Weeks ago I posted about the problems I had been having trying to get an outside cable line replaced by Comcast. Among other issues with their services, such as not showing up for scheduled appointments, never receiving cancellation calls from the service technicians, and generally brooding in a vat of growing discontentment with the company as a whole.

Several days after that post and after repeated service calls to 1-888-COMCAST, a technician finally came out to check on the line.

Well, I should say a technician just came out. When I met the technician outside he asked me why he had been called out. I responded "You don't have a work order for what is to be done today at this address?"

His answer was "No." He goes where dispatch tells him to go.

It's no wonder service is so confusing through Comcast: no one on the customer service side actually talks to each other, and when technicians show up, they are uninformed as to what work actually needs to be done. This is a waste of everyone's time; I have to explain yet again what needs to be done, regardless of how many service calls I've made or work orders have been processed for a specific problem.

It isn't the technicians fault, it isn't even the fault of dispatch: it's a communication problem within Comcast as a whole.

After explaining to the technician why he was there and what needed to be done, he informed me that he didn't have the authority or tools to bury an outside cable line, only to replace the feed line which runs from the house to the utility pole. He told me he could do this and put in a work order for a contractor to come out and complete the rest of the work.

I exclaimed that a work order had already been placed, over a month ago, to have this same thing done and that I simply wanted the work completed. I was told by the technician that sometimes the work orders "get misplaced" and that he'd be happy to submit another and place a priority on it.

Fantastic.

The feed line from the house to the utility pole was replaced and two days later without a call or appointment a contractor came out unannounced and buried the cable line. It only took 5 months of service calls with Comcast and a handful of no-shows with technicians for the work to be done.

The contractor did a clean job, the cable service is great, no gripes about the end product.

A final word on follow ups with Comcast.

Today, less than an hour ago, I found someone poking around the utility pole and the outside of the house. I went out to ask who they were and what they were doing. There was a truck with the Comcast logo parked at the curb and two men inside. One got out and approached me. I asked him if I could help him, he responded that he was here to bury my outside line. He had called before he walked around the house but no one answered (I was preoccupied with running a wash in the back of the house, exciting Saturday chores.)

Observations at this point:

• The only recognizable Comcast symbol was on the truck. The men had on plain clothes, dirty jeans and dirty t-shirts.
• My cable line was buried almost 2 weeks ago, and yet Comcast is sending out another crew to do the same job on a SATURDAY.
• This is why your customer base is crumbling.

When I informed the second contractor that the line had already been buried, almost 2 weeks actually, he asked me what the man looked like that buried the line.

Excuse me?

I repeated that the line was buried, the cable service was great, and thank you have a good day.

Comcast, my issues aren't only that when I call you to make service appointments my phone calls are funneled through the Dominican Republic, that bother me (especially since I'm located 14 miles from a corporate headquarters) it's that your sloppy service in the end costs me money and time. It's that one minute I'm speaking with someone who is willing to help me, who is knowledgable about the company services and the next I'm speaking with someone who is chewing on their gum so loud I can hear it through the phone, along with the "um" and the "like." You hire people to represent your company, but you have no pride in the people you hire and when they speak to your customers, show up at their residences, IT SHOWS. And this is a reflection of you and your brand.

Why does the storage capacity of my DVR seem to change from day to day?  A couple of days ago, I'm sitting happily at about 50%, content that ONE DAY I'll watch those Discovery "Human Body" episodes I recorded, or that 20/20 that featured the royal family.

I get up this morning, and the screen is filled with an urgent message about my DVR being full and that no more recording can be done.  Of course, this included the CSI NY I was attempting to record last night.  Lintilla's going to be royally ticked.

Anyway, I proceed to delete everything unnecessary, and hardly a dent was made in the total space used.  I deleted EVERY recorded program but the last Medium.  With that one 1-hour program, 66% was filled.  Granted it was HD, but I've had well over 10 hours of HD programming stored before.

I'm going to guess and say that, when maintenance on the DVR is being performed - say a defrag - the necessary space on the DVRs hard drive is reserved and unavailable.

Am I close?

I WILL say that booting the thing doesn't help, in the immediate term.

I need something concrete to tell my wife, because she thinks I'm an idiot when it comes to the cable TV.  For instance, on either of our receivers, there are times when I pause live TV, start watching again, get to a commercial and hit the fast-forward button.  Nothing happens.  I hit it again, still nothing.  Again,again.  Then 30 seconds later, the DVR begins responds to the first FF, then a few seconds later, the second.  It gets to where the show has come back, so I hit play.  But the DVR is now responding the the 3rd and 4th times I hit FF, and soon, I'm 10 minutes past where I want to be.  When it finally responds to when I hit 'play', it's showing the next set of commercials.  I hit rewind, with no immediate response, and the whole thing starts all over again in reverse.

