Xfinity/Comcast customer service

seeitrun2006 · Feb 1, 2013

I need to vent!

Last night the HD cable box in our bedroom went out/died/quit working etc. Did on line (kiss my !@%) chat with Xfinity this morning. What a flipping joke! First I find out they have closed the service center 8 miles from my house. Closest one is now 45~50 minutes (30+ plus miles from my house) to swap out defective equipment. Second they wanted to ship me a replacement box and charge me $10~$15 to ship it! I literally went thru the roof! Long story short a Tech will be bringing a replacement on Monday between 4~6pm.

Clark Howard (in Atlanta) has said many times Xfinity/Comcast has the worst customer in the country. Wish I could go on sattelite......can't do it too many trees around my house.

Anyone else have these problems with your cable provider?

Thanks!
David

tomturbomatic · Feb 1, 2013

Comcast, for me is a something thing; sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. The internet connection periodically just dies while the TV keeps working. They are hideously expensive for the crap they pipe into our homes. Our bills, like for all TV signals now received via electronic means, are hugely inflated by the greed of the owners of sports teams which sign broadcast agreements with these entertainment sewers, but you can't choose which channels you would like to have as part of your package because so many, like the religious stations, would be chosen by maybe a tenth of the audience and then they would have to go off the air like they should anyway. I am tempted to drop to the tier of service without the one smart box. I have a digital tuner TV and an antenna for it that I have never used. Maybe I should try that and see how that would work. It's funny, but one of the reasons I did not drop to basic cable years ago was that it did not include the Weather Channel, which 90% of the time now is useless for local weather info because they are so wrapped up or crapped up with showing what I call "weather porn." The final pisser for me was that most of their Local On The 8s now have vocal music playing. You are trying to read with someone who thinks they can sing catterwallering and then the announcer comes on and they lower, but do not mute the wailing so you are hearing all of this mixed junk. I wanted to complain, but could not find the "SHIT FOR BRAINS" department at NBC which owns TWC.

Last night in tuning past that COZI channel, which is now a lot of our local station NBC4 news and cheap, in house productions, the weather girl, I guess trying to relate the force of the high winds bringing cold back to the area, with the poundings she receives from her boyfriend said that the cold was being "pile drived" into our area. I half expected to see her fall to the floor as her pelvis finally split in two. What a shame our new journalists don't have to know proper English.

I contrast all of this with the miserable experience I had with Verizon when I had a DSL and that is the only way Comcast comes out ahead.

seeitrun2006 · Feb 1, 2013

Tomturbomatic,

We have the same problem with our internet service thru Comcast. I get up around 6:30am most days. I can't to my emails up before 7:00am. I usually have to reset my router least once a day. I pay $169+ for phone, internet and TV. I would expect a little better service.

DADoES · Feb 1, 2013

Local cable franchise is a Comcast reseller for Internet service ... and I suppose for TV. I have Internet, not TV. Well, technically I don't have TV but really I do because a service tech removed the filter at the pole a couple years ago when it went bad. Either way, I don't have a TV connected. Regards to the Internet side of the service, it's largely very stable. Lowest of three speed-tiers offered but is plenty fast for my needs, streams Netflix OK. Monthly $35.93 incl taxes.

moparguy · Feb 1, 2013

Tom, given your love for NBC/TWC, I am sure that you will be glad to know that Comcast now owns NBC...

I love my Verizon FiOS, with the fiber directly to the home, I never have service outages and it's really fast. The Internet/TV/phone bundles usually are $89.99-99.99/month, but you also have to pay for the converter box (my basic box is about $9/month). I think the largest issue with FiOS is where it is actually available, based on where they have replace the old copper/coax with the fiber facilities.

mitch · Feb 1, 2013

So glad to be shed of Comcast!

