screw comcast

[ratbuddy]

Comcast DNS was down for like 3 hours tonight.. Ugh.

 

[psionic98]

I call comcast monthly about issues with either the net, my phone or the crap dvr box that likes to reboot itself randomly.. they give the same boxed answers everytime, which was stated above about sending out techs.. garbage.. I can't wait for fios to be in the area.. i dont care if they never answer the phone if i have to call em.. as long as I get what I pay for.. my friend works at comcast and even though his services etc are free.. hes waiting on fios too.. talk about POS

EDIT: @ratbuddy.. i lost my phone/net for a few hrs.. luckily for them I had to go out... what was great was that my TV told me someone was calling me while my phones had no dial tone

 

[darkknight187]

Comcast DNS was down for like 3 hours tonight.. Ugh.

If it's only their DNS wouldn't it be possible for you to just use the OpenDNS free service for awhile? Not that comcast's should be down but you can work around it.

 

[D33PJackal]

I am piiiiiisssssssssssseeeeeedddddd with my service here.

That fact that they purposely throttle my speeds but don't fess up to it annoys me like nothing else.

 

[mrgoodkat]

Most, if not all, cable companies have regional monopolies. They pay to get the rights to service an area. You either gotta hope you have fios or dsl in your area to have an alternative. Otherwise you're pretty much screwed.

Most people have choices. In Illinois, until At&t got back in the game, we really didn't. And Comcast has gone to court to all but block other companies from becoming a factor in anything other than backwater towns down South.

This is a company that is in a constant state of litigation with the US government (at times), states, counties, municipalities, and even individuals. The proof is in the pudding.

I can understand and accept outages, but I have no understanding or acceptance of the tactics that they use to monopolize a city, like Chicago for instance. They move in, and spend until you cannot even see your own home town sports teams without spending on cable every month. I'm lucky to see my teams, other than the Bears, more than 12 times individually each year. For baseball specifically, that is terrible. A dozen out of 162.

But the real reason I will never throw money Comcast's way again is what they did to me a handful of years back, while I was still in the military. Having just got my first HDTV, I signed up for the $100 package for 3 months at $20/month with the plan to simply go for a much cheaper package after the intro rate. We then got orders for a short 3-month deployment, and I called to have a temporary hold put on my account. The call lasted a few minutes, where I was told it was no problem, and I remember thinking "that was far too easy".

Less than three months later I came home to find a $300+ bill. They ultimately said they had no record of the call about the temp hold, and that the DVR was showing activity, apparently from still recording shows. First late charge led to the intro price going up to the regular price, and so on.

I sent them all manner of records, etc, proving that I was out of the country. They never did budge, but lowered the amount to $175, which I never did pay, on principle. And I will never spend another dime with them...

I recently changed banks due to the former killing it's free checking, and that stupid $175 on my credit report is still hurting me. I have a mortgage, a car payment, etc. Never been late, but the bank I switched to gave me all kinds of problems. The bank manager was sympathetic to my Comcast story, and had a current story of her own in which she and her husband believe that the installer damaged their TV.

Ive even had conversations with Comcast installers when my mother asks me to come by to oversee that, who are less than excited about who they work for. And those have almost always been Comcast installers, not contractors. One guy did give her extend basic for free. But they did an audit just this year and it went back to basic, which doesn't even include 24/7 weather.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I can understand and accept outages, but I have no understanding or acceptance of the tactics that they use to monopolize a city, like Chicago for instance.

Can you offer me a quote for running cable and building out infrastructure to service an entire metropolitan city? How long will it take you to get a positive return on investment after implementing this system? How will this be funded?

I dunno, this thread sort of bothers me. At times, the monopoly thing is bad, but then you shouldn't be complaining about the company - they all do the same thing more or less. If you have issues with the way business is done, voice it to your community leaders who have the power and influence to make changes in how city officials make these deals with utility providers. Every large telecomm plays the game because thats the way its played... Its standard telecomm business practice to seek localized monopoly rights in order to ensure positive returns on long term infrastructure investments.

Not picking on any one in particular, but the local monopolies are a political and industry problem, not a problem with any given company in particular. Easy target to beat up on, but it doesn't really demonstrate and understanding of the variables involved.

 

[ratbuddy]

Call me a stinkin' hippie or whatever, but I'd like to see communications infrastructure be government owned and maintained, like roads. If not that, at least some seperation between content providers and infrastructure providers would be nice.

 

[psionic98]

if it were government owned wikileaks would have it destroyed by terrorists by now!

