Help Request From A Comcast Victim

Are there any other Comcast victims out there?

We've been suffering through their inability to fix our connectivity problems since January 28th. Yea, I know... we had an ice storm in Atlanta on the 29th, and even though we were never without power and our DSL'ing neighbors were never without their connection, we had issues. Trying to be proactive, we made certain the problems were not on our end, with our equipment or anything like that. Once we were Absolutely Certain the problem was not us, we tried to get the problem fixed. Okay, we were nice about the growing pains thing with speeding up the lines, so we gave them a few more days. Last Tuesday they were finally able to send someone out to track down the problem… it wasn’t us, our lines, our computers, our router, or even our cable modem…. It was them… their junction before the port our service connects to at the pole.

Still, no firm commitment on fixing the problem... they've been out three times now, found the exact same problem all three times (not us, THEM, THEIR junction), and still no resolution is in sight.

I can't imagine how their customer service people could remain mentally intact from constantly having to apologize for their company's lousy service. I'm tired of being apologized to... they've GOT to be tired of apologizing. And I'm tired of waiting for their short bus full of "special" techs to come out and say the same things the previous group did.

Is comcast like this everywhere or is it only Atlanta?? With our previous broadband providers we never had a service issue that took more than 24 hours to be repaired and have full service restored. Now, with comcast we can't even get a firm promise that the problem WILL be fixed at all, much less WHEN. This became even more evident when we found out that, after the third visit and assessment, there were no further repair or investigation requests in the pipeline.

SO, I'm going to be following suit with my neighbors soon... going to DSL. Yea, we'll be slowed down a good bit, but there's something to be said for stability versus speed you can't use.

Also, can someone help me with info on DSL? I've never used it before because I've always thought the extra speed on broadband was worth the money. Any tips on good companies? What to watch out for? Any help would be appreciated. Please PM me here since my connection isn't stable enough to stay in game and I can check this from any OTHER internet connected computer.

Thanks... I miss everyone!!
Cessee

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I guess its a reigonal thing. I've had Comcast for over 3 years. I used to have @Home until Comcast took over. Its been pretty good in the DC area. Our longest outage was just over 3 days, right after Hurricane Isabel passed through. I guess you just got the idiot division of Comcast.

Be thankful you have the option to switch to DSL. In my case, its either Comcast or dial-up.

It depends on where you are in the DC area. Montgomery county sucks. Most of their digital lines were installed by Montgomery cable before Comcast bought them out. They did it the cheap way... by firing the cables through the ground instead of trenching. It caused a lot of split cables which in turn causes a lot of signal leakage and interferance. It's not so bad in Germantown (though I've been having problems all night tonight) but where I used to live in Gaithersburg my signal would cut out every few minutes between around 9pm and midnight. I could never get them to even acknowledge there was a problem until someone finally clued me in to what their real problems were. It's luck of the draw. I'm sure whoever lives in my old apartment is dealing with the same crap I was.

To be a bit more specific Chip, Comcast inside the Beltway in PG County seems to be in pretty good shape. I guess we were just lucky.

go out and break the damn thing for good, then they have to replace the whole junction (if it's reachable).

Demand compensation for all the time lost.

Comcast in my area has been HORRIBLE for years! Every time Comcast came out to service someone nearby at the nearby junction, my internet and/or TV since they appearantly don't have any other solutions to servicing people than unplugging a cord from the junction and hope it isn't connected... Then they apologize when we say someone disconnected us again and don't service us for usually four or five days. Service was so much better around here in the past and seems to have changed a lot since Comcast came in town...

Go here and see what people are saying:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/comcast

Some techs from Comcast keep an unofficial eye on the forums and are usually pretty helpful.

Comcast has been pretty good to me so far (over 2 years). A steady 3 MB downstream and maybe one outage since I started.

- T -

I'm a true hater of Comcast! When I lived in Atlanta I had nothing but problems with them. Connectivity issues, billing issues. They suck and I feel your pain.

I have no problems with comcast except for their exorbitant prices.

That stinks... I have Comcast up here in Jersey and it's great. $40/month for cable internet is a little pricey, but I've been satisfied with the uptime - had bad experience with my last cable company that gave crappy service and had frequent outages for about the same price and only 1 way cable. Ew. 3mb down / 1mb up rocks

Well, it's been three weeks since this "exchange" began between comcast and myself.

It's been over three weeks since I've had a stable connection. It has improved a little, but is still not stable enough for me to consider anything like dj'ing - though, if you suffered through my dj'ing last time, you're probably clapping and thanking them for sparing you further agony - I thought Bela Fleck bleeding into Drowning Pool was an interesting concept.

While I have seen several "Contractor for Comcast" trucks in our area, there is still no word on when/if the problems will be resolved.

Oh the bright side? well, I've quit trying to come up with creative ways to call them fucktards with out using the "f" word. I've decided I'm in enough pain that their masturbatory habits are really none of my concern, even if it's on the job.

I'm still torn between DSL and waiting out Comrats, er, Bombcasts, er... whatevers growing pains.

Hope things are going well with Comcast. Another problem has come up with Comcast for me where their system stopped giving my computers IP addresses and after three phone calls and too many hours troubleshooting, nothing has been solved. It's times like this I wish there was another internet companffffffv0-vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvgh


LOL sorry. Cat talk

My experience with Comcast (in Pennsylvania, montgomery county) as an internet provider was absolute shit. Their tech support didn't/don't understand what Latency is. Also having to disconnect my router before they'll even TALK to me was an extreme pain in the ass. Nor would they even look at a latency report from dslreports.com.

For any kind of gaming, streaming, or downloading without a resumer, you NEED to not have your connection intermittantly drop out . Comcast couldn't manage it. There's no point to an extremely high speed download if it cuts out to 0 every few seconds. I'm perfectly aware that they manage to have a decent, even great, service in other areas and states, but such is not the case in my area. So I went with DSL.

Speakeasy DSL (http://www.speakeasy.net) offers a 'gamer' package. It offers two static IP addresses, no restriction on WHAT you run on your connection (go ahead and run servers, routers, etc. they're fine with that and will even give you tech support). The big thing that got me to get this package was that it offers priority routing. Basically, guarenteed low ping to anywhere on the planet (unless you're trying to connect to some crap place for some reason).

But hey, shop around find the best combination of services that meet your needs. (P.S. I've heard nothing good about Verizon, your mileage may vary).

My parents have been having issues in Michigan, and well They haven't even gotten an apologie. They acctaully called and had an appointment for a tech to come out and look at it. Their local office cancelled the appointment without calling them. So here my dad wasted a day of work waiting for the comcast tech to come and they canceled the appointment without saying a word. Now, I was raised to be very patient and level headed. But, damn. How crappy is that??!?!?!

When my dad called to see where the tech was and they told him that he just said, so can I still have a tech come out? Comcasts response "Our next availible appointment isn't until next monday" He just said, "goood, i'd like to cancel my service then please."

So they got tired of it and switched to DSL.

And is there really that big of a speed difference between dialup and DSL?

There's a sugnificant difference between dialup and DSL, but I haven't noticed speed differences between DSL and cable. My parents are pretty pissed off with Comcast for their own reasons and I'm sure if DSL were available in their area, they would get it.