So I just got over a two day internet outage and I have to say that with the exception of a couple of key people, Comcast support and service absolutely sucked and even now I am surprised things are working.
If you or someone you know works for Comcast and can get to someone who can really make a difference there, let me know, I would love to talk to someone with some actual level of ability to fix things.
It was a hoot. I first noticed the issue ( a blinking receive light which should have been solid) at about 1AM on Wednesday morning but figured it was maintenance so let it slide. I first called at about 9AM on Wednesday when it was still down and I was told the issue was in my house. So I tear everything apart and test everything and try a second MODEM and then finally go to my neighbors house to test my MODEM there and see they have the same issue…
So I call back at about 10:15AM and tell them this and the next person says… Well yeah duh, there is an outage in your area, I don’t know why the first person didn’t tell you… So I ask for an ETA, no ETA. So I ask when I should call back, I am told you will just see the lights light up on the MODEM again and you will know everything is all right. Absolutely shitty answer but ok, I will go for it.
I wait until around 3:15PM and then call again. I am told, there is no outage in your area, should I send out a tech. I try to explain sure but I know there is an outage because it is multiple houses. They say the tech will be there between 4-7. So I sit tight and wait. At 6’ish a tech calls me and says, I am stuck at a house, I won’t be there until 8:30-9PM, do you want to reschedule. I say no, I want my internet working get here when you can and I don’t care if it takes until 3AM. But you may want to call your dispatch and remind them that it is multiple houses, not just my house and it has been down over 16 hours now. He says ok, he will see me at 8:30-9PM.
I run to Home Depot to get some stuff, while I am there Comcast calls me and says, hey we have a tech at your house, you knew he was coming, where are you??? I respond that the tech called me and said he would be there at 8:30 or 9 and the guy on the phone says, ummm no, that wasn’t us. I said, I can assure you it was one of your guys. But I will be back to my house in 5 minutes. I get there around 6:30PM and it is a cool Australian guy and I explain it to him and he is confused why they would send him out for that but he checks the taps on the poles anyway… Sure enough, the internet channels are absolutely dead though all of the other channels are fine, nothing he can do. He calls it in, someone says, yeah, we know, it was like that earlier today too!!!!!!!!!! He says that he sorry, he can’t do anything, but it will now be listed officially as an outage. He leaves.
Around about 8:00PM the other tech calls me and says, I am on my way out now, I should be there within 20 minutes.. I said, well you know, another tech stopped here already and never had to come into my house because he found that two channels on the line were dead at the tap… He said, oh I didn’t know that… I will see what is going on. At 8:30 he calls me and says they are working on the node and it should be up and running in the next 30 minutes. I notice that my MODEM is now stuck on a blinking send instead of a blinking receive… finally progress.
40 minutes later, still no internet, I tried calling the tech, got voicemail. I call Comcast and they tell me that they don’t have any knowledge of an outage and that if there were it was past 9PM and nothing would be getting worked on and they wouldn’t get any info until the next day… So I ask for a supervisor who tells me something similar but does say that there is an outage in the area. I get reimbursed for the day’s outage…. Great I missed a whole day of work, I get back a couple bucks.
I call back the next morning at 10AM because the MODEM is still blinking on send. I am told, you guessed it, there is no outage… This continues all morning with my inital calls being answered by low level techs who tell me there is no outage and then reaching senior techs who say oh yeah, there is an outage. I finally get a tech who had a brain and gave a shit, his name is Montel, thanks to Montel for not being a complete kneebiter. He starts with the idea that there is no outage but then digs into it and sees that indeed there is, and then with prompting from me starts digging further into it to find why there is an outage but it isn’t showing as one. Seems someone moved a node and didn’t tell anyone else about it, so most of the techs were looking in the wrong place. He goes offline digging into it and keeps calling me back with updates to keep me informed. Eventually he chases it, I believe, into maintenance that occurred about the time it all stopped working and then voila, a couple of hours later it is fixed.
