Phraust vs. Comcast Part 1:

[Phraust]

I don't really know why I am posting/sharing this...
Maybe it will turn out to be amusing...
None the less here is a synopsis on my current situation:
My sorry ass has been gettign buttfucked by my ISP for the last few weeks. Meaning that for nearly a month, I have been witout the game...

This is the letter I sent earlier, to said ISP.
Rant all you want here about your ISP in general.

I have been informed by one of your representatives that this e-mail would possibly reach ears that might be able to bring change to my current situation.

I personally have grown tired of the quality of service I have received. I would like to summarize my ordeal with my most recent experience; it is a good template for 'the usual'.

My connection died, I received no signal for an indecent amount of time, and I put in the call to Comcast customer support. I would like to take this moment to inform you that every person I have spoken to on the phone has been very patient and courteous. The call ends with setting up an appointment that would be around early afternoon the next day, only to be cancelled seconds later (I asked to confirm the time, and in the time I asked that question I lost my slot in the queue. No big deal.) So I was set up with an alternate appointment for the upcoming Friday, nearly an entire business week away; the day of the call was Sunday. I would be without connection and the amusement it brings for an entire 5 day period. C'est la Vie...

Friday Rolls around, and after having to take time off work to meet your technician found myself sitting at my home with no sign of the technician, an hour outside the maximum time designated for our little rendezvous.. I put a call for the and the lovely and helpful tech support person was kind enough to tell me that the technician was called off the job, supposedly because the problem was higher up the wire, and had apparently been fixed. Had I been informed that my appointment had been cancelled, I wouldn't have wasted four hours, and angered my coworkers and boss for having to leave early to get my internet connection mended.

The following weekend my connection had started acting up again, dropping out as if nothing was fixed at all. The Technician I called this time was quite amazed, and I quote: "Wow! You are actually down more than you are up." As amused as I was with his amazement at my misfortune, it gave me an ill feeling none-the-less... A technician was scheduled to come out, this time at a good time, between 06:00 and 08:00 on the upcoming Monday.

The technician shows up at around 09:00, and 'already knows the problem'; apparently... He seemed irritated at having to come out, and stated that the problem was a reoccurring one at one of the main nodes, and no one was listening to him or any of the technicians that are dealing with this problem in the field, so it was anyones guess as to when my connection would be fixed.

The above is the typical scenario that happens. I have had several other encounters in my past where I have had technical issues that have taken several weeks to get fixed, and in the case of last year’s issue that took a over a month to rectify.

Now:
»When my connection fails, it takes two to six weeks to get it running stably again.
»When this internet service was first handed to AT&T, my ping times on all games doubled.
»My static IP range was taken away.
»Your technicians and tech support still to this day try to take the modem I bought when I got the service, and it's still on my record that I possess "your" modem. I bought I then so I didn't have to pay a monthly fee.
»I have been promised compensation several times for my inconvenience, and have yet to see anything being credited to me.

I have been a reliable customer since the days when this internet service was purely '@home', and it was perfect then. Trust me, if you weren't the only option for broadband internet in my area, I wouldn't have been your customer. And I know of several friends and business associates that have left your company never to return, for the same reasons I have stated and more; they all use very colorful language to describe their own experiences. The irony is being in Cupertino, the heart of Silicon Valley, the most digitally advanced areas in the world, unable to even check my e-mail, and having to hit 'send' 72 times (I counted) to send this very e-mail to the internet company whose stance when their service fails is to wait for it to heal it's self...

 

[Excim]

Heh, at least you get a technician. I always call the SRTs only to find that my appointment was cancelled/reschedueled for one reason or another. I get DC'd from FF XI at least once during every session. My "Always On" internet connection is useless between 7:00am and 1:00pm. Not because it's slow. Because my modem won't even pick up a damn signal. Explaination anyone???

Oh, and this is for the wizards at Charter.

t(>.<t)

 

[Valandil]

Sounds a lot like Southwestern Bell...or SBC Global as they are known by these days. Fortunately in the Oklahoma City market you can choose between SBC DSL or Cox Communications as your DSL/Cable ISP provider. Personally, I have been with Cox for over 3 years and I have nothing but good things to say about their network, its reliability, their technicians, and their customer service reps. My parents on the other hand live in rural Oklahoma and they are forced to go with SBC DSL because the local cable company wants to charge $60/mo for a "guaranteed" connection speed that SBC guarantees for $30/mo. It's ridiculously slow too for the price....Something like 750-1500 MB. I pay $50/mo for a 8000 MB download speed and 7500 MB upload speed. Another lovely thing about SBC DSL is the software my parents had to install on their computer to use their service caused Windows XP to constantly crash for about the first 3 months they had the service. I am not sure how it is in California, but in Oklahoma telecommunications providers still fall under the realm of the Corporation Commission. If they have such a body and some kind of jurisdiction over ComCast you might try filing a formal complaint against them.