 

[Ninth]

IMOG: The system that I believe internet should best be modeled after is how the government pulled off the railroads all those years ago. They sponsored the infrastructure and sold contracts out to various groups; in a similar mannar, infrastructure should be government supported, at least, in that it definitely sets a mark in the quality of living index of the country (yes, there actually is such a real index, and we're not actually at the very top; quite far from it in terms of tech infrastructure), and then allow private companies to manage the infrastructure. Frankly, net infrastructure is far too complex a job to manage on a country wide level by a non-communicating group of private enteprises with no common goal in mind (i.e. providing good service, period, as simply opposed to providing -better- service, or service that profits them more), thus, there needs to be at least some involvement from a party (governmental) that would assure at least some needs are met before the market takes over.

That being said; comcast is worse than ******** in a blender, when I was initially attempting to configure my service; I was advertised a deal on the internet. The person I was talking to to complete the transaction in that chat window thing, didn't even understand english; so I gave up and called comcast. The lady, after about half an hour, got me signed up, but then I received a bill where I did not receive the bonus. I call them back and they said that it was for "online subscribers only." I explained that the terrible customer service neccesitated I talk to a real person, to which I was handed around to about 20 more people, before they cancelled my subscription and said I could subscribe online for the deal again. I did this, and this time the person at the end was such a flaming idiot that they didn't understand when I said that my name is not my fathers name (as that his house is where my credit card is still signed to, since I got it like, 5 years ago back when I was still living at home), and kept calling me by my father's name; and after I told her that's not my name, started calling me by my father's last name + my last name. (not sure how they managed that.) Proceeded to then say that they couldn't find record of anyone by that name living at my address, and left the chat. After about another day of fighting with people over the phone and internet, managed to get service; they promised the discount, but when I got my first bill half a month later, It was not discounted.

But you get the point.

(also, they don't seem to understand the concept of, "THE PROBLEM IS NOT MY GODDAMN ROUTER, I DON'T NEED TO POWER OFF AND THEN ON MY COMPUTER, YOUR SERVICE IS DOWN" means.)

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Comcast has the worst rating in the industry for a reason, it's slowly improving but overall they don't really care.

You almost make it sound as bad as HughesNet!
HughesNet will make Comcast look like a perfect angel!

HughesNet makes Comcast look like Finnish internet!

 

[madhatter256]

Well it looks like comcast deliberately wants to keep their crappy congested network lines:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1335235/Comcast-Accused-of-Congestion-By-Choice

 

[oakstave]

IMOG: The system that I believe internet should best be modeled after is how the government pulled off the railroads all those years ago. They sponsored the infrastructure and sold contracts out to various groups; in a similar mannar, infrastructure should be government supported, at least, in that it definitely sets a mark in the quality of living index of the country (yes, there actually is such a real index, and we're not actually at the very top; quite far from it in terms of tech infrastructure), and then allow private companies to manage the infrastructure. Frankly, net infrastructure is far too complex a job to manage on a country wide level by a non-communicating group of private enteprises with no common goal in mind (i.e. providing good service, period, as simply opposed to providing -better- service, or service that profits them more), thus, there needs to be at least some involvement from a party (governmental) that would assure at least some needs are met before the market takes over.

+1. The internet is now a utility, and should be managed as such.

Edit: Good link madhatter256. I like this quote in the comments: "...you pay for a high speed connection to the INTERnet and they are providing a high speed connection to their own INTRAnet with a congested gateway to the internet. Then they make money on both ends by charging content providers to get onto the intranet providing their customers with the connection they already paid for in the first place. They get away with it because the consumers are ignorant, the politicians are crooked. The end result is the consumer will be charged more plus the carrier gets greater control of what is on their networks. This decreases competition further eroding what the consumer gets in the end. Eventually maybe it won't even be possible to discuss and make others aware of what is going on..."

 

[hank123]

IMOG your almost to smart. I had bad issues a while back with comcast again. It was hardware issues on their side. I cant tell you how much time I spent with those ******* and how many tecs they sent out before the found the problem.

I feel bad for some of their tecs. They are way under trained. Once in a great while you find a good one and he/she fixes the problem in no time.

On top of it all they are running on cable that they put in years ago for cable TV. When they went to digital it opened up a lot of bandwidth.
They have to be making money, they are just pushing hard on something that is outdated.

 

[mrgoodkat]

Can you offer me a quote for running cable and building out infrastructure to service an entire metropolitan city? How long will it take you to get a positive return on investment after implementing this system? How will this be funded?

I dunno, this thread sort of bothers me. At times, the monopoly thing is bad, but then you shouldn't be complaining about the company - they all do the same thing more or less.

Inherent costs of doing business does justify the tactics that Comcast has used. The third largest city in the country with a metropolitan population of 1o million, and millions of those people only have one choice, by design.

Again, this is a company that is in a constant state of litigation at every level. And I wouldn't have thought twice had I not had a thoroughly terrible experience with them. Not just the end result, but dealing with people civilly, only to be hung up on more than once by really miserable human beings that were supposed to be the voice of the company that wants my business. Hung up on...

Their new advertising campaign targets just that, heavily. They know...but it is lipstick on a pig.