Comcast employee cancels my internet after receiving complaint
March 21st, 2008 - By: Alex Bailey
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I've never been too big a fan of Comcast. At the begining they were nice, but after a months their services just tanked. There would be packet loss at random times of the day, usually during around lunch till dinner time. The web would suddenly grind to agonizing speeds, leaving some sites to load fast and others to load dial-up slow. It was operating this way for months despite the numerous service technicians that had failed to fix the issue. The last Comcast employee identified line issues and permitted a line tech to come and try and resolve the issue. I guess that failed because again on March 19th there it was again, that nasty packet loss.
Before we go any further, here's proof I'm not just making this up. Here's the first time they came out, and here's the second.
I took it upon myself to visit Comcast's website (which ironically loaded slow) and discover their live support. I decided to fool around with them and entered the chat.
Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:43:26 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
Hello Alex_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Jamie. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:43:36 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
How can I help you today?
Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:45:03 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
rhetorical question: if you paid top dollar for crappy internet that slows to a grinding halt daily during peak hours, how many months would you put up with them for before you finally just cancel their craptastic service?
Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:46:11 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
I am not sure, it would be up to the customer I suppose.
Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:47:10 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
not really when there's a monopoly
Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:47:34 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>
of course I could go to 56k, I guess at this point even that's an upgrade
Sure it was rude but I was sick of their crappy service.
Literally seconds later; maybe even before I finished the last sentence, my internet shuts off. I use OpenDNS for my nameservers so at first I couldn't identify the issue. Later it was discovered that when you use Comcast's nameservers it redirected everything to comcast.net. There was a portal where you could choose if you were a technician or customer.
I remembered this part I thought, it was the page I had gotten when I had first installed my service and hadn't confirmed it. Oh shit did they really do that?
After being around 30 minutes late to his appointment, the Comcast employee arrived. After insisting the issue was on Comcast's end I was reassured it was my modem that was the issue. That is after running endless tests, the splicing many wires unnecessarily, and swapping modems for a brand new one.
When the new modem was installed, it was the same issue. I was almost certain that wouldn't solve the issue, and it didn't. In the end he ended up calling up a Comcast line that was for technicians in northern Chicago. The whole conversation was on speaker so I could hear the conversation clearly.
He confirmed that my account wasn't associated with that modem anymore and then asked the lady to associateship it. I forgot the exact term he used for it, but there was an exact word. After giving the person on the phone my modem's Mac and IP address the modem was authenticated once again and online in no time.
There were no issues with my modem, lines, or PC configuration settings. Every packet loss issue I'm experiencing is/was on Comcast's end. This was confirmed for a second time today and another line technician has been dispatched. I won't hold my breath for it to work properly.
I find it pretty ballsy of an employee to sabotage a customer's account. I don't have any direct proof of this, and I doubt I ever will. I just don't think the odds of my modem being disassociated with my account as I'm making fun Comcast very high.
For the record the employee was just doing his job by the book. He was pretty nice and did fix the issue eventually. He also confirmed the packet loss after testing wires on the poll (which he didn't have to do), and sent the line technician.
1. DJ | March 22nd, 2008 @ 10:48 PM |
+2
Hello, I just wanted to add a little something to this. I am a technician for Comcast, and I’m sorry your internet had some issues for a while there. There are many factors involved when it comes to troubleshooting intermittent problems and packet loss, so it’s very tough to diagnose the problem and fix it early on (especially if your internet was running fine while the technician was there).
Now I’m the same way, I would not want to pay top dollar for internet service unless I was getting the top service out of it. That’s what our service is, top notch, and is always fixable if there’s a problem. Sometimes it just takes a little time and patience, and most subscribers have no problems, so it’s unfortunate you were one of the unlucky ones.
Now as far as the packet loss, if the technician had done his job right and saw good levels off the line, naturally the modem would be the first thing to think of (assuming you had bypassed a router if you own one and still had packet loss). There is unfortunately many things that could cause problems, and some are more difficult to troubleshoot. There are many pieces of equipment and lines that could be a factor between your modem and the headend, and intermittent issues can be caused by problems in any of these.
I hope this helps, and just realize that Comcast will do what it takes to give you what you’re paying for. Just every now and then you need to show a little patience and persistence.
2. Bawked | March 23rd, 2008 @ 7:04 AM |
+0
Dude that sucks ass…
DJ, thats funny… you technicians are just lazy don’t make excuses, what happened to customers are always right. Cutting off his internet is crap and the person should be fired instantly, fucking useless.
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