I smite thee - Comcast!

[draggar]

Sure enough, the day I decide to get some sites up and running as well as redo a bunch o them Comcast decides they're going to have one of their "crap service" day.

What will their excuse be this time? System "enhancements"? Line noise? It's too cold out (it's in the high 70's now)?

Or their favorite - blame my equipment??

Edit: It took 6 minutes for this post to post.

I'm trying to upload a site that will be based on Joomla (about 5800 files) - not even halfway though over 1,000 uploads have failed.

[telecom_goddess]

It's always your equipment

[Dreamstalker]

We had the modem replaced three times now, and for some reason they don't seem to think a residential account should have a router (every so often I get some odd reset packets). We're not trying to run a business, just so our laptops and any guests that need it have a connection. They do partake in packet shaping; it seems that in their zeal to stop teh illegal downloadz a lot of legitimate activities get caught in the mix.

I've had my mail client blamed for their authentication being screwed up. Yes, I was told "Thunderbird? I don't know what that is, we don't support it. You'll have to uninstall it and use Outlook" (for the record, Outlook didn't work either that day)

My college had Comcast, and they tried always to convince IT that any problem was the school's responsibility (wow, I didn't know we had our own ISP on school grounds). The funniest one was where I literally watched a Comcast contractor cut the T1 running to the library (I was on break working down in IT at the time). The director had the call on speakerphone; whoever he was talking to tried to deny that they had anyone onsite

[telecom_goddess]

wonderful.....hearing that just pisses me off...I do a lot of dsl work in my job among other things and I know how to troubleshoot a connection and not just blame equipment.

SIgh.

Not to mention I have Comcast at home and golly gee WITH a router

[draggar]

Well, I'm back.

I called them and I got the automated "we're experiencing higher than usual call volume at this time blah blah blah".

When I got them on the phone they swore to me that there was no issue and that I needed to reboot the computer, router, modem, etc..

I had to ask "If there is no issue with the service then why are you experiencing higher than usual call volume?"

I got the "we don't know why" answer.

Jeez. Won't even admit there is an issue with their service - but I guess it saves on service credits. (Yeah, what $0.30 for an all day outage??)

[telecom_goddess]

Yeah, they aren't allowed to tell you that something fucked up on Comcast's end...if they even know.

I wasn't trained on the internet side of things there sadly...or should that be 'happily'? Bah. I guess the only thing I can suggest is try directly hooking a computer up to the modem to see if there is any problems with your up/down rates. I know from personal experience that if a router is starting to fail that there can be spotty connectivity. Maybe call your router's support line to see if they have any ideas?

I agree. Worth a shot anyway...I've had two routers go crappy over the years and it did make a difference.

It still pisses me off they don't actually troubleshoot...I could NOT get away with that crap. But then again I work for a real telco Well sorta anyway.

[surreal20]

speaking of Comcast. Last night the entire Cable box stopped at 2:30am. Yea, i know..what they crap am i doing up that late? I just was :P

But i was afraid my payment hadn't gone through and it was them turning it off entirely. (We had missed a payment the previous month, and i was not aware. When i got the bill that also showed the late payment, i payed it immediately in full. A few days later, we got the notice about the late payment. Obviously they sent out the items in silly orders or something. Who knows. Anyway, i had that day also called the automated line to ensure that it had a zero balance. It had, so i thought nothing of it.)

So, last night when the box stopped working, i got the notice and got my cell phone to call the line. It said i had to call regular business hours, stated the hours, then hung up on me. The notice specifically says that they have a 24/7 phone number, and listed that number. Furthermore, when i've called, i've never spoken to a real person, i always ended up button mashing until the payment was done. Nothing wrong with that, and it's easier for me. But still..how can it be a 24/7 line and be only automated answered..and i be told to call back for "regular business hours."

I am very perplexed about it. lol

[protege]

With the issues we've had at work, it's no wonder I call it "Crapcast." Their service is always going out, and it's always some bullshit about how the "wiring" in the building is to blame. Anyone want to guess who *installed* said wiring? We always get that excuse, or comments about how it's a problem in the neighborhood. A problem, that they seem to know about, yet are reluctant to take care of

About once a month, the 'net and phones just go out for hours. You'll be on the phone with a client, or in the middle of a project, and things go dead. They claim they don't know why, and can't understand why we get pissed. We're pissed because our business is heavily dependent on 'net access and phones. We're out of business without those items!

