[ale] All you Comcast fanboys...

[Alex Carver]

I think at a local level each company is hit or miss as the support
center and field service teams vary.  For example, I had Time Warner at
one point.  It was an awful setup experience, awful service, and
abusive[1].  I moved into an area that AT&T was about to start servicing
with UVerse.  A sales rep was going door to door in the neighborhood
with business cards.  I ended up getting more service for less money
with AT&T at that time.  Initial experience was great, had very little
trouble with the service and the field guys in that area were pretty good.

Then I moved to another neighborhood and took the service with me.  This
neighborhood had UVerse installed not too long prior to me moving in but
most of the people were using Comcast.  Because of that, no one noticed
the problems with what turned out to be the pole wiring.  I was having
lots of dropped calls (VoIP), the network would drop out daily at first
and then hourly.  I had techs visiting multiple times, swapping
equipment, checking and changing wires, always noticing poor signal even
though I was 400 wire feet from the fiber node and my modem was 25 wire
feet from their drop.  The thing got fixed about a month before I moved.
 It turned out that no one had checked the splices on the poles.  So
there were several bridge taps as well as connections that had
experienced water leakage.  But for a long time anyone servicing this
area insisted it was my wiring that was at fault.  The previous
neighborhood service groups never assumed anything and just showed up
for any problem.


[1] Time Warner initially promised that I could have business internet
(so I could have a static IP and unblocked ports) and residential cable
television when I was on the phone with them.  After getting the
internet up, I was told I could not have the residential cable because
the billing system can't send two different services to the same address
(don't ask me how messed up that is).  If I wanted residential cable I
had to give up the business internet.  I objected and they said I needed
to go to their customer support office.  The person on the phone gave me
an address...to a gas station.  Meanwhile, during the installation I
discovered I was getting two devices, an ATA (Arris) for the phone and a
different unit for the network modem (SMC).  Even though both devices
could support both functions, I had to have two devices.  So I asked to
have the ATA installed in one room and the modem in another.  They said
sure and then installed both devices in the same room while disabling
all the other jacks in the building so that I couldn't move them (they
put security covers on the free ends of those lines).  I was glad to be
rid of TW though they tried to charge me for failure to return the
devices until I produced a hand-signed receipt from their service office
when I returned them in person.

At the new place that originally had Comcast, it appeared they had done
the same thing as Time Warner and disabled every single jack in the
house with security covers except for the one with the modem.  It took
me a couple hours to get those covers off so I could use the jacks to
distribute the satellite TV feed around the house.

On 2015-01-02 10:45, Pete Hardie wrote:
> I'm not a fan of the forced donation of power for hotspots either, but so
> far for me Comcast has been less of a liar than AT&T, whose DSL offering
> maxed out at 1.5M, and who was willing to keep telling me to reset my
> equipment when a simple check of their equipment would clear out the
> problem....
> 
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 1:19 PM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> [Disclaimer]
>>
>> I gave up on Comcast years ago.  Even if they offered me twice the
>> bandwidth they do now at half the price they do now, I would refuse.  I
>> got tired of all the lies they told me (multiple documented occasions)
>> years ago.  I can tolerate incompetence or ignorance but malice
>> aforethought will not stand.  I have plenty of bitching points with ATT
>> Uverse but, at least, willful lies are not one of them...
>>
>> That all being said...
>>
>> [/Disclaimer]
>>
>> The saga of Comcast using your premises and your electricity to promote
>> THEIR wifi services is well documented.  I saw this first hand just this
>> last month where the clutter of Xfiniti public access points (on all
>> possible channels) were drowning out (beaconing) the legitimate services
>> in a residential neighborhood, making non-xfiniti services unreliable
>> even within a single home where we were staying.
>>
>> The horror stories of their so called "customer support" is also well
>> documented...  Safe advice is now to ALWAYS record any support call with
>> Comcast...  Latest in that saga...
>>
>>
>> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141231/01553029553/yet-another-horrible-comcast-customer-service-experience-goes-viral.shtml
>>
>> Now, they are increasing your "rental fees" by 25% for the privilege of
>> providing their "service" to their customers using your facilities.  The
>> rental fee on "their" cable modem is going up...
>>
>> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/31/on-comcast-buy-your-own-modem/
>>
>> I still have a couple of my old DOCSIS 2 modems from the last time I was
>> wasting my time with Comicalcast.  But now, at $120 a year to rent their
>> "we advertise our own open service from your property" modems, why is
>> anyone still renting their modems?  Morotola DOCSIS 3 cable modems are
>> starting around $70 on Amazon?  That's what?  7 MONTHS return on
>> investment?!?!  And you are not providing them with free electricity and
>> facilities for their network or cluttering the air with their access
>> point beacons.  How do they continue to get away with this???
>>