One of the happiest days of my life was when U-Verse came into the neighborhood and I was able to ditch Comcast! They actually have armed guards at the "customer service" center close to us. I guess too many ticked off customers necessitated armed guards! Not suprised.

nurdlinger · Feb 1, 2013

I'd use an antenna in a heartbeat

Right now I have the cheapest possible Comcast service, local channels only plus WGN from Chicago. But where I live in the Tucson area is west of the mountain range north of town, and the local broadcast antennas are on top of those mountains pointing south. So without the cable I can only get a handful of signals, predominately Spanish-language stations.

Ihad been running Comcast without a set-top box for years. The tuners in my own TVs were adequate to the task. When the original "no more analog" change in service began, Comcast offered for free some set-top boxes which would tune the signals from the cable and convert to the analog channel 3/4 style. I got a couple and hooked them up. Worked as advertised, but no HD or wide-screen. Within a few weeks they lost their internal authorization three times. Trying to get them re-authorized taxed my patience beyond tolerance. No on-line reauthorization requests, you had to call their customer service. That call was answered in Bangladesh or somewhere else halfway around the world, which individual had to (HAD TO) run through every single step of his ridiculous script before the reauthorize would get done. After the third time I disconnected the boxes and let the chips fall where they would. I have a couple flatscreens, one Sony and one Panasonic, and they could see a reasonable number of channels. Hardly perfection, but costs under $25/month. Comcast reserves the option to scramble any digital channels, including the local stations. If they do it, I will disconnect and watch Mexican wrestling before going back to the box and Bangladesh.

danemodsandy · Feb 1, 2013

I'm No Authority....

....But are we certain that proper English usage permits the words "Comcast" and "customer service" to be used in the same sentence?

tomturbomatic · Feb 1, 2013

They are to be considered a juxtaposition of opposites.

super32 · Feb 2, 2013

When I had Comcast, I was actually quite happy with them. Where I live now, cox and Verizon are the 2 choices. I first was with cox, the tv was great, had the whole home dvr. The Internet was constantly going out. They made several trips out, reboot, reboot, and finally told me it was in my head. That pissed me off so I told them they were living up to their name and canced my service. I switched to Verizon Fios and have been 75% happy with them. I had a problem with my router that took a few phone calls to get fixed and then recently the Internet went out for a week. They did get it fixed and credited me for a week of service.

I guess that's as good as it gets these days.

foxchapel · Feb 2, 2013

Oh the stories I could tell . . .

. . regarding "customer service" with Comcra.... er .... Comcast. As soon as another cable TV provider was available in our area, I jumped ship.

foxchapel · Feb 2, 2013

>>>But are we certain that proper English usage permits the
>>>words "Comcast" and "customer service" to be used in the same sentence?

Yes, if the word "oxymoron" is included in the sentence.

jerrod6 · Feb 2, 2013

I've had my share of problems with Comcast from years ago starting in the late 90’s. They took over my areas cable service and was OK at first but their service starting going downhill quickly. 

Next came 2 weeks of having a TV signal for 20 seconds of each minute; TV show on 20 seconds, static for 40 seconds. At the end of the month I was billed for the entire month. CSR told me that because I was not without total service they could not apply a discount to my bill. 

A year or two later I was having problems with the picture on my TV’s and customer service said I needed new set top boxes. Set up an appointment for Saturday morning because I was going out to dinner that night. Tech arrives with 1 box for 1 TV. I mentioned that I was supposed to get a box for each TV, and then I called the service center to make sure. Service center confirmed two boxes and asked to talk with the tech. The tech hung the phone up and told me that he only had one box and that was all I was going to get. I protested saying that the order was for 2 boxes. He then stands in the middle of my house and tells me to go to hell....Walks out of the house leaving the TV and everything unhooked in the middle of the room.

After several very heated calls and getting a supervisor to come out the problem was resolved at 11pm that night --of course no dinner date for me. At the end of the service call the supervisor told me that what I did wrong was call Comcast North East Philadelphia. He went on to say that Comcast NE doesn’t tell Comcast Center City(downtown where I live) what to do. I replied that we are given one customer service number and as customers we have no control over where we are calling, so how is this my fault, MY PROBLEM? He couldn’t provide an answer.