Lintilla swears this NEVER happens to HER.  And for all I know, it doesn't.

Are DVR manufacturers involved in some kind of feminist plot to make husbands give up the remote control?

Update:  I should also add - Am I the ultimate dork because I actually watch all the recently added HD channels in Nashville?  Animal Planet , ABC Family (Trillian just discovered Sabrina), Disney, TLC, Discovery,Food Network,History Channel, HGTV,CNN, Science and sometimes even TBS and AMC? 

Between blocking the net neutrality debate and avoiding any sort of meaningful punishment for their actions, Comcast has reason to gloat. Right now, they are winning, and we are losing.

First and foremost, tomorrow (Wednesday) is the day of Lintilla's sugery.  She is not concerned, and we'll just have to see what they find when they get in there.  She'd appreciate any prayers and good thoughts sent her way.  We're getting up quite early, as is usual for outpatient surgeries like this.  Hopefully,they'll get rid of the bad stuff, and that'll be the end of it.

 I'll keep you posted.  I'm taking the day off tomorrow so I can be there for her.

Totally changing gears...

Our experience with Comcast today was the exact opposite of yesterday.  Lintilla called and got a very helpful CS rep, who sent out a technician.  He was prompt and very helpful, and after a little prodding around, fixed the problem.  He said we had some long-overdue maintenance that needed to be done - he changed out each and every one of our leads.  Excellent!  He didn't even charge us, and I was quite willing to pay.

This is excellent customer service, and I want to shout about it as loudly as I did the horrible customer service.  Viva la Comcast!

I'm seeing a pattern in myself - I have a "trigger". Remember in the Back To The Future movies, how Marty McFly was all timid - unless ... someone called him "chicken"?  Then he got mad and irrational.  I am apparently the same way when I percieve that someone is looking down on me intellectually.  I have no idea where this comes from; I've always been looked at as being a nerd, a geek, a mad scientist.  Yet, I have a stong insecuity about it, apparently.  Maybe I subconsciously hate myself for not finishing college, I don't know.  So, I'll keep working on it.  Hopefully y'all will be patient with me.

In answer to John's rhetorical question: in a couple of months, the WGA strike will probably cost me at least 1000 page views a day.  It translates to a pretty good chunk of change. Get to the table!!!

I had an unexpected lunch with an old friend today.  We were debate partners in high school, and like brothers most of the time.  That was quite enjoyable.  I hope we can do it again, soon.

I'm also quite happy that my brother and parents are in town this week.  I had a great time with Zarniwhoop at the game, and visiting with the folks.  Of course, Zarni and I will go to the Jags game,and I'm trying to set up a Brothers' Night Out for me, Zarni, and Marvin to go to the Preds game Saturday night.  This is how many men bond: parallel play, like toddlers. 

Trillian has invited her BFF for a sleepover this weekend.  This is the same girl who was the recipient of Trillian's uncharacteristic bullying.  Kids are strange, and forgiving.  There is much we can learn from them.

That's the last 30 minutes in the life of my cable modem.  It's been like this for over a week.  I am speaking to you now via Verizon Wireless and their broadband card, which is slow but better than what I'm getting through my cable modem.  The so-called customer service rep at Comcast tried to give me the exact same spiel BusyMom got about my router (It might have been the same person, for all I know).  The best way to tick me off is to speak to me like I'm an idiot.  And even if I was an idiot, it's not too hard to figure out that when the little light that says "cable" will not stay lit, you have a problem with the signal.  Comcast CS management: please update your scripts!  Maybe take out the parts about arrogant condesension while you're at it.

When I look direcly at the modem's URL, I'm getting crazy variations of downstream (all of them LOW), and absolutely NO upstream signal.  Yes, I've tried bypassing the cable splitter; it makes minimal difference.

I'm willing to accept that a)My cable modem is dying or b) maybe, just maybe, there are signal problems on the west side of town.  Or maybe all those reports we've been reading in the Nashville blogsphere are all coincidences.  But we can't get to the bottom of things because the CS people are hung up on my router.

 I've already severed ties with one unresponsive ex-monopoly.  I'd like to work this out, but that's not possible dealing with people who are not polite and talk down to people.

I work from home a lot, and I have Vonage.  This is going to end, Comcast,and soon.  One way or the other.  How it ends depends on your attitude when I call again tomorrow.

