So, I use Comcast’s Internet service. Lots of problems. Well, one big one: it goes down a lot. And a warning: this became a long rambling rant of a post.
Over the last several months, it’s been down about 20-25% of the time. Remind me to check the numbers and I’ll get you something more exact. Usually the downtime is in bits and pieces (2 hours here, 8 hours there), but there are also the outages that last for several days without any connectivity.
So, it goes down. I call them up and try to get an appointment. The appointment is usually 5 to 7 days away. Great. So far, every single time, my Internet connection comes back up a day or two before the appointment. I’ll then get a call from Comcast saying something like, “Yeah, we were doing work in your area, and your problem should be taken care of. Can we go ahead and cancel your appointment?” They then cancel it, no matter what I say. If I say “no, let me wait another 24 hours and make sure it stays up”, and then call back later to cancel, it turns out that it’s already cancelled. Of course, usually then I’ll get a call on the day of the appointment reminding me of it. Or the driver will call to let me know he’s on his way. Now that’s organized.
The customer service reps also aren’t that consistent from one to another. For example, I call up and report an outage. The CSR (we’ll call her CSR #1) is very sympathetic, and at one point says, “Oh, and you don’t even have to ask. You’re definitely going to get a credit for all this.” Ok, sounds good, even if the few dollars don’t really make up for the inconvenience of several days without Internet service. So, when it comes back up and I cancel the appointment, I call back up and ask CSR #2 about the credit. “Oh, you should have gotten a ticket number when you called up. She didn’t give you a ticket number? Well, I can try to put in for the credit, and we’ll see what they say, but you really need to get a ticket number.”
Ok, so when I call to report the next outage, I ask for a ticket number, and explain what happened the last time. That CSR says that I shouldn’t have needed the ticket number to get the credit, but gives me one. He also manages to somehow give me a ticket number from that last outage. If he could find it, why couldn’t CSR #2?
Comcast has been blaming Verizon for their connection problems in my area, saying that as Verizon crews are doing fiber installs for FIOS, they’re also cutting Comcast’s lines. Now, I haven’t heard much good about Verizon in general, so that wouldn’t surprise me, but that’s not much of an excuse. If the lines were cut, I’d lose cable TV also. In my outages, cable TV always works (except for video-on-demand, that goes out with the Internet service each time). That means that my repeated outages have to be caused by something else.
So, that’s my last few months of Comcast service. I’ve been down for about 24 hours so far into this outage. I called up around noon today to report it, and was told, “Yeah, there’s an outage in your area, and we’re already working on it. It should be back up very soon.” Didn’t sound very believable, but ok. Asked him when I should give up on that and call back if it’s still down. 6:00. Ok. Call back when I get a chance around 9:00, because, of course, it’s still down. The person I talk to on that call looks all over the place trying to figure out what outage the first CSR was talking about, but just can’t see any trace of an outage near me.
He goes and schedules an appointment, which is actually only two days away. This is new territory, and so for the first time in a while I don’t know in advance how this will go. Usually it takes them longer than that to fix the problem and then cancel my appointment, which works for them because the appointment is 5 or 6 days away. Right now I’m going to guess that someone will show up on Saturday, look at it, and say that he can’t fix it, another crew will need to be scheduled to do work on the lines. I’ve gotten that one before, a long time ago (the saga of trying to get the cable modem working to begin with is another long story) and wouldn’t be surprised to hear it again.
But, we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll get a miracle worker technician who’ll magically fix everything and make it never happen again. More likely, it’ll eventually get working again, and I’ll switch to FIOS in the near future.