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Phat_Pat

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 8, 2004
1,955
0
I Live Where I Live
Right now i am just angry with them.

So our community just got DVR installed and in order to get the function you need to get a new box with a Hard Drive built in. No biggie just call them up they be out here in 1 or two days, i mean thats what their commercials say, they're local so they'll always be there.

WRONG

So the "next available appointment" is a day or two shy from two weeks. So i get the option of waiting two weeks and paying twenty dollars for a guy to plug in three cables or drive down to their station and switch the old box for the new and "install" it myself.

So i have 40 minutes before it closes so i drive down there with the old box to get the new one. I watch as the lady literally grabs the box from under the counter. The box is scratched up and looks awful.

She hands it over to me and says "plug it in, call us and your good to go"

As i walk out she locks the door and i drive home with my brand new DVR/HDTV box. When i set it up its great, looks nice, fits nice, ect.

Although one problem, it doesn't work. So i spend two hours on the phone with the tech guy, who does nothing at all that was helpful (are you cables plugged in, thats a common mistake)

So here i am with a "broken" cable box that should of been checked before it was given to me.

Now i know that this is just a mistake and its only one incident, but thats not the whole story.

Comcast has constantly rained down crappy equipment and services to me for a while. I literary had no cable for a month because they were "updating their equipment" They finally turned it back on and i learned that we were at war.

When I got HD the box was not only bad but we received, at best, a pixilated image for four months.

Thats just some of the awfulness

I seriously have them on speed dial.


So am i alone or is comcast a train-wreak were both the trains were moving horse feces and they crashed into a fish company which had been abandoned although the fish were left to rot in humid temperatures, because right now they are just an awful company in my view.

/Rant
 

treblah

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2003
1,285
0
29680
I've never had a problem with the ScientificAtlanta 8000HD's that Comcast has given me at my last 3 apartments. You have the same box? At my new place, OnDemand did not work after the installation but they had it resolved in about a week. Perhaps I am lucky?

Also, expecting your local Cable/Phone/Electic company to service you in 1 to 2 days is pretty ludicrous.
 

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Well, as far as their internet goes, I'm pretty happy so far with my cable modem. The guy that did the install even broke about a dozen laws (including breaking a door down) in order to get it all set up, so again, I'm pretty happy. When the bill comes, of course, I won't be as happy, I'm sure.
 

wdlove

macrumors P6
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
I don't hate Comcast, don't necessarily like them either. Not using cable modem though. I have the Basic Cable for TV only. No real choice in Cable, they have a monopoly here in Boston. Have two channels that are snowy, CBS & PBS. Have had it checked but it never seems to get better.
 

stonyc

macrumors 65816
Feb 15, 2005
1,259
1
Michigan
Add one vote for "Comcast sucks a big fat one" from me.

I hated them so much that one we moved to our new house, we signed up with a local competitor (Wide Open West, or WOW!... yes, very cheesy I know). They couldn't find our house on our appointed day, so not only did they knock off $5/month from our bill but they gave us 3 free months of internet (which I had signed up for at the same time as our cable). I also like their packages much better than Comcasts... though they don't have the "6 months for $19.95 deals, they instead guaranteed their prices for 2 years. Which, when I worked out how it compared to Comcast over the next 2 years, I ended up saving $250 or something with WOW!. And that was before they threw in the discounts for their error.

I can't say that WOW! would be good in every area... in fact, I've known many people who have been very happy with their Comcast service. But from my experiences with Comcast, I would be very happy to never have to deal with them again.
 

rosalindavenue

macrumors 6502a
Dec 13, 2003
855
282
Virginia, USA
My Comcast experience

I have cox where I live, but my in-laws in the DC suburbs have comcast. I set up their new cable modem and router (WRT54G) last month. Comcast is apparently configured not to work with a router; but I googled and found a work-around-- something like this. .

I thought that it was pretty seedy of comcast to attempt to limit the use of its cable modems. :mad:
 

iGary

Guest
May 26, 2004
19,580
7
Randy's House
Comcast has been pretty reliable in the two years I have been here. Internet was down once, and cable down once in that whole time.
 

ColoJohnBoy

macrumors 65816
Mar 10, 2003
1,129
0
Denver, Colorado
Damn, that sucks. I'm sorry it's happened. I've had Comcast a few years now and couldn't be happier. Wehn they were still AT&T Broadband they sucked majorly, badly enough that I switched to Dish Network and Qwest DSL. Comcast has really cleaned things up, at least in the Denver area. Thankfully, too, as they're the only cable company in town. Are there alternatives in your area?
 

Johnny Rico

macrumors 6502
Feb 17, 2005
267
0
In the two years that comcast has been providing internet in my area it has been down exactly once. I called them when this happened, they were aware of the problem and were working to fix it, then they gave me a sizable refund on my next bill.
It seems to me that when people's internet goes down they go all shithouse and get pissed and blame anyone within a thousand yards. Then they go online and tell everyone about how they are being jerked around by a big company and how its not fair because they paid their share and goddammit they DESERVE to be treated like royalty for twenty or forty bucks a month.
Is your internet down? Has it ever been? Maybe instead of getting all worked up you should go outside or smoke a bowl or have a cigarette or whatever and shut the fxck up about it.
 

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
We don't have Comcast here, however, i feel your pain. We have Charter, which I guarantee you is the worst cable company in existance. Not only is the service slow, expensive, and unreliable, when you call, you're placed on hold for an hour only for one of the incompetent apes answering the phone to not know jack, and tell you all they can do is send a technician out in 3 weeks.
 

XNine

macrumors 68040
ColoJohnBoy said:
Damn, that sucks. I'm sorry it's happened. I've had Comcast a few years now and couldn't be happier. Wehn they were still AT&T Broadband they sucked majorly, badly enough that I switched to Dish Network and Qwest DSL. Comcast has really cleaned things up, at least in the Denver area. Thankfully, too, as they're the only cable company in town. Are there alternatives in your area?


Damn, I'm in Denver too! heh

Yeah, I like Comcast compared to Qwest. Their install techs have always been quick (I'm faster, though) and Qwest sucks giant donkey nuts. Their service and modems are horrible. There's been a couple of DNS issues with Comcast in the past where the net was down for a while, but all in all, it's pretty okay.
 

Yebot

macrumors 6502
Jan 6, 2004
362
2
Comcast is on my good list right now because I called them up and made up a story about how I wanted to cancel my internet service and go to DSL. They offered me $29.95 for 12 months to stay. I just saved about $156.

Stick it to the man people.

STICK IT.
 

Black&Tan

macrumors 6502a
Mar 4, 2004
736
0
Read a nasty article in the paper yesterday regarding Comcast and cable channels in general. It seems digital is more efficient that analog, in regards to equipment demands. For every analog channel, they can get 3 digital channels. So they're doing their best to "push" people along to digital, even though its at least $20 more a month, adn eliminate analog channels. However, the analog consumer currently makes up 64% of the cable market. So they need to tread carefully. However, to ween consumers to digital, they are starting to remove channels from the analog listings to digital only. The SciFi Channel is one, for instance.

Makes me very happy I switched to the Dish. Pay less and get more.
 

kgarner

macrumors 68000
Jan 28, 2004
1,512
0
Utah
There cable is seriously expensive and I have only heard bad things about their DVR. But I only get the internet through them and I have no complaints at all. The only time I lost service was that one time a few months back where EVERYBODY lost service for a day. I just wish they would make the intro prices their permanent prices.
 

narco

macrumors 65816
Dec 9, 2003
1,155
0
California.
I have Comcast internet and it usually works pretty well, but when it goes out, it goes out in FASHION. I remember there were 3 outages in the span of a week, and for about a week straight I couldn't upload/send email because there was some kind of cap on my uploading. Numerous calls and nothing fixed, but it eventually got resolved.

I don't recall having as many problems when I had DSL, but one thing's for sure: I LOOOOOVEEE having cable internet and getting basic cable for FREE. All I watch is the basic channels anyway, so it works out perfectly.

Fishes,
narco.
 

Phat_Pat

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 8, 2004
1,955
0
I Live Where I Live
So i just got a new box and well i guess it was worth the wait.

DVR is pretty awesome.... just ticks me off that they didn't check to make sure the box was okay before they gave it to me..... but i guess i should of noticed something wrong when there is a 3 inch gash on the vent of the thing.

THey have been doing alot of things for our community, lots of upgrades making most things unavailable or just not working, although so far the results are looking good.

I don't have the internet but a few of my friends who do have it say it goes down couple times a month. I'm also gonna blame that on the upgrades.

Alright now back to recording things :D
 

jywv8

macrumors 6502
Jan 11, 2003
322
0
Chicago
I've had no problems with service, but they are pricey. Then again, I need my digital cable, HDTV boxes, HBO, etc. And I really like the On Demand, though they need to update their movie selections more often.
 

mcmillan

macrumors 6502
Jul 4, 2004
318
0
Actually I hate Verizon more, but also Comcast a bit. And the telephone/internet company in my country... wait! I hate every service, you call, and a guy that gets $6 an hour picks up the phone, do you really expect that guy to know a lot about internet/tv/telephone/whatever? And if he does, do you think he really likes to help you? he is only doing it because it's his job.

I once worked as a volunteer cutting tickets at a concert, I wanted to do it, that's why I volunteered, but believe me, working with general public is one of the worst jobs available (I'm sure a lot of you have had works at stores or similar stuff). I had a pregnant lady with crazy hormones screaming at me.

My point is, those guys hate spending hours receiving angry calls from someone they don't know, and it's not their fault, I don't think it's the company's fault either. It's really hard to stop those thing from happening. You shouldn't hate the company, maybe hate the incident, or the coincidences ;) .
 

masterapple04

macrumors regular
May 26, 2004
178
0
Massachusetts, USA
I DESPISE, LOATHE, and REVILE Comcast, but not because of any service of theirs. In fact, I've never had a Comcast service. What they did do was destroy TechTV and turn it into crap G4. They chased off Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and others who were great on that channel. I wanted to watch tech info and shows, not gamers sitting playing games. Lame. :mad: :mad: :mad:
 

dotdotdot

macrumors 68020
Jan 23, 2005
2,391
44
I have Cablevision for TV and Internet (iO Interactive Optimum for TV and OOL Optimum Online for internet) and I can honestly say that the service is 100% perfect.

We have never had TV problems in our house, each has a sharp, crisp digital signal into each TV - even some TVs we have from before I was born look great with iO.

And the internet service which we had for a little over 3 years I think has literally been down only once. (Maybe like 5 times realistically).
 
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