That was it for me. Standing in my house and telling me to go to hell.. then telling me what I did wrong? I am paying for this? When I turned the cable boxes back into the service center there was pandemonium in the place and yes there were armed guards there too. People were yelling and screaming... Customer service sitting behind bullet proof glass. One guy yelling “do you people even want customers”? 

Done with that.

I have been a DirectTV customer for over 10 years and in that time had 2 problems.

A. Something went wrong with a connection point at the dish and I only had use of one TV for 1 week. The tech came out climbed the ladder to my roof(3 story house) fixed the problem and Direct TV gave me a credit for the entire month for that one TV.

B. Hurricane Sandy. The eye of the storm moved across my area and a strong gust of wind 
moved the dish out of alignment. Customer service came out the next Saturday as I requested climbed to the roof and fixed the alignment no extra charge.

In both of these cases the techs have been nothing but courteous and even call 20 minutes before they are going to arrive and tell me to call them directly for the next 30 days if there is a problem.

I have HD Tv and so many channels I never watch so I should probably take a lesser package but it’s there if I want it. So no complaints with Direct TV and the only time the weather impacts the reception is right before a thunderstorm before the rain hits the picture may break up a bit but never really goes totally out. I think this has to do with electrical interference in the atmosphere. 

Have Verizon DSL professional speed which is fast but I would like to try Fios internet. Verizon has been running cables underground for over a year in my neighborhood but it has not launched yet WHY? - because the city has an agreement with Comcast that prevents Fios from being implemented in my neighborhood for X amount of years even though it is other parts of the city, but when that time period expires I might be all over Fios at least for internet. Meanwhile I get invitations in the mail to become a Comcast customer again. They’re out of their mind.

wayupnorth · Feb 2, 2013

I have had a grandfathered package with DirecTv since the late 90's, as Time Warner does not run lines to this area and is raising their rates AGAIN. FairPoint is my landline, internet, electricity supplier and with the DirecTv bundle saves me a lot. They have been a great company to deal with, much better than the previous Verizon.

jamiel · Feb 3, 2013

We are so lucky to live in an area with cable competition...there was an overbuild by the phone company (Ameritech Americast) in the 90s, so we have Comcast, Wide Open West and U-verse. W0W is great to deal with. I realize...I've never lived in an area without cable competition...suburban Chicago had Ameritech Americast, Tampa had GTE Americast, and Atlanta had BellSouth Entertainment.

michaelman2 · Feb 3, 2013

Yep, "Comcast and Customer Service" = "The Ultimate Paradox"

Gave up on them three years ago, do not have a hook up for television. AT&T for internet. So far so good ( I am wincing as I type this. I had sworn never to do business with anything that was associated with AT&T.

tomturbomatic · Feb 3, 2013

But don't you remember the promised "best of all possible worlds" (thank you Dr. Pangloss) we were going to receive when they deregulated cable TV providers, because many firms would rush in and the competition would lower prices and increase offerings. If the crooks in legislatures and public service commissions had even stopped to think of the expense of the infrastructure involved in wiring vast areas, they would have known that there were not going to be numerous companies providing cable service on one street, but then that was not a concern as they pocketed the bribes, I mean campaign contributions, before the votes. So you have unregulated monopolies who don't give a damn about anything but profits which is what they envisioned from the start.

perc-o-prince · Feb 3, 2013

FiOS

Zero complaints here. The tech came in a couple of days after Christmas a few years ago to install it and that was the end of it. Yes, when the power goes out the back-up box they installed is only good for 8 hours, but I keep it juiced with the generator so we never lose phone, TV, Internet. I think we had one outage a couple of years ago for something like a couple of hours.

Chuck

Xfinity/Comcast customer service

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