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Comsuckstic
By adamg on Wed, 02/15/2006 - 1:07pm
Reports are coming in from across the region that Comcast still sucks.
In Hopkinton, John Gallant, who sits on the town cable advisory committee, pens a letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts on the occasion of the company hiking its rates just as the town begins negotiations with Verizon, which claims it can offer the same services over its FiOS system for 8 to 15% less a month:
... As the era of your monopoly control over cable service is coming to an end, as customers face the prospect of having a real choice for cable TV, you decide that the time is right to charge us more? I said I was no math expert and I am clearly no marketing expert. But I'm pretty sure that raising prices just before a new rival begins offering the same product for significantly less is not the smartest of moves. It just doesn't seem like a solid way to keep customers from wandering off the farm. It would seem to put customers in the right frame of mind for jumping ship, as it were. ..
From further down the Charles River, we read that former Watertown Town Council member Pam Piantedosi is pretty put out that she couldn't watch last night's Town Council meeting on the local public-access channel. Well, technically, she could watch it - she just couldn't hear anything:
... After 2-1/2 hours of foolishly believing that if I continuously increased my sound button on the remote to illegal decibal levels, I would be able to hear, I gave in to frustration, stopped my whaling at the TV and stomped out of the room in speechless mutter. How is it that the subject matter, obviously well planned out, based on the video feed, did not receive or get confirmation that the live feed would be working properly? It's been done before and as the former Council President, I made darn certain that any meeting presenting the magnititude of relevance like this one, had cable up and running. There is simply no excuse for this. ...
What makes it even specialer: The problem only affected people with digital cable. Those troglodytes who have somehow resisted the siren call of digital and still have analog converters were able to hear people just fine.
A different disclosure: Gallant is my boss. I would've linked to his post anyway. No, really.
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Comments
Still better than AT&T
When Comcast came in, I found its customer service was better than AT&T mainly because it seemed AT&T prided itself on customer disservice. I'm still reasonably happy with Comcast's customer service, but not it's cable service.
In July, after vacillating on whether "I really need all this TV," I downgraded my cable to the most basic service for $8 a month, which is tantamount to wired reception. I was impressed with the channels I got for $8 a month and leanred to live without ESPN, NESN and CNN and FOXNEWS, et al. Then in early January, almost six months to the day I downgraded my cable, several of my channels were blacked out. I called to complain only to find out that I wasn't supposed to be receiving them in the first place. Like Milton's paycheck (in "Office Space") they fixed the glitch.
Comcast also tried to tell me that my single family house was a mutli-family dwelling and insisted that if it's in their records then it is irrefutable. I invited the guy for dinner, just so he could see my single-family house.
After several minutes of arguing with the guy about why I should have these channels back, he blithely suggested at $8/month cable wasn't meeting my "entertainment need." Psssssssssssssssshhhhht. Entertainment need? What the hell is that? He then, because he was such a good guy, offered me full basic for $37 a month for three months to only go to $47 a month afterwards. No thanks.
The one positive result was that the conversation revealed that I was being charged for a box and remote that were removed from my house on the day the cable was downgraded. Those charges were refunded completely, which was close to about five months worth of cable. (Not to lay blame on my wife because it was hard to discern from the bill for both of us, but she never noticed the box and remote charge thanks to the design of the billing statement.)
In all, I would give Comcast a C+. The service person was polite the whole way through and did try to offer solutions, but Comcast loses major points with me because it should offer a package between its $8/month and $47/month packages.
blurry
For a long time, I was dealing with blurry channels. These were on the most basic channels such as PBS, CBS, ABC and some other lesser known ones. After a long battle, it fixed. Since that problem stopped, an even bigger problem came up. Out internet went out constantley. It got fixed but a month later it started acting up again and right now, I am lucky to be typing this.
Did you have Foodtv and
Did you have Foodtv and Cartoon Network, mysteriously? The same thing happened to us.
Toon and Food, yes!
We also had Weather, SciFi, FX and AMC. Now all are lost to the ether. But we still get about a half dozen shopping channels, which I delete from my channel lineup.