Wednesday, November 28, 2007

AVOID COMCAST at ALL COST!!!

For three years, off and on we have had trouble - MAJOR TROUBLE with COMCAST - our local cable service provider in West Chicago. We have had a good 15 or more people out here, each one claiming he has fixed it. Usually he just undoes what the previous guy did and pronounces it fixed.
On Thanksgiving day, we went down at 4:00. No internet. That sucked. So, when it hadn't returned by eight, we called service. They set up an appointment for Monday, the 26th. The internet remained down on Friday and on Saturday.
On Sunday they called us (computer, not live) and said a problem in our area had been resolved, and we should be fine. If not, press 1.
Which I did. And got sent into cyberspace purgatory. Elevator music and annoying announcements for a half hour. At which time it promptly hung up. I called dispatch and sure enough, we no longer had an appointment for Monday, but they could reschedule me. For Wednesday.
On Monday night we got a call from Comcast - just like before: said a problem in our area had been resolved, and we should be fine. If not, press 1.
And, silly me, I did.
Same results.
Really angry I called service, insisted on talking to a supervisor, and went through 3 years of stories. He, BTW, was very nice, and very helpful. That's all he can be from Canada......
He set up an appointment for 1:00 pm on Tuesday. This time the cancellation had worked in our favor.
Until the technician showed up at 10. I was at work. I rushed home and to this guys credit he was wonderful, and he replaced the cable to our house, and reconfigured the inside to with a heavier duty cable. When he left our throughput was 17,000. Not the 1,000 it had been earlier when it had arbitrarily chosen to work.
Yeah!
By 4:00 through-put was 3,000. I chalked it up to Internet congestion. Cuz a tech had just been there. Oh - and I forgot to say, they STILL attempted to keep the 1-3 appointment and blasted me on the phone for not being there after the third attempt to reach me. How was I to know that when Roy was there in the morning he didn't cancel the afternoon call - that was the same call.....duh.
By 9:00 pm, we were down. DOWN. Hubby spent an hour with service. No luck. Scheduled an appointment for today between 4 and 6 after I said if I missed anymore work I'd lose my job....
Well, you guessed it. This morning we got a call from COMCAST: a problem in our area had been resolved, and we should be fine. If not, press 1.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!
I immediately hung up and called Comcast. Sure enough we no longer have an open ticket. After pitching a royal fit (because they said all they can do is reschedule....) and two supervisors later they are supposedly investigating this whole situation, and are going to get back to me. Sure.
I'm not holding my breath.
But at $129.00 a month I think I deserve better than this!
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE.....DO NOT CHOOSE COMCAST!
BTW - the service center actually had the gall to ask if I wanted to switch my phone service to Comcast.......


EDIT - I just sent letters to the City of West Chicago, as well as my alderman, and Rick Germano, Senior VP of customer operations at Comcast....
good luck to me.

EDIT #2 After emailing Rick Germano I got good results. Lots of help, both on the phone and at my house. My internet is now working like a dream. I guess you just have to get to the right person at Comcast. Thank you Rick, Anita, Ron and Dean. I appreciate all your help!!

1 comment:

Mike Clawson said...

Yeah, we've had all kinds of trouble with Comcast too in the past. Nothing this bad though.