 

[Eni]

wow that sucks >.>;;

i use RCN and its been pretty reliable ^^;;

 

[Aubrie]

I have Comcast Broadband also. Have been using it for about 2 years now. My first modem from them, that I was renting, died 6 months after I got it. I was told it was brand new when they hooked up my internet. Before it died every couple of weeks I had to call them and get them to restart my modem or walk me through how to reset all the information I had on my computer so it would work. The night it died it stopped a total of about 8 times within 4 hours. One of those times caused me and my static on the game at the time to be killed by Guivre. :evil: It died later that night. The came out the next day and brought me an actual new modem and told me the one I had before was about 4 years old. :evil: So glad i'm moving to Texas soon. They have different internet there.

 

[Stigmatas]

So glad i'm moving to Texas soon. They have different internet there.

errr comcast bought out att broadband down there... so TX is ALL comcast now or very soon :|

 

[ultraseven]

lmao...

 

[Skaw]

Sigh Stiggy, Instagib? tsk tsk.

However, Instagib with volatile weapons and ammo is the pinnacle of fun.

Nothing like killing someone, just to have them explode with shockrifle blasts flying in 80 directions.

 

[Stigmatas]

play their game...

oh sorry to hijack your topic sir....

but what you SHOULD do.... i used to work for comcast.. so i know...

contact a supervisor there.... and politely inform him... that you are thinking about switching to dsl... because this shit.. is ridicolous...

IF hes worth a shit he will say something like.... well we been having outages or some shit... or he'll say something like... what can i do to keep you with us.... then you imply.... you want them to pay for your cable.... give you a month or so for free... because you dont want to have to leave them.

during my time as a technician for comcast... i would receive calls to go hook up cable and turn it back on for customers who were unhappy and/or moving to satellite....

comcast will do anything not to lose their customers to "the dish".

and if that supervisor acts like a asshole... talk to his manager...
remember.... that was then... this is comcast....

i know i have to customer service creed around here somewhere...

read that shit to them.. make them cry and beg you to stay :|

its happened..

have a good day

 

[Mistaya]

Cox cable (Or cocksuckers cable as I've been referrring to them) in AZ is awful. In my old aprtment my cable modem (which I bought so I wouldnt have to pay for it monthly) was down more than it was up which was very bad for me since I had some online classes at the time. I called them every time and finally they send a technician out and he's like "Oh you have strange voltage in your wall you need a new 2.00$ adaptor to fix that" He installs it blah blah FINE. 2 days later it goes out again.

Move to new apartment, same service but roommate is using her modem and paying for it. At least once a week we get an outage for about an hour---4hours and have to just unplug and wait it out.

t('-'t) Cox cable.

 

[Arctyrael]

Bad weather is like my soothesayer of doom. With rain comes intermittent connections and horrible speeds.

Screw Bellsouth.... oh yea, forgot to mention Dial-up.
SO IT ISN"T just the weather... ITS that Bellsouth doesn't OFFER DSL in my area...

I swear, if there were another provider here... Bellsouth would pay me to switch :evil:

 

[Pascal]

Hey Phraust, Comcast's business model is providing the less amount of service at the highest possible price. There are people in TN paying over 50.00 a month for less than a 1mb connection with Comcast (or they used too). Only people I know worse than them is Adelphia.

I’m praying that once the Time Warner/Comcast buy out of Adelphia is final, that Time Warner takes over the market I am in. If Comcast gets it, I’m going Dual DSL.

 

[Phraust]

Part II & III

They sent me this:

Thank you for contacting Comcast.

I understand you are experiencing difficulties with your Comcast
Service. I will be more than happy to assist you with this matter. However,
I need a more detailed description of the issue you are facing to do
so.

Please respond to this e-mail and provide a detailed description of
what is happening. Please review the questions below, and provide as much
information as possible so I will be better able assist you:

1. What were you attempting to do when you received the error?
2. If there is an error message, what is it? We don't always need
every word; however being specific helps us tremendously.
3. What program and version are you using? Internet Explorer? Outlook
Express? What Operating System? Windows 98? XP? Macintosh?
4. Has this issue happened before? Are other programs affected? Are
all web pages affected or just some of them?
5. Did you recently install any new programs, or plug-ins? Have you
recently changed your hardware, or software preferences? Even a
seemingly minor change on your computer, or with some of your software
could directly affect your ability to get online or access your e-mail.

Thank you for your patience. I know your time is important. If you
would prefer to address this issue in a real-time format you can chat with
one of our Online Customer Support Specialists 24 hour a day, 7 days a
week at

<ADDRESS OMMITED>

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Help us improve our e-mail customer support! Please click here to take
a quick survey.
<ADDRESS OMMITED>

Sincerely,

Randy P.
Comcast Online Customer Support

To which I replied:

Ok, to answer your question's:

1)I was atempting to access the internet for various reasons.

2)There was no error message per se' but my modem's 'cable' light would turn off. Which is an indicator that there was no connection from your line.

3)For this particular incident No progrmas were able to access the internet: IE, Opera, Quake3, Final Fantasy XI, WinAmp, Nothing was able to connect. Currently I am using Windows XP. And to note, I have no connectivity issues anywhere else.

4)Yes. This issue has happened several times before, about once or twice a year since @home was bought by AT&T then Comcast. All web pages and programs that access the internet are affected.

5)Recently bought a laptop, but my internal network consists of a Modem, Router, A pair of Gigabit Switches, a File server, Home Entertainment PC, and three desktop workstations, none of the above network devices have changed and none of them can access the internet. However, they can see each other on the network just fine.

Thank you for looking into this situation.

AND... I also received this:

We apologize for the inconvenience you've experienced with the ups and
downs of your service.

I very much understand your frustration and have taken the liberty to
credit your account in the following ways:

I have changed your internet code with us so that it is reflected that
you own your own modem. That saves you three dollars per month. Since
this mistake has been taken place for a while now, i have also credited
you for a year worth of monthly payments for a modem you did not rent.
So in total i credited your account for 36$.

Finally, since i changed your code, in order to reflect our apologies
for the lack of service to you and for your inconveniences, i have put a
promotional code on your account that gives you the internet at 19.95$
for three months and then resumes the regular rate for 42.95$.

I hope this resolves this issue to your satisfaction. If there is
anything else we can help you with, please do not hesitate to contact us at.

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Help us improve our e-mail customer support! Please click here to take
a quick survey.
<ADDRESS OMMITED>

Sincerely,

Stefanie P.
Comcast Online Customer Support

I am still really pissed off.. I think it's nice of them to finally acknowledge I bought my modem, but I still feel that I deserve more..

If you were me, what other demands would you ask of these people?

 

[Chouzan]

If you were me, what other demands would you ask of these people?

Um...that they would supply me with reliable internet access.

 

[Phraust]

If you were me, what other demands would you ask of these people?

Um...that they would supply me with reliable internet access.

Touche`

 

[Kurgon]

Who's Phraust?

/wave

I use Concast as well yet I really can't say that I have been having any of those problems. Sorry to hear that is occuring. Comcast will bend over backwards to try to keep you rather than loose you to a competator. For my cable modem hookup and non digital premium cable I pay ~$50 a month. Give them hell.

 

[MacMarz]

Do you have an SLA with them in your contract? Typically residential service is not subject to an SLA, but the fine print is where you would find this information out. If you can document that they did not meet the SLA terms, then you are entitled to a comlete refund and possible down time reimbursement.

 

[Panda]

I had a spat with verizon back before I got comcast for something that i found amusing.

Our internet went down, of course, and waited three days to find out that the reason it went down was

"BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD UNPLUGGED OUR CONNECTION IN THE SERVER ROOMS"

huh?

So feeling a bit angry about that I called them up and threatened to switch to cable. They said they would give us a month free. I said "Thank you." and went on my way.

The next month's bill shows up, claiming that we owe them for the month.

So I called up, and said, we aren't paying this. I explained what happened and the woman on the phone said they had no record of giving us free service. I said, well your representative claimed that we were going to get it, so we want it. Had a nice chat with her about cancelling my service and how dissatisifed I was with it.

Ended up getting that month free and the next three months free.

That shit works like crazy. Works with cable companys too. Call Comcast up and tell them you are switching to satellite. They will hook you up with some mad free channels.

^^v

 

[Direwolf]

Ha ha Comcast just plain sucks, I love Charter Communications, I never seem to have any issues. My friends who have Comcast... Heh... Glad I am not them.

 

[crookedmidget]

It seems that if you are in a location that works, it seems to continue to do so... But if you hare having problems, it seems like they will never get fixed. I has a situation at my previous address. I was using Cocks (or Cox as it is listed on my bill), and I would loose DNS at least once a day, during peak times. I would notify Cocks, but they would not assist me if the problem was not replicateable while they were on the phone. They asked ME to troubleshoot their network. After concluding that there was a node between me and the DNS server that would drop in performance during peak hours, I called them back and they informed me that the node was due to be replaced, but would be done so for some time.

Well, two years later, the node had not been replaced. At that point, I was working from home, and needed to have reliable internet. So, I would call at least once a week, complain, and open a trouble ticket. I if the problem was not replicatable at that exact second, I would keep them on the phone until it was. After having over 30 trouble tickets open, and even more that were closed out, the problem got fixed.


I moved.


Now I still have Cocks (area monopoly), but my connection has been wonderful. Go figure. :roll:

~Crook