Wonder if my tech visit today will even be successful

As I start to stew more about the horrible customer service that Comcast provides with their tech calls, I’m wondering if anything will even come out of today’s visit (assuming someone shows).

The tech coming today is supposed to be someone who has the ability to work on the wiring to my home. You see, not all Comcast techs are created equal. (I’m not an expert on this, but I’ve learned a thing or two from my dozens of tech calls and numerous visits.) The ones who show up at your door are basically there to swap out modems, check very basic settings and generally do one level more than what they can do over the phone. About the only thing productive I’ve seen them accomplish is swapping out a modem.

Then there’s the guys who can work on the wiring. They actually show up in Comcast vans. (The other guys show up in trucks with a Comcast magnet on the side.) They have the ability to pull up the wiring inside your home, outside your home and the stuff coming into your neighborhood. When they finally got me working last time (for a full 3 weeks), it was one of those techs who came out and adjusted my lines.

That’s the guy I need today. That’s the type of tech who is supposed to show up. But now I’m wondering if they are just going to send a normal tech out. If so, it will be a waste of time. (Especially since right now my connection happens to be working.) He’ll walk in and tell me he can’t do anything. I’ve seen it before.

Comcast is always late when you’re home

I haven’t posted much in a while because my connection has been so bad I haven’t had the ability to post much. And I haven’t been working in my normal office at work so I couldn’t even copy/paste my notes onto the blog from there.

But here’s the scoop. After several back and forth calls with Comcast’s second-level customer support folks, I was able to get them to come out today (Saturday). I’ve been having to deal with really bad service over the past two or three weeks now because I can’t take any days off to wait for them to come out. They have a three-hour service window, the latest one running from 5 to 8 p.m. Since I work about an hour or so from my house, I’d have to leave work at 4 and I haven’t been able to do that much lately. I did offer a few days in which I could do that, but they were busy those days.

So, Saturday from 11-2 it is. And it’s now Saturday at precisely 2 p.m. Is Comcast here yet? Nope. They just called to say that the tech was running late. I assumed that meant another 30 minutes or so. But the caller continued to say that he would call me with an updated ETA between 3 and 4.

Yeah, you heard that right. So instead of just making sure I’m home between 11 and 2, I have to sit home all day. He could be here at 3, 4 or maybe they will call at 4 to say he’s coming at 5 or 6. Who knows.

Still no response from Comcast … and the service is only getting worse

On Thursday evening I was able to get through to Cathie, one of the second level customer service people who was able to help me last time. Of course, she didn’t remember my case but said that she would look up the notes and start working on the issue. It was 8 p.m. or so by the time I called so I wasn’t expecting much that evening.

Friday and Saturday went by without a returned call or any communication from Cathie (or anyone else at Comcast). My problems are as bad as ever by Saturday afternoon so I left another message for Cathie. Hopefully something is being done.

Today (Sunday) my service has been down some and up some. I never know when I walk over to my computer whether the service will be there or not. But since it’s been up for an hour or so now, I figured I would take this opportunity to update the site.

I have tomorrow off of work so I’d really like to have a tech come out (assuming that’s necessary) while I’m off. Otherwise, I have to take half a day off since they schedule calls in 3-hour blocks and are usually late anyway. Plus, I live about an hour from my office so I can’t just run out for the tech and come back.

But, since I still haven’t heard anything yet, I seriously doubt that I’ll have the luxury of getting Comcast to fix their issues when it’s convenient for me.

Tech calls nets nothing

Got my connection back for a few minutes last night so I tried to post the updates to this blog, but the connection didn’t last long enough to make the posting. Mildly upset by this point, I called Comcast just to see if they could refresh my line or work whatever magic at their disposal to just get me up and running long enough to make my blog updates.

Talked to Elika down in FL. Told her my connection was out, here’s my phone number, my name is, the other name on the account is (because I’m renting and they refuse to remove the last occupant of this residence from the account), and my address is.

She took all that down and also asked me for the mac address of my modem. This is the third time I’ve been asked this now, so I asked her if that’s a new thing. I had their phone number, voicemail prompts and initial questions memorized pretty well. But this was new. Elika explained that there are two modems on my account so they had to confirm which one was having the problems.

Great. So when the replaced my modem on Saturday they didn’t remove the other one from my account. I told her this and asked if she could remove the old one from my account, but to no surprise she could not. I guess I have something else to memorize while I’m on my daily hold with Comcast support.

New domains

I never announced this during the last go-around with Comcast because they were close to fixing my problems by that time. But I purchased a few domain names to make this site easier to reach.

I did a little shopping on GoDaddy and now you can reach this blog by going straight to JustSayNoToComcast.com, as well as SayNoToComcast.com and NoToComcast.com. GoDaddy is so cheap and easy to deal with (strange concept to folks like Comcast, I’m sure) that I figured I’d buy a few that way I had some choices.

Comcast chaos, round 2

Sigh … the good times lasted about a month. Or a little less.

About a week or so ago I started having problems again. It started with a dropped signal that I was able to correct with a Comcast Shuffle. Then a day or so later the connection dropped and I wasn’t able to get it back. I called tech support and they said there was no problem in the area as far as they knew. So we tried to get the problem fixed over the phone, but weren’t successful. I told the woman that I didn’t want to put in a tech call yet, though. I was still hoping that it was just a problem in the area – one that had not been reported to the tech support offices in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. The next day it was working again.

