And so it begins....I hate Comcast / Xfinity

[LikeLinus]

Last Thursday I noticed that web pages were taking a long time to load. So I loaded up Speedtest.net and was getting around 1 mb a second. I figured they were having problems and I didn't worry too much about it. Friday and Saturday I was out with the wife, so I didn't use the internet. Yesterday I ran a speedtest and it came back to 20mb and all is well.

That is until last night...my internet connection went to crap after 7pm. At 8:30 I called Comcrap and explained the situation. They had problems even connecting to my modem. I ran speedtest and I was getting .5 - .8mbps and couldn't get pages to load at all.

Their answer "Apparently there's a problem and we'll have to send someone out to your house". NO CRAP IDIOTS. This is the third time since 2005 that I've had this issue. Two years ago I started having poor connection speeds during peak times. It took the 7-8 techs to finally admit I had an overloaded node. They kept wanting to blame my cable mode, they even re-ran the drop to my house and replaced the lines. I mean this company is run by freaking monkeys who do not have a clue what they are doing. They do nothing but lie, lie, lie and will not resolve the problem until they receive a signifigant number of complains. This is what I was told by a higher level tech when they finally admitted it was a load isses on my node. They don't give a crap about their customers unless it's enough people that will make a stink.

Now it starts the whole "it's your modem" or "it's a bad line". They want to come out during the day when there's not a problem, so when they show up at freaking noon - your line is fine and there's no problem! They're about as stupid as they come. I talked them into coming between 4-6, but that's still not peak time.

God I wish FIOS would hurry up and come to our area.

 

[Twista]

hi

 

[LikeLinus]

hi

hi bro, what's going on?

 

[techs]

I can attest to similiar problems.

Speaking of FIOS, about a year to two years ago all of a sudden everyone in my area took a huge performance hit. I'm talking about a speed of .5mb during the evening hours.
Comcast kept insisting I was the only one having a problem. Even after I gave them 20 name of other people with the same problem.

Turns out, they were "managing" their network to provide more bandwidth to the Boston area since they were in competition with FIOS there.

It took a month before Comcast did something about it. Even then we were not as fast as we had been for the last couple of years.



Spidey in 5-4-3-2-1.....

 

[The Boston Dangler]

not to invalidate your concerns, but:

1. the overwhelming majority of issues exist between the telephone pole and your chair. outdoor wiring has a lifespan of 10 years max.

2. 3rd time since 2005? sounds like 99.999% uptime is being met.

3. the people running your cable provider aren't stupid, but they never learned what "mea culpa" means.

4. all of the wishing, hoping, praying, and animal sacrifice in the world will not get you FTTH until they are certain to turn a profit on your entire town. the installation cost is about $6000 per subscriber.

 

[techs]

not to invalidate your concerns, but:

1. the overwhelming majority of issues exist between the telephone pole and your chair. outdoor wiring has a lifespan of 10 years max.

2. 3rd time since 2005? sounds like 99.999% uptime is being met.

3. the people running your cable provider aren't stupid, but they never learned what "mea culpa" means.

4. all of the wishing, hoping, praying, and animal sacrifice in the world will not get you FTTH until they are certain to turn a profit on your entire town. the installation cost is about $6000 per subscriber.

4. all of the wishing, hoping, praying, and animal sacrifice in the world will not get you FTTH until they are certain to turn a profit on your entire town. the installation cost is about $6000 per subscriber

Until they can turn a huge profit. And a profit greater than they can make by giving you crappy service because they have no competition.

 

[LikeLinus]

not to invalidate your concerns, but:

1. the overwhelming majority of issues exist between the telephone pole and your chair. outdoor wiring has a lifespan of 10 years max.

2. 3rd time since 2005? sounds like 99.999% uptime is being met.

3. the people running your cable provider aren't stupid, but they never learned what "mea culpa" means.

4. all of the wishing, hoping, praying, and animal sacrifice in the world will not get you FTTH until they are certain to turn a profit on your entire town. the installation cost is about $6000 per subscriber.

I think you missed the part where they re-ran the drop from my pole to my house and all of the wiring back in 2008.

Also, we're talking about 2-3 months (2005) and 3-4 months (2008) worth of issues. Not it going down for one night. I mean the inability to browse web pages between the hours of 7 and 10/11pm. Last night I would have posted this, but I let ATOT load for 5 minutes and I could never get the page to fully load.

I've had other issues with comcast (tv) outside of this, but I'm only discussing the internet problems. I moved to DTV and will move from comcast internet as soon as FIOS is here.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

well then, that sucks donkey balls.

 

[Aharami]

you mean xFinity, right? I thought that xfinity thing was a joke until I saw a xfinity billboard on the highway! The company is truly run by monkeys.

I too have problems with my internet during the peak evening hours and weekends. On days like superbowl sunday...hah! takes minutes just to load up a page.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

4. all of the wishing, hoping, praying, and animal sacrifice in the world will not get you FTTH until they are certain to turn a profit on your entire town. the installation cost is about $6000 per subscriber

Until they can turn a huge profit. And a profit greater than they can make by giving you crappy service because they have no competition.

FTTH would be provided by a different company, like verizon, at&t, etc.

 

[shortylickens]

Comcast is like any other service: It varies where you find it.
In my area they've been alright and certainly much better than Verizon. Also cheaper. So we'll stick with Comcast for now.

I dont like what they do to me when I use uTorrent or RevConnect, but I can deal with it for now. Eventually I will find someone who doesnt care what I'm actually doing on the internet and doesnt punish me for it. Until then, I am content.

 

[LikeLinus]

Comcast is like any other service: It varies where you find it.
In my area they've been alright and certainly much better than Verizon. Also cheaper. So we'll stick with Comcast for now.

I dont like what they do to me when I use uTorrent or RevConnect, but I can deal with it for now. Eventually I will find someone who doesnt care what I'm actually doing on the internet and doesnt punish me for it. Until then, I am content.

I agree and know full well that I'm going to have issues with any provider. My issue is their handling of it and their attitude that there's nothing wrong with their service and it must be something wrong with my equipment. I told them until I was blue in the face that it only happens during peak hours. Yet they still wanted to tell me that it was a modem issue and have to re-wire my entire house. How much money and time was wasted trying to fix a problem that was obviously caused by something else. I mean I had 7-8 techs come to my house over an 8 week period. They never once said sorry or tried to credit me for my downtime. It's just the horrible customer service aspect that annoys me.

 

[techs]

I agree and know full well that I'm going to have issues with any provider. My issue is their handling of it and their attitude that there's nothing wrong with their service and it must be something wrong with my equipment. I told them until I was blue in the face that it only happens during peak hours. Yet they still wanted to tell me that it was a modem issue and have to re-wire my entire house. How much money and time was wasted trying to fix a problem that was obviously caused by something else. I mean I had 7-8 techs come to my house over an 8 week period. They never once said sorry or tried to credit me for my downtime. It's just the horrible customer service aspect that annoys me.

Monopolies FTL

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Monopolies FTL

so start your own ISP.

 

[techs]

Monopolies FTL

so start your own ISP.

Uh, what part of "monopoly" didn't you understand?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

there is no legal reason you can't start your own ISP - telecommunications act of 1996.

 

[Gibson486]

I made the jump to FIOS. It is not that great all.....

 

[dud]

"This is the third time since 2005 that I've had this issue."



Only 3 times? You are so lucky ...

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I made the jump to FIOS. It is not that great all.....

my buddy dumped them. he said it was great when it worked, but the routers were complete shit.

 

[lord_emperor]

It took the 7-8 techs to finally admit I had an overloaded node

Actually they knew it all along but splitting a cable node is $