Fuck Comcast

Comcast is telling me that they'll do it for $69.99 plus $15.00 for each outlet. I'm not totally convinced this is what I'll be paying.

lurkingdirk_sl said:

I'm about to dump AT&T. I've had internet with them about 4 years, they've had techs out here 11 times to try to make the service consistent. The service cuts out regularly. Multiple times a day. During key hours. It's terrible. I have literally 3 feet of wiring that is mine - data cable from the point where it connects to my house, drill through the wall, wireless router. That's it. Everything is theirs. It doesn't work consistently. Their customer service just told me to stop calling, the service is as good as it is going to get, and they don't care that there are a few hours a day where I don't have internet service.

I was thinking of going to comcast. All I need is internet. No phone, no TV, just a wire in to a wireless router. The wire is already there. Will they charge me for installation?

Click to expand...

I'm close to that point too... Starting in November up until a couple weeks ago, our connection would go out for 30 seconds everyone 15-20 minutes about 10 times a day, always in the morning/early afternoon. It's enough to fuck up whatever you are recording or kick you off whatever game you are playing, but it's gotten better lately. I think it might have to do with how cold it was this winter but I'm not sure. The tech was lazy and instead of running the wire through my house, he ran it outside to an old cable outlet where I had my computer set-up. The guy who lives across the street from us is a U-Verse supervisor and there were 4 trucks on our street for 2 days last week so they might have been fixing whatever the problem is.

and yeah Comcast will probably charge you. They try charging you for sending someone to your house to read the code on your cable box to reactivate your service after you move. I told this story before but they tried to charge us over a hundred bucks when we moved from one apartment to another in college and they sent a guy over who literally turned the cable box over, read the serial number to someone on the phone, and handed us a bill for $119.

Yeah I've had a pretty bad record with Comcast, as I previously posted. When we moved to another apartment right down the street, I asked if we could do the self-install and was told no. Guy showed up, plugged in my box and left within 3 minutes, charged over $100. Complained and got all the charges reversed.

I've come to the conclusion that the outsourced Indians that work at the Comcast call center have no idea what I'm talking about. The tech is going to have to bring the cable into the house and install the jacks. I've read that is somewhere between $60-70/hr - customer service is quoting me at a really low price. At this point I might just contact an electrician.

Anyone know anything about Netzero?

Kirun_sl said:

When I had U-Verse around 8 years ago, this was my exact experience with it as well. In all my years of various internet services, I have never experience one that was more unreliable. There's no way in hell I'd ever go back.

Click to expand...

To AT&T's credit, this is the fourth home (parents house, apartment, mother in law's house) that I've lived in and this is the first time I've had this problem in 10 years.

Can CAT5/6 or whatever they are using be effected by extreme cold? I guess that is the logical question I need to get an answer to.

Cold doesn't affect the cable, yo.

It was a really cold winter in MA (relatively) and my Comcast service never had a problem.

I've decided to wire our house myself. I noticed holes in the floors of the first floor of the house where previous cable must've been run. My father is buying me the same coax distribution unit he got for his house (8-ports). We're gonna put it in the basement and run cable up into those lower floor rooms. When the time comes. I'll probably end up finding a way to drop cable from the 2nd floor rooms into the basement.

I called Comcast and they do not wall fish wires anymore. I don't even want to know what their alternative is, but I think the guy said they'd drill holes on the outside of your house.

Noodleface_sl said:

It was a really cold winter in MA (relatively) and my Comcast service never had a problem.

I've decided to wire our house myself. I noticed holes in the floors of the first floor of the house where previous cable must've been run. My father is buying me the same coax distribution unit he got for his house (8-ports). We're gonna put it in the basement and run cable up into those lower floor rooms. When the time comes. I'll probably end up finding a way to drop cable from the 2nd floor rooms into the basement.

I called Comcast and they do not wall fish wires anymore. I don't even want to know what their alternative is, but I think the guy said they'd drill holes on the outside of your house.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's pretty obvious driving through the neighborhood who had this done. One side of the house where the feed line comes in has multiple wires running up the siding into different rooms, and it's fucking ugly as sin.

So I'm moving out my place which had the amazingWebpass - Simple Urban Internetservice - now I have to find usual shitty internet. Anyone know a good, non Comcast ISP in sf/ Bay Area? I'd go with sonic but their speeds just aren't enough

Comcast residential is just awful. The business side is pretty good, though. I've had a business account with Comcast for almost 2 years (I telework part time), and it has been great.

Fedor_sl said:

Tech Blogger Tries To Cancel Comcast Service, Hilarity Ensues | TechCrunch

Click to expand...

txmadison comments on Comcast's customer service nightmare is painful to hear

n retention, the more products you save per customer the better you do, and the more products you disconect the worst you do (if a customer with a triple play disconnects, you get hit as losing every one of those lines of business, not just losing one customer.) These guys fight tooth and nail to keep every customer because if they don't meet their numbers they don't get paid.

Comcast uses "gates" for their incentive pays, which means that if you fall below a certain threshold (which tend to be stretch goals in the first place) then instead of getting a reduced amount, you get 0$. Let's say that if you retain 85% of your customers or more (this means 85% of the lines of businesses that customers have when they talk to you, they still have after they talk to you), you get 100% of your payout - which might be 5-10$ per line of business. At 80% you might only get 75% of your payout, and at 75% you get nothing.

Click to expand...

The local office is great and generally easier to deal with.

If I call and cancel on the phone I usually just tell them I'm moving to a state that they don't service, say Louisiana and act disappointed that they can't do anything for me.