But that evening the problems were back so a tech call was placed to my house to swap out the modem. The tech thought that was the problem and since we never replaced my modem during the last round of problems, I was hopeful that he was right.

He was wrong.

The new modem didn’t help at all and I’m back to losing the signal at least once a day. It’s out when I get up in the morning and it’s usually out when I return home in the evening. Sometimes I can get it back, but most times I can’t. If I leave my browser up, I can see that email comes in during the night. But by 6 a.m. when I get up, the connection is gone.

Everything is exactly as it was the last time.

Now mind you, I’ve changed nothing except the modem (which was after the problems started). No need Ethernet card, no new router, no new computer, nothing. In fact, I’ve been so busy between work and watching TV now that football is back, I’m doing much less on the computer than I was before the problems started last time. I barely download any podcasts, haven’t built any new sites (which is a lot of uploading and downloading of files), and can’t remember the last time I bought any music online.

I honestly wish I was the problem because then at least I could fix the situation by changing my behavior. But it’s not me.

Today I called Andrea – one of the folks who helped fix my problems last time. It’s 9 p.m. now and I called her mid-afternoon so I guess I’m not getting a return today. Hopefully she’ll call me tomorrow. If not, I’ll start calling some of the other contacts I made last time.

This is very frustrating. I thought I was past all of this. Couldn’t even make it a full month. Wow.

Still going …

Today Comcast officially closed my case and I think I can close the book on this whole thing too. It’s been 6 days since the maintenance tech came out and made some adjustments to my line. Since then I haven’t had a single problem. No dropped connections, no noticable slowdowns, nothing.

It took a while and certainly some measures (such as this blog) which would probably be considered drastic, but in the end Comcast fixed the problem. And today they closed the case with promise to credit me a full month’s service, which is really about two months’ worth of Internet service.

So unless they fail to come through with the credit or suddenly my service problems return, this is me signing off. A final thanks to Doug and Chris, Andrea, Angie, Cathie, Wayne, and especially Scott and Rich.

3 days later … still going

Three days after the maintenance technician stopped by and my connection has stayed strong.

Angie called back yesterday to see how it was going. She said that she would check in on Wednesday, just to make sure we’re all good. So far, so good.

Could it all be over?

I’m probably jinxing myself by even wondering. I had a technician stop by this morning. As I mentioned yesterday, Rich from Comcast called yesterday and offered to get someone to my house this morning by 8 a.m. to fix the issue. Originally, I was to have a tech swing by on Saturday with a new modem. However, Rich was kind enough to free someone up ASAP.

True to his word, Rich made it happen. At 7:45 a.m. this morning, Scott arrived. He started out by measuring the signal going into my house on his own laptop. Then he made some adjustments to my connection outside and said the signal increased on his laptop dramatically. Scott then showed me some power levels for my connection, explaining that I was barely within range when he arrived and now was much better. He offered to change my modem anyway – an idea that was previously only brought up because we couldn’t come with anything particularly wrong and that seemed like a good place to start.

But Scott seemed pretty confident that his adjustments had fixed the problem and he didn’t appear to be someone who was guessing. He looked like he knew what he was doing and was very professional. Most likely one of their best technicians. So I told him that I trusted his judgment and if he didn’t think the modem swap was necessary I would take him at his word. “If this doesn’t fix it I’ll come back out and switch out the modem,” he said.

I had to run to work so I couldn’t test the connection all day, but it seems good now. I don’t think it will take more than a couple of days to tell whether or not the problem has been resolved.

If these changes don’t turn out to be the fix, though, I am not concerned about being able to get someone back out here. Rich called me back this afternoon to make sure the problem was taken care of. After describing the visit from his technician he confirmed that I had his direct number and said “if you have any more problems, you call me and I’ll have someone out there in less than 30 minutes.”

Wow, now that’s the way to make someone feel good about your service. And when I returned home this evening I had a note on the door from Scott. He left a copy of the work order along with the message “don’t hesitate to call the Maintenance Supervisor” (that’s Rich) if I have any more problems.

So far, I’m impressed. Knock on wood … hopefully the problems are all behind me now.

Getting closer

Got a call this morning from a man named Rich at Comcast. I’m not sure which department he’s in, but he sounded like someone with the power to get things done. He asked if my problem had been resolved and I explained how Doug would be stopping back by on Saturday to install the new modem. Rich said “I want to get this taken care of today” and said that he would have someone at my house by 8 a.m. tomorrow (Thursday) with a new modem.

Like I said, he didn’t seem like the normal Comcast people I’ve talked to. Not that they haven’t been nice, but it usually takes someone with some decent pull to guarantee that a tech would be at my house by 8 a.m. the next day. Not between 8 and 11; 8 a.m.

Works for me. I must say, I think Comcast is doing everything they can to fix my issues. Hopefully the new modem will do the trick.

I wonder if they have made any other changes. I have to admit that the connection has been better the last day or two. It slowed down yesterday a couple of times, but didn’t really drop. And today it’s been fine all day.

Ran a speed test on a site I saw on Digg. It saves your tests and allows you to save PNG files of your results. I’ve been testing a few times a day just to see what I get. One thing I noticed is that my latency varies greatly. Don’t know what a good or bad number for latency is, but I got a 66 (ms) around the time it was running slow. Later when it seemed fine, I got a 13. This evening I got a 36.

Don’t know if any of that means anything, but I figure the more info the better.