Now keep in mind, this just impacted internet and cable phone connectivity. Normal cable and digital cable were perfectly fine. If I were using cable phone, not only would my internet had been out, I wouldn’t have been able to have called Comcast on their phone line to tell them for over 40 hours. I know of at least three households now in my area that they were thinking about Comcast Phone and every single one has now changed their mind including me. In fact, I am going to start looking at DSL as a backup. Thankfully our area is supposed to be getting wireless broadband at some point in the near future and if that is speedy I will switch to that the first day it is available because NOTHING Comcast has done to date has made me want to be their customer. I would love if Wide Open West were available, they were less expensive and had a stable service and when you called them they weren’t a bunch of idiots. At this point, if they came out here I wouldn’t even care if they cost double what Comcast cost, I would switch without a second thought.
All of the neighbors now know that I am in this business and are asking my opinions, you can bet when I find a new solution, Comcast is going to be wondering what is happening out here in my area as they lose the business.
joe
I feel your pain man. I’ll spare you the details…mainly cuz I don’t want to type them all out on my treo. The gist of my story is that MediaCom told me they wouldn’t be sending out the tech until 4 days later because the problem should resolve on its own. When I protested, the rep told me that maybe I should try thinking positively.
I dropped a comment when you first moved, and I will stand behind it. I live “out in the boonies” according to the ISP’s in my area. I use Satellite Internet and haven’t had an issue that couldn’t be solved quickly. Might worth looking into, I know in my area it is Verizon or Time Warner for internet, can you say monopoly???
Good luck!!
I switched to Comcast for internet when my contract with my DSL company ran out. It literally took me 24 hours to realize Comcast absolutely sucked and I switched back.
Their service sucks (bandwidth throttling bittorrent traffic) and their support sucks (as you certainly know).
I called to get support because in my area at least, the MAC address of the device that first plugs into the Comcast network gets tied to your account. So if you first test your connection directly with your PC, and then try to connect your router, the router will never pick up a DHCP address because the DHCP address is tied to the MAC address of my desktop machine. So when I called to try and explain this, the tech immediately says, “Oh, it must be a problem with your router, let me give you the number for D-Link support.”. I pretty much instantly lose it. I get to talking with another tech, after much explaining, she looks into the issue, and sure enough she just needed to release the MAC address.
I’ll never go back to Comcast for internet service. 24 hours was enough for me.
I hear you there, joe. I’m way too dependent on Comcast (internet + 2 vonage lines), and I just tried to use AT&T Uverse and gave up.
What galls me is that it’s treated as a convenience, i.e., you’re having TV problems so no big deal. It’s not a convenience any more, it’s a utility like power and water!
Next time you have an issue make sure that you request that your tech be an employee rather than a contractor. They are more likely to know the technology, and be in sync with the goings on of your local area.
I feel the same way about Comcast. Some people are nice, but not consistent. You shoul at least ask for money back for two days when you did not have service.
I made an appoitment at the local office in Aspen, Colorado. Was told the service installer would be able to do the install the next day from 1:00pm to 5:oopm. He never showed. I called the 800 number and was told the person who took my order gave me the wrong date. So I just took a half day off work for nothing and you want me to do it again.. FORGET IT! The saying that a happy customer tells one other person and an unhappy one tells ten, I will be telling everyone that will listen about the poor service I got from Comcast.
I am planning to sue Comcast. Anybody interested in joining me, please forward your info to
shaminaemail@yahoo.co.in
After going through one month of hell wiht this company, on July 7 I was promised a one month’s credit by their reps but later they said they knew nothing about it. I spent hours correcting their mistakes which led me to one month of hell trying to get my internet up (they had the address wrong, followed by a series of customer service errors).
I am planning to sue this company for the problems it has caused me and the hours I wasted, (including a legal research paper that was delayed because of their failure ot have the internet working in time) trying to resolve this. The customer service reps hung up on four times. This is absolutely positively the worst customer service I have seen in my life.
Shamina (an Atlanta customer of this shitty company)