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.

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.

A light at the end of the tunnel?

Today started off the same as last week with no connection when I woke up. But today instead of calling Comcast, I emailed them a letter. I believe the letter was professional and mature, simply requesting someone help me with my ongoing issues. I described my recent troubles and suggested that they check out this blog for a more detailed account of my problems. I then sent that letter to a few people in Customer Service and Communications for Comcast.

Those emails went out at nearly 4 p.m. and by 5:30 I had received three calls from Comcast. At 8 p.m. this evening I received my fifth call from them. I must admit I’m impressed. I received calls from Cathie and Andrea, who I believe work in Customer Service. I also received a call from Angela. I’m not sure which department she works in, but she said that my modem had not be properly configured on their end and she fixed it. Wayne, who works with the field technicians, called to say someone would be coming out tomorrow to look over everything and find the problem. He also apologized for the past issues with the technicians and – without me asking – said I would be credited for the days I was out of service. Andrea bookended the calls with a follow-up to make sure that I was aware of my technician appointment tomorrow and to say she would check in with me after the appointment.

Very good customer service from all of them. They all were very professional and sincerely seemed to be disappointed with how my case had been previously handled. I was promised follow-up phone calls after tomorrow’s tech visit and I was even given direct numbers to call back should I have any further questions.

I was honest in my complaints and I want to be fair on the other side. Today I was very impressed with the quick turn around and the sincerity each Comcast representative conveyed. All I’ve asked for is someone to fix my service – or tell me what’s wrong with my computer or equipment if the fault lies with me. They now seem willing to do that and I am very appreciative.

Tomorrow between 2 and 5 p.m. my technician should arrive. I look forward to then and hope that I can report tomorrow on this blog that the problems have been fixed.

Comcast connection going to sleep, so I guess I will too

I’ve had a fairly relaxing day today. Amazing how much better I feel after a day where I didn’t fight with my ISP for several hours. However, it’s now 11:30 and my Comcast connection is dying for the second time today so I guess I’ll turn in for the evening too.

I wonder if I’ll get to read the news tomorrow morning when I get up?

Lazy Sunday for Comcast

I’m a little surprised it took this long, but at 4:55 on Sunday my connection dropped. I was able to do the Comcast Shuffle and revive the connection, but just barely. It’s horribly slow will often pop in and out while I’m trying to read my emails. Posting this and the previous post is taking forever trying to type a little, save, then type a little more and save again before the connection drops. (Most of the time I get bumped offline and just type in Notepad and then transfer to the blog later when the connection returns.)

Anyway, I called Comcast just so they have a record of my outage. I’m still waiting for a return call from the gentleman that Allie has supposedly put my case in front of so I don’t really even want to speak with Comcast and muddy any waters. However, I want them to have a record of every time my connection drops.

So, I talked to Daniel from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I suppose all Internet-related calls go to Ft. Lauderdale. I had thought it was randomly spread out through FL and GA, but I always seem to get FL. (Probably some kind of Karma thing since I fled the state 8 years ago.) Daniel was nice enough. I explained that I had what I hope for their sake is an usually bad case and that I was waiting for a call back from someone whose job it is to handle these type of cases. All I wanted from him was to mark down that my connection dropped again today and I would let him move on to another call.

That was easy enough for him. Before going he asked me if I wanted the ticket number. I have no idea what that is and the last number I got from Comcast was a “job number”, which didn’t seem to mean anything to the next person I spoke with. But I took it anyway. It’s cr068815896 (if anyone from Comcast should be reading this).