Reasons That I Hate Comcast
After many years of Comcast service, we’re moving to a new place where Comcast doesn’t provide service. I still hate them with a passion, though, and I’ll keep this page up until I die.
Here are some of my complaints about Comcast. Some are just idiocity…some are proof that they suck.
- My Digital Voice Center password changes to the default for no reason. One second I can use my password, then 10 minutes later it’s set to the default.
- My A/C is still broken because of Comcast. It broke over the weekend, and the repair guys were supposed to come over on Tuesday to fix it. Comcast’s entire VOIP system was down, so the A/C guys couldn’t confirm the appointment and cancelled.
- My HD channels have had some pixelization each day for the past 22 49 months. During heavy usage times, it can be pixelated for hours at a time.
- My audio cuts out on all channels every so often. During heavy TV viewing times or days when the network is moody, it’ll happen every 30 seconds or so for hours at a time.
- I’ve had 7 9 techs and 4 5 DVR boxes over the course of several months, and none of them have really done anything to fix any problem.
- Every tech that has come out has promised to do something to fix the problem (like open a ticket with another group or test the mainline coming into the neighborhood), but not a single one has actually done it.
- There has been an orange (now yellow) cable in my yard for 7 weeks now waiting for someone to bury it. The guys who bury the cable have missed five appointments, and all I can get is apologies and promises that it will be done by X date. Once I made Comcast get the cabling contractor on the phone, they had it done the next day. The wife said that she talked to the guy doing the burial, and he said that he had heard about it only 2 business days beforehand. He hates Comcast, too.
- It took Comcast 21 months to escalate my problem to the next level.
- It took 3 weeks for a technical supervisor to call me. I finally got a call from a supervisor today, and his attitude and plan-of-attack actually make me…confident that they’re going to do something. Well, it’s still Comcast, so we’ll see. I spoke too soon; the supervisor never called me back.
- My trouble tickets are constantly being closed saying that the problem is resolved even though I’m still having those problems and no one has contacted me.
- The Digital Voice Center is supposed to keep track of my voicemails, incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. Everything errors out except for the voicemails. See “My trouble tickets are continuously being closed…” above.
- Everything they have online is based on the original email address they gave when we first got Internet service from them. They misspelled our name and won’t let us change it to the proper spelling. A technician tried to find the email address associated with our account and couldn’t even find it.
- When they installed Digital Voice, they sent over three guys when one would have sufficed. One guy just sat in my office chair for 2 hours while one was on his personal cellphone and the other worked.
- The installers of our Digital Voice left before fixing a problem where we have to dial a 1 or 0 before we can make local calls. They said to talk to people that they talk to when they’re done on their end (the people that the installer talks to to make sure everything is finished). These people said that was an installer issue, but they had already bolted. They put us on hold and called the installer and told them to come back. They never did. Still waiting and still have that problem. See “My trouble tickets are continuously being closed…” above.
- The DVR box continuously locks up, and all that tech support says is to reset the box. Worthless.
- The cable boxes lag. I’ve hit the button on the remote to pause a show only to see it play for 40 or more seconds before it finally pauses.
- OnDemand only works about 30% of the time. The rest of the time, I’m either waiting for a page to refresh or completely losing connectivity to the video server.
- Some techs that have come over tried to tell me that I should be using the yellow RCA for video to my TV. I guess they don’t notice the 50″ HDTV that they’re looking at is actually in HD.
- We were having problems with our Starz channels, and a tech come over to check it out. He discovered that the feed from the splitter to my living room was just sitting in the plug. The previous tech hadn’t even screwed it down. WTF!?!?!?
- Every time lightning strikes, we lose audio. We had DirectTV for about 5 years and never had as many weather-induced problems as we do with cable.
- Whenever there’s an Emergency Alert System message, the cable box automatically switches to channel “EAS”, which is a public access channel with a low-quality crawl across the top.
- The EAS crawl is in Spanish 8/10 times.
- We received an EAS alert that said that Comast had issued an Amber alert for a missing child. They left out some details like…oh, I don’t know…anything about the child, what city, what state (we live on the border), where last seen, etc.
- I cancelled my account with them. They asked why, and I told them that I was moving to an area they didn’t service. Lo and behold, the next day, I get a voicemail asking what they can do to keep us as a customer.
YES!!! I’m so (soooooooo) with you!
I spent 48 minutes on the phone with them the other night because I needed to change the email address they sent my billing alerts to. And these turnips insisted that I was trying to adjust my GMAIL settings on their site. …because I don’t know that I’d need to go to gmail to do that. I hate them, they are turnips.
I am a service tech for Shaw Cable in Canada and have a few comments.
Times of heavy usage will have no effect on your signal at all. Your TV signal, whether analog (lower channels) or digital (higher channels/HD) are broadcast via a radio signal. This signal is broadcast throughout the entire cable system at what should be a sufficient level for all TV’s to pick up. A good example is if you and every person in your city were to turn your radio on to the same station everyone would still get a clear signal. Just because the car next to you is listening to the same station as you does not mean there is less signal for you.
Now as for your pixelating, specifically at certain times of the day. This would mean that there is not enough signal reaching your cable box. Since we now know that there is enough signal broadcast to the street we can assume that the problem will be between the street and your cable box. Since you say that your HD channels are what are causing you problems we now know that it is your higher frequency channels that are affected. Higher channels crapping out are often: water in the lines, too many splitters/cheap radio shack splitters, or possible a short in the line. A good way to confirm this is to check your highest analog channels and see if they are snowy at all. I don’t know what kind of company Comcast is but they don’t sound like they’re too good with customer service. The only thing I can advise you to do on your own is to install a Drop Amp. This will boost your signal if it is too low. This does not always fix the problem but might be worth the try. Make sure that it is ‘two way capable.’ It could make the signal too high on your lower channels so could be a trade of one problem for another.
As for the shitty cable box; I can assume that you guys down there are using the same piece of shit Motorola 6416 HD PVR boxes. These problems you are stating sounds like problems within the box themselves and have nothing to do with the cable signal. These are problems all cable providers across North America are experiencing and are in constant communication with Motorola to send firmware updates out to your cable boxes. Unfortunately there is not much that you cable provider can do except to reset the box in hopes that it didn’t receive the last update. You can put the blame on these problems on Motorola.
Anyway, hope you have better luck in the future, it’s too bad you guys don’t have Shaw Cable down there. Truly an excellent company. Stocks up from $11 to 54 over the last eight years. Will split soon so now is a great time to invest!
Dude, you’re getting better tech support from readers of your blog than from the dozens of open tickets with comcast! That is comcastic!
COMCAST SUCKS!!!!! $1200 A YEAR FOR “SERVICE” WHAT A TOTAL LOAD! MY SERVICE WORKS IN THE MORNING FAILS AROUND NOON AND COMES BACK AFTER SIX P.M. – SO AFTER BEING TREATED LIKE A GIANT A-HOLE OVER THE PHONE THEY TELL ME WE CAN SEND A TECH OUT – CAN SIT YOU AROUND AND WAIT FOR FIVE HOURS? ALL THIS FOR ONLY $1200 YEAR! WHAT A DEAL!! ACCT. 8497505300194397
I have problems with comcast’s non-net neutrality, but I’ve been pretty fortunate in my dealings with them and my TV and cable internet service. I believe these local pipes were initially laid down by Road Runner though, and then bought my comcast, so maybe that makes a difference? Anyways, just wanted to provide my side of things to balance the picture a bit. People tend to pile on with the negatives…
hate to bust your bubble, but i have a client with 24 sites, 19 of them using comcast. I’m very impressed with how relaible the service is. Outaqes are very rare. And i can’t say enough about the Business class support.
Maybe all your wows are because your residential….. maybe you should sign up for business class
Hey hows the digital voice working now? I’m considering it at home.
thanks
I do think that Comcast tech support is totally worthless. They have either not been able to fix the problem or made things worse. It is better to try and fix things yourself. I have a G-5 apple and that really confuses them. They love to blame apple. I know their game as well. They suggest to send over a technician who doesn’t know a thing (not one word of HTML) I have seen computer wizards work and they can go inside any system and correct the problem. Again, they will blame Apple and charge you anyway.
Shouting into the void in a bleeding America
Speaking to the person who had e-mail comments, I had a earthlink DSL line so I had to change my e-mail and internet over to comcast. This is during the initial period when I tried to set up my new comcast account. They messed things up so bad as neither internet nor the mail could find my server. Eventually I got a guy 2nd tier guy at Apple who set up both my comcast e-mail for comcast and for earthlink, which allowed me to keep the old address for one month for free. Do you think comcast will do that? I don’t think so, Bobby boy! Now to connect to the internet via my Wi-Fi, a perfectly good Hawkings. I have to pull up the Hawkings application, then the Firefox application. Open the wireless and type in my wep letter/numbers series and wait for a connection. Sometimes I don’t even see my connection name or profile ( a new problem that just arose yesterday). Then I have to hit Firefox and it starts trying to connect, about 5 minutes and then I get the message…Firefox address is wrong or my server is not configured correctly. So I keep hitting FireFox and get the same message about ten times also a screen pops up saying can’t find PPOE. After many tries, I get on the internet but I should be able to just log into my computer and my internet should be on. I am afraid to change to Explorer, which I used as my server for earthlink DSL but I don’t want to make things worse. Is anyone out there either knowledgeable to know how to change my server settings so this Comcast knows them?
Or will I forever be in computer Bardo hell. The apple store is inconveniently located on right on Michigan Ave where are Mayor DICKLESS DALEY wants the Olympics here so bad so he can stand on the bandstand like Hitler in 1933. Watch out homeless you will be soon be swept into the Lake or they will start passing out free fentanyl laced crack and OD you guys.
I cancelled all three comcast sevices. The phone was a joke and most customer service reps were rude. The techs could only temperarely fix problems anyhow. Comcast loses $179 a month just from me. Multiply this by 100,000 and your talking about 17.9 million dollars a month they would lose. Cancel today and show them they suck. Hit them the only place they pay attention to. THERE BOTTOM LINE> Power to the people.
AMEN!
I hate them too, with a passion. Ever since they switched all their email to SMARTZone, we’ve been unable to get any mail. Even using their webmail to read it instead of outlook. I finally fixed it by deleting all of our secondary accounts and recreating them, with new names of course because the names I DELETED were still IN USE. Go figure.
I did have one pleasing experience with them lately. Our internet service was really really bad. To the point the cable modem would reset. The tech that came out said our “upstream power” was kind of high, meaning a line problem or bad modem. So he said he would replace the modem and for me to call back if it happened again. Anyway he asked me to open up the browser to make sure all was working and he happend to notice some of my youtube favorites were for gun stuff. So we go to talking about our apparent interests. Anyway, he hung around for a while then to make sure the problem was really fixed. I’m not sure if he thought I might go mad and come hunting him down with guns or not. Anyway the problem reoccured and he decided to do the whole works. Replaced my line outside and called a line crew to come check the boxes in the back yard. The line crew found a problem elsewhere in the neighborhood (bad tap). Service is good ever since, well except for my email…..
And if you lived a few miles north you could be lucky enough to have Hargray! I know… you can barely hold in the excitement.
Congrats on ccnp! I took the routing test 3 times since 2002 and this one was by far the hardest.