Once, when I was in high-school i rented Planes, Trains & Automobiles from the corner 7-Eleven. The next day, I went to Slurpee Heaven to return the little nugget of funny, but the store had closed. And when I say closed, I mean the suddenly-out-of-business kind of closed. In the halls of 17-year old justice, that meant the tape was mine... yeah, tape. When i was in high-school DVDs were the property only of exclusive trans-national eye surgeons and hush-money confidants.

The tape is no longer with me.. it didn't survive my freshman year of college... but, I still love the film, and for the last month (Sarabeth says I'm exaggerating), I have totally been identifying with Neal Page. I CAN'T GET BACK TO CHICAGO!, and when I say I can't get back to Chicago, I mean Comcast cannot establish my home internet access for anything longer than two-minute intervals. I would say it's maddening, but honestly, I gave up on it two-weeks ago. The dude is still around, and once normalcy returns to my connectivity, I will again be abiding right here.

Callers tell me I sound like a robot in a tunnel. Sci-fi fan that I am, it isn’t such a horrible thing—as it cuts way down on conversation time. But having to wait 3-5 minutes to send or receive an e-mail or not being able to load a website because the server times out sends my blood pressure through the roof. (My blood pressure is just fine, otherwise, thanks for your concern.) I simply cannot get by without access to the Internet—it is a necessary fixture in my life for both work, study and entertainment.

In the past two weeks, I have had a smorgasbord of technicians show up at our door. It seems like someone different is here every other day to fix this annoyingly stubborn and intermittent problem. And every time a technician shows up, the problem goes away for an hour or two, only to reappear an hour or two later. Kinda like a toothache that disappears when you get to the dentist's office.

So today I had enough! I called to set up DSL service with another company. I was going to use their telephone service and internet service, but, get this: I would have to wait until they set up our phone service (it takes 8 to 10 days to get on the schedule) and only then would they send me a kit (via snail-mail—an additional 3 to 5 business days!!!) which I must then hook up myself. ARE THEY SERIOUS??? It is bad enough to wait 8 to 10 DAYS for a service call to install a new telephone system. But I can't believe there is no other way to get the kit. It is ludicrous that they do not have them available in stores, and they will not send one out in advance of the installation of our phone service. I am amazed the way companies do business today and think they are customer friendly. This is nearly as bad as the airline industry and I really don’t want to get started on that one…

The gist is, I will have new telephone service by September (2007, if I am lucky). I will keep the high-speed internet I have and pray it will get better once I get rid of the Com-spastic telephone service. It USED to work just fine…before those pesky space aliens got into the cables.

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.

If you look closely near the center of the image below, you will see a five story brick building with painted yellow brick on the first floor.  This is the home of Zave Smith Photography as seen from the Comcast Tower.

More to come in a few weeks.

Sincerely,

Zave Smith

I wish Comcast would be more like Bed Bath & Beyond... they seem to make things cheaper for me every time. On the other hand, Comcast's bill comes in average increments of $17. The following graph represents what Comcast has done to my time and my wallet continuum, it's Comcastic!

The allegation made against Comcast by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and reported by the Associated Press is that Comcast have allegedly been inserting forged reset (RST) packets into the datastream. This is not analogous to delaying a call. It is more analogous to the company disconnecting a call in mid-sentence because they have been listening in and classifying the type of conversation and don’t like what is being discussed or think it is likely a waste of time.

This is unethical if it is being done and also goes against the Internet technical documents, the RFC's. Further there are several potential legal issues including potential violations of the:

* Electronic Communications Privacy Act 18 USC § 2510.

* General Prohibition Against Traces and Traps 18 USC § 3121.

* The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030.

* The Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984, 47 U.S.C. § 551.

* State statutes such as Michigan statue Fraudulent Access to Computers, Computer Systems, and Computer Networks, MCL 795.791.

Whatever Comcast routing and Quality of Service provisions are in effect should be fully spelled out and transparent to regulators, internet technical experts and the general public so that citizens can make an informed choice about whether they want their internet unsurveilled, uncensored and uninterrupted... or whether they want Internet which is "Comcastic".

See Comcastic?!? Not So Much...
Comcast and BitTorrent; a Complicated Relationship
Technorati posts tagged comcast bittorrent

See also An Open Letter to Rich Sheridan regarding the proposed insertion of spam by the Wireless Washtenaw Project
Seven Questions on ‘Net Neutrality’ for Ann Arbor City Councilman Ron Suarez

Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy