Comcast Blows Dead Bears

For the past couple of days, my Internet has been acting wonky. This is somewhat normal this time of year, since the wiring in the area is old, and doesn't handle the dramatic temperature changes which accompany the seasons changing. They could solve the problem by rewiring everything, but fuck that, that costs money! Yesterday, I got home from work to find it completely out. I did all the things one's supposed to do when that happens, but none of it fixed the problem.

I figured I'd wait to see if it cleared up this morning and then give them a call. Naturally, it didn't, so I borrowed a friend's cellphone to call them (my phone doesn't work inside the house and it's not normally a problem since I can call using wifi). After spending several minutes on hold, listening to ads for things like Comcast phone, home automation, and home security systems (all of which require functioning Internet to work) I got to talk to a rep.

I explained the problem, and told her what had generally fixed the problem in the past (them turning up the amplifier). They, of course, couldn't do that and said that they'd have to send a tech out. On Tuesday.

So, I'm stuck going outside to check my email and see if I have any messages or texts. Later, I'm going to have to hike down to one of the places that has free WiFi so I can download the podcasts I listen to. (I can barely get 3G at the house and it takes forever to download one podcast at those speeds.) AT&T claims to have extended their high speed Internet to this area, and as much as I hate those pricks, if Comcast fucks this shit up (as they often do) I'm going to look into switching. God, how I wish Google would run fiber into this area.

If the amplifier is located at your house, it may be increasing db too much (Comcast may have boosted their signal remotely). Try removing the amp.

Without the amp I don't have signal during temperature swings.

try it. Years ago I had a similar problem, losing a usable signal at the modem at different times. I thought it was sunspots. They resolved this by putting an amplifier at the interface on the outside of my house. Problems started a couple years later. The tech bypassed the amp for the coax going to the cable modem explaining they no longer needed it for internet service. This fixed the modem's problem. He left it in for the TVs. (I have since removed everything except the coax to the modem.)

And buy your own modem if you haven't already.

I complained once on my blog that I never had a time in my life, no matter how many times local cable has changed hands (and it's been a lot) they've always been run by scumbags.
I wondered if it was just bad luck in Maine, or if it was nationwide, and well, that South Park episode answered that.

WTF is it about cable companies that attracts not just scumbags, but the exact same type of sadistic scumbag?

I can't wait for technology to bring cable down.

MA town tells Comcast to kick rocks

Now for the rest of nation to do the same.

I think this must be some sort of ancestral memory from the 80s. Comcast's customer service and quality of service is exemplary, at least in the Atlanta market. They have been extremely helpful resolving problems (3) in the last 10 years, and spent as much time as needed to configure my modem purchased from Amazon. Returning their cable boxes was the only less than good experience and that was more from having to stand in line with the rest of the riffraff.

What are your terrible experiences?

I can't do it until the tech gets here. The amp is remote. And I do own my modem, no way am I going to pay them a rental fee for the POS modems that Comcast uses. I'm also not going to use their router which is an open hot-spot, since it cuts into what little bandwidth I have.

I've never heard anyone say anything good about Comcast cable service. The techs that have worked on my DirecTV and UVerse over the years, OTOH, have all been helpful and courteous. My only complaint is having to talk to some Indian fuck from time to time who can't clearly speak English.

This. I've had good interactions with the guys that show up to install the business, but terrible ones when I have to call someone.

Comcast is a hell of a lot better than Time Warner Cable.

Not that that's actually saying anything good about Comcast.

Oh I refuse to subscribe to Slime Warner on personal grounds.

That's why I had DirecTV for so long. Slime Warner was essentially a monopoly here until UVerse came along.

So now that they've merged will they suck twice as much?

All of them suck the cawk. They'll try their best to bundle up cable and phone service* together, but I'll save that twenty dollars just on principle.

*and why would I want/need a digital phone line that will be susceptible to all the power failures and flubs as a cell phone with none of the mobility? Only old people still have home phones of any sort.

I have cable (ComCast) and I'll watch TV maybe once every two or three months. The rest of the time I stream from NetFlix or other sources.

Yep. My choice around here is Time Warner, AT&T, and Cincinnati Bell, and of the three, I'm just inside the coverage area of the one that I ended up getting; that being Cincinnati Bell.

Right now, I'm paying $45 a month for 5 Mbps. Feel free to read that last part again. AT&T had 10 Mbps service for the same price, and Time Warner had 20 Mbps service for the same price, but AT&T constantly fucked up. I couldn't get a stable line speed for anything, and there would be so many outages, I started asking AT&T to reimburse me for the days where I had no service (they didn't). I couldn't switch to Time Warner, because they're a bunch of assholes who once charged me $400 in one month for cable service, and when I explained it was a mistake, they told me to pay the bill, and they'd look into it. Of course I couldn't pay such a huge bill, and so I lost that service. I can't go back unless I pay it, and like hell if I'm paying $400 on a $39 bill. So I'm stuck with Cincinnati Bell.

That said, at least the service is stable. Outages are rare, and customer service has been decent. Still, $45 a month for 5 Mbps service is ridiculous. It balanced out since I only pay $9 a month for phone service through another company but still, that's a lot of money for slow DSL.

Our TV service is DirecTV, and as much as I love them, they're getting too pricey, too. Equipment fees alone (a DVR, a Genie, and two remotes) are $35 a month. It's just too much.

My ComCast internet used to cut out all the time. I'd call and they would tell me that it looked fine on their end and it must be my router/computer that was causing the problems. And by often I mean 3-10 times a day or more. After a few months of that I popped open the ComCast junction box or whatever it's called across the street and started pulling out wires and whatever else I could.

That got their attention, it took them a day to repair it and since then my internet goes out maybe once every 3-4 months or so.

Well, that's one way to do it.
Yeah, I've had the "it's on your end" excuse with AT&T, and every time they'd come out, it would be something outside the house. The replaced the line going to the house, the junction box itself, and the lines going into the house, and nothing worked. After that, they stopped taking my calls, and so I just left them. They wanted $80 for two months of service, after I had already cancelled, and I wouldn't pay them. Still won't. I knew what the problem was: they had oversold that area, and their system couldn't keep up, and they weren't going to upgrade their equipment to handle it. So they can go fuck themselves.

None here in Augusta. With all the new construction around here lines get damaged/destroyed but Comcast or any company can't control that.

Verizon FIOS.

Directv for $35/month. I wouldn't have left them if we got it that good. Ours was at $150 and the only extra channels we got were history international type stuff.

Oh my, no. If that were so, I'd be thrilled! The $35 a month is only for the equipment. That's the equipment fee.

What's this about amplifiers and temporature swings? How does the amplifier work? I have Time Warner for internet and can't really complain. I haven't really had many problems, and they're pretty quick about fixing them.

Time Warner's service in San Diego is actually pretty decent with few interuptions and they were even pretty reasonable about refunding for the day on the few occasions there were interuptions though I credit that to state law which says cable companies have to do this. I did notice that as more and more of the people in my neighborhood signed up speeds on their cable service went down especially on the critical 6pm to 9pm time frame when folks got home and all started heavy internet usage. That said speeds were mostly in the 10 mb download speed.

I think the reason they were so accomidating is because they didn't have a monopoly as there was also ATT Uverse as well as a couple of resellers in the area offering broadband. They still tried to fuck me though in that at the end of the service I turned in all of my equipment by the end of the week, they accepted it back and even gave me a reciept for the boxes, but then they still tried to bill me $400 claiming it took me five days to return it and the contract required it to be done in three.

I told them to fuck off and haven't spoken to them since.

It's an inline coax amp that increases signal strength a few decibels. Typically they're used before long runs or when splitting to multiple connections to preserve signal strength.

Temperature swings I'm not so sure about. A long time ago I experienced seasonal problems with comcast and they installed an amp. could be squirrels. Or otters. That worked fine for a few years and then I was having TCP/IP problems. They bypassed the amp for the coax leading to the cable modem. This fixed it. That was about 5 years ago and I haven't had any issues except for a couple brief network outages.

Guess who still does NOT have Internet? Yup. Me. Tech didn't show up, I wound up calling Comcast twice and they "promised" me they'd have someone here tomorrow. I've already got offers from at&t. If I don't have service by tomorrow, I'll be jumping ship.

And now that I've had a day to stew over everything, I've decided that even if they DO fix it tonight, I'll still be jumping ship. I got to thinking, that since I can get AT&T for less than I was paying Comcast (as a promo deal, of course) I can use the money I save to sign up for a VPN, which will enable me to BitTorrent anything I might want to watch that isn't available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to. Which made me realize that I could then cancel my Hulu subscription (and thus deprive Comcast of all my business). It just is a question of when I do it. If they get it working tonight (HA!), I'll keep until we get our yearly bonus in December (since I'm sure I'll get a better deal for having cell service with them as well, and I'm planning on getting a different cellphone company anyway), then dump them.

If they fail to show up tonight, I'll borrow the necessary money and dump them this weekend.

Had they showed up when they said they were, I'd never have thought about doing that. Oops.

so how'd your date go? Stood up once again?

Borrow money to dump them? You need a lawyer? Hit man? I know people. I was once married to a Colombian.

And how does a virtual private network (VPN) enable extra bittorrents?

Yup. Comcast was a no show again. The vpn keeps the isp from knowing what you're downloading, so they can't check for copyright violations.