[telecom_goddess]

So does this mean Patiokitty is our resident comcast helper and expert now

On the plus side I've had very few issues with the cable going out at all. And the last install I had due to a move went very well and he even hooked up our router for us...and he did not have to do that. Although he did say he would wire the phone jacks and he didn't....which we found out when we actually needed to hook up a medical device to a jack in the wall...but we have it hooked up to the modem so whatever it works.

[Kogarashi]

I'm not a big fan of Comblast (my college roommates' and my nickname for them) either. Every time we called with a problem, they tried to pass the blame to something else. And for a while, we had to call a lot.

We started out with AT&T for our cable internet, including renting the modem rather than buying our own. Toward the end of the first of two years in that apartment, the internet connection started to get spotty, dropping out every few minutes for half a minute or longer at a time. Then it would clear up for a couple hours, before repeating the problem. We tried talking to tech support about it, but they didn't know what the problem was (or so they said). Then Comcast bought them out for internet service in the area. And the disconnection troubles continued.

We called repeatedly trying to get it taken care of when it would get bad (out for hours at a time rather than minutes, dropping at the worst possible times, etc.). Every time, the phone reps told us it was something else. They blamed the building's wiring (you inherited that from AT&T, Comcast), something in the neighborhood, the fact that we used a router to network three computers, our modem.... We took great pleasure in telling them that the modem was theirs too, and therefore still their problem. Twice they sent a tech to check the modem, and both times the tech told us the modem was fine and the connection was probably Comcast's fault. After blaming the router and hanging up twice, we learned to connect a computer directly to the modem before calling so we didn't have to mention the dreaded R-word at all. One rep even tried to tell us that Comcast "doesn't do networks," despite the company's own website telling customers how to set up their home networks.

I think one roommate and her father (a tech at the company he works for) eventually traced the problem to some faulty node in the area, which probably went out when it was still AT&T's and was inherited by Comcast. As for the disconnections, the problem eventually disappeared about a year after it first started. And what was extra-annoying was that we couldn't switch providers, because that town had maybe four internet providers and they all had their own areas to cover, plus Comcast was the cheapest and we were broke college students.

The company at least somewhat redeemed itself when Hubby and I first moved out here and had to get internet through them because they were the only option. Had them for a year with no problems worth calling in over, thank goodness. Then the university started up free wireless for student residences, and we switched to that and its own set of issues. But yay free wireless.

[surreal20]

Then the university started up free wireless for student residences, and we switched to that and its own set of issues. But yay free wireless.

As the economy classes will states "Nothing is free." So I guess, for you not having to use money to access the internet, you have to deal with their crap. However, the goods out way the bad.

[draggar]

I wonder if I can bill them for the time I have to spend now deleting all the files from the site I was trying to upload and the time to re-upload all the files?

As for nicknames:

Con-cast
Comcrap
Crapcast
Gonecast

[zombiequeen]

At first, I thought you had put up Grapecast. I was wondering how that was an insult. Unless you would like to cast grapes at them? They might enjoy that though.

[lordlundar]

This sounds similar to when I first got high-speed (Canuck here, so I don't have Comcast). The first one I had was a home ADSL startup kit from the local phone company, including the filters and modem. Cheap and easy to set up, so hey, I went for it.

Little did I know that the phone lines were 20+ years old and haven't had more than the minimum maintenance in over a decade. Needless to say, it wasn't really set up for ADSL connection bandwidth. Cue several calls to their customer support line every time the connection died (often multiple times per day) and given a variety of excuses just to dodge the concept of accountability. After enough pushes on it, I finally got it out of a rep the situation of the lines. At that point I canceled my service with them (they didn't have a minimum contract on the kits) and called the cable company and got the cable internet connection. I didn't even bother to run the remainder of my connection, instead taking a sledgehammer to the old ADSL modem. Yeah, I know it wasn't the best choice, but it felt so GOOD.

[Andara Bledin]

Back in the last house I was in, our connection (and phone service) would go all to hell when it rained. They sent a tech out and ended up replacing the entire drop line from the pole to the house. Seems it was about 30 years old and they were honestly surprised that it only caused problems with the DSL.

After that, the problems got much more sporadic, but they were still often enough that we called the techs out again. This time the issue was further up and was the line coming from the local junction point out to our pole. The tech tells us that this line was even older than our drop line and he wondered how this managed to be the first call they'd had about it. He was actually a bit surprised that our block even had service, the line was so degraded.

^-.-^