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My experience with them trying to get service set up in my new apt:
Week of 5/16/11 - I call Comcast about scheduling a technician to come out to install service in my new apartment. I lock in a promotional deal for 18 mbps Blast internet + basic cable for $53/month for 1 year.
Monday 6/6/11 - Technician is scheduled to show up 7am-10am. By 10am he's still not here yet so I call into the 1-800 number and they put me in touch with the local contractor. The contractor dispatch was incredibly rude, never apologized, and tried to argue with me. Finally, he shows up at 12:45pm, over 2.5 hours late. He walks around my apartment and looks on my walls. He sees no cable outlet. He tells me there's basically no way he can do his job if there is no outlet. He tells me to call the 1-800 number and order "pre-post wiring" to be done. I ask if there will be any additional charges for the service, he says Comcast cannot charge for that - it's free.
After he leaves, I call the 1-800 number around 1pm. He customer service rep apologizes and said the tech is actually the one who should have called his contractors to have it done for me. He apologizes to me for the tech blowing me off. He tells me he will put in the work order for the pre-post wiring and it will take up to 72 hrs for someone to contact me to schedule a time for me to do the wiring.
Thursday 6/9/11 - 72 hours have passed. Not one phone call from Comcast or any of their contractors. I call into their 1-800 and explain to them that this period has passed and I have not received any word on the wiring work order. The first guy I talk to is extremely rude and impatient with me - he told me he will send an email out to the department but he has no idea when someone will contact me. Next, I call again and this time I get a nicer lady. Her name is Rene. The lady says she will contact the local Baltimore office about the issue and she promises I will get a call from either her or another party before 9:15pm that night.
Later in the afternoon I get a call from a guy named Rusty - he works at the corporate office in Baltimore. He seems rather nice and competent and he tells me he will have someone else contact me to schedule a time possibly tomorrow morning to take care of the pre-post wiring. He leaves me with his call back number in case there are any issues.
About an hour later a lady from another contracted company contacts me and puts me in for a 7am -10am work order for the wiring on Friday morning.
Friday 6/10/11 - I take off of work in the morning again and the technician does not show up until 11:25am. Over 1 hr late. He walks around my apartment and looks for a cable outlet that he should already know is not there. He's surprised that I don't have a cable wire, which is ridiculous because the contractors should have told him that. He goes to the basement cable box and says I will need someone to drill holes up to my apartment to get me wired and he does not do this. I asked him if there would be any charge and he said it is still free. Before he leaves he tells me he will contact his contractor and have someone call me later that afternoon to schedule a time for them to do the drilling and patching. I get no such phone call that afternoon.
Monday 6/13/11 - The weekend comes and no such message from anyone. I call Rusty, though he is away from his office so I leave a detailed message and my contact number. I then call the contractors responsible for the pre-post wiring and after exchanging my contact information, the lady hits me with a tidbit of information that absolutely infuriated me - they will charge me $90/half-hour with a minimum of one hour for the cut and patch job. I was told all along from many different parties (initial tech, customer service, and the first wiring guy that it would be free). Basically $180+ for a cable wire that should have been in my room when I moved there but wasn't.
I call my apartment manager and explain the fee that I was quoted for. He said it's ridiculous as the entire apartment is under agreement with comcast that they are responsible for supplying at least one cable wire to each apartment unit. He says that the customer is only responsible if he wants cable work done within an apartment (i.e. routing cable wires to both bedrooms in a 2-bedroom apt from the living room).
I call into the 1-800 number and explain my entire story and the customer service rep says she can't do anything but contact the dispatch for them to call me back. I tell her to do so.
So far, I've had almost two full missed days at work + about 20-25 phone calls to various customer service reps at the 1-800 number and comcast contractors. I've had terrible experiences dealing with comcast the past 4 years but this takes the fucking cake.
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Have you tried talking to EvilTeletubby about this? :O
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Doesn't ETT work for Comcast? Would to hear his thoughts.
Unfortunate turn of events, you should see if you can get some kind of compensation, threaten to pull out of your deal with them if things don't shape up. I don't know.
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Hyrule18937 Posts
Comcast sucks -.-
Tell them you demand service, better business bureau filings to follow, not what you're paying for, etc
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Don't be afraid to get mad or affirmative either, you have every right to be.
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Very Kafkaesque. And this is why Cox is way better; their customer service people are generally pretty nice, though if Cox doesn't work in your region you could always try Verizon.
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Im in the DC area and its not any better here. I once rented out a dedicated server from "The Planet" based in Texas. The biggest problem I had with this was the latency to the server was horrible. I had tried it on other servers located in the Dallas area (not owned by "The Planet").
