. Still disconnected though, so i'll call them back later.

[Ikith]

Call now, fuck waiting.