Bill Watt’s Blog

When I live back in Boston Comcast wasn’t great but they were ok. They deliver a good product but getting it was often a pain. My experiences in Boston couldn’t have prepared me for how bad Comcast is on the West Coast. I had no idea that the same company operating 3k miles apart could be so radically different.

History of Bad Service

Case in point… try scheduling an installation or a technician to come to the house and pretty quickly you’ll see that the customer is unimportant. In my last house I scheduled an appointment to get cable and internet access. 4 times they blew off the appointment. The third time around they scheduled for 3 to 5. I left work early (which is tough to do when, without internet access, I can’t continue to work from home) only to wait and wait and wait. They called and said they were on their way.

So I waited.

At 4:45 I called again and they said, “Yeah, he’s running a little late but he’ll be there in the next two hour window.”

I called again at 6:45 and found the local dispatch was now closed. I was routed to Sacramento’s call center which knew nothing about me ticket (how do computers not make that problem go away?!?). They said that the guy never checked in to say he was canceling so they had no idea what to tell me but they would be happy to reschedule.

We moved into our new place 2 weeks after it became livable (all new construction). The down side to this was two fold- map services couldn’t find us and constant construction would disrupt phone, internet and cable. Comcast had problems finding the place time after time. I called, left my number, and offered to help them find the place. Each time they’d schedule an appointment they’d call to tell me that they were sitting at my address and I wasn’t there. Each time I’d say, “Where are you?” and they’d reply that they’re on the 3rd floor outside my apartment.

Sigh.

Each time I’d tell them that I don’t live in an apartment and there is only a door on the first floor.

When the 3rd guy finally found my place he was not really prepared for what he had to do. Apparently he couldn’t figure out the HDTV setup. He did ok with the internet installation but that is mostly a guided, step by step process. I had to call a friend that has HDTV setup and ask what I should be looking for as a possible problem. 3 min later I was up and running.

Follow-up problems include:

• The bill going to the wrong address for months despite us calling repeatedly. When we call to confirm the address one of two things would happen. Either they’d read us the address and we’d tell them they were wrong or they wouldn’t tell us what was on file but would ask us to confirm it. Each time they’d tell us it was what they had on file. They still act like we moved since we got the service- seriously- they say it every time we call.
• No option for auto-pay over the web (hello- in case you didn’t know- you’re an ISP?!? Get with the web)
• Several times their servers have gone down and we’ve needed to go back and reinstall all their crap software. Let me give you a tidbit- if your software changes my homepage without my permission then it is garbage.

PS- I had a friend that just waited 4 months to have a drop put into his house. All his neghbors had service so it wasn’t an availability issue. They just kept rescheduling the drop. When he would call the people in “service” would chastize him for wanting it quickly. At 3 months can it be called “quick” by anyone? After 4 months though he’s finally free of DSL. Welcome to how we used to live in Boston circa 1999.