I call The Planet to get any network info I could for my server and find out that they are up and running as usual without any problems. (They are a major hosting company I realize but hey I wanted to cover this ground first) The next step I take is to get all the information I can, tracerouts and a lot of research just finding out how the hell my connection gets to Dallas. Turns out it goes up to New York, Over to Chicago and down Dallas. I then do my homework and found out they can fix my routing table straight to Atlanta then over to Dallas and this will fix my horrible latency just for this one server.
I spend a good while on the phone explaining to customer service what A ping does and how it actually works. I think I managed to insult the customer service rep due to her lack of knowing anything other than my customer number. I ask to have my ticket escalated and that I wished to speak to Tier 2 or even Tier 3 support to correct a simple routing issue.
I get on the phone with a lady that was apparently a team manager for Routing support or some bull of that nature. I explain to her my issue and again have to explain WTF a tracerout is and how I managed to come about my problem. I emailed my logs and all my evidence to this lady who in the end told me it was not possible to re-route my connection because (My words here) Im just an average Joe customer. She explains I would need a business account with a static IP address before she can even submit a ticket. In my bid to just get this problem solved I asked her the pricing options. With the cost for having a dedicated IP and due to the package stipulations, needing a phone line to my place (its the 21st century I don't need a land line) I tell her it isn't happening.
End result I had to cancel my Dedicated server option after paying for 2 months of its service because Comcast couldn't re route me through a different backbone, one that doesn't circle the country to get to Texas. And my apartment has a contract with Comcast so Its not like I cant get raped in the ass by another ISP for "Throttled" 20mbps connections
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ETT works for comcast? I would love to hear what he has to say about this... sigh.
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On June 14 2011 02:26 redoxx wrote:
Very Kafkaesque. And this is why Cox is way better; their customer service people are generally pretty nice, though if Cox doesn't work in your region you could always try Verizon.
I live in Baltimore so we don't have any other providers other than Comcast and Verizon. In fact, in my building, Verizon can only provide dial-up. There is no FiOS in Baltimore city either....bullshit.
I am 100% stuck dealing with Comcast.
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Cable monopolies fucking blow. You are left with a choice between shit and shit.
Just this past week, we had our optimum guy come out about four or five times bc our service was all wonky. When the fifth repairman came, he alerted us that it was not stuff in the house... but a service issue on a wire a few blocks away they had been working on all week. AWESOME!
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American cable blows in so many regions due to the operating principle behind cable internet and that the %'s that the companies say you should expect often don't reflect real network usage...
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The telecom situation in Canada is pretty shitty too.
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I sympathize with you. Both times I've moved into new apartments I have had nothing but headaches dealing with them and requiring them to come back to finish their job. =[
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I sympathize with people who complain about comcast, and the general consensus seems to be that they are terrible but in my experience they have been pretty damn good and at worst they worked with me. I moved around like 10 times in GA and have never really had a problem that wasn't fixed within a reasonable time frame. Got free cable a buncha times and faster than advertised down/up speeds. I must just be a special case or very good at talking to customer reps.
Now AT&T on the other hand...lol
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YAY FIOS! I live in the DC area and its the best switch I ever made, I am a faster/more stable connection at a cheaper price. While I didn't have Comcast, I did have Cox before.
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After trying to call through the corporate office over the past three hours, the guy I spoke to on Fri left a voicemail saying "unfortunately, I spoke to our contractors and you'll have to pay the $180 for the pre-post wiring. Give me a call back and we'll be happy to get you set wired up in your home!"
So let me get this straight, I have to pay $180 for their contracted monkeys to route a cable wire in my apartment that should have already been here when I moved in (pretty much every room in this building has one but mine) + additional $90/half an hour if their incompetent techs can't get the job done in an hour or dick around + $60 install fee for the ACTUAL service + $53/month + $??/month weird ass charges (modem rental fees + misc) to get some service here?
No thank you as I've basically been lied to by over three different parties from comcast, who stated the wiring would be free of charge as it's "comcast's responsibility to provide your unit with the wiring"
I am so fucking pissed I have to deal with such monkeys and all the time and energy I've wasted. Alongside all the wasted time on the phone, I've had to miss two full days at work waiting for their late techs to show up only to tell me they can't do a single thing. One customer service rep credited $20 to my account as apologies for the late tech but that obv doesn't help if I can't subscribe to their service and doesn't give me my lost time back! Sucks major balls that comcast has a monopoly on the HSI here in Baltimore.
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Baltimore, USA22247 Posts
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On June 14 2011 13:35 EvilTeletubby wrote:
I got this guys.
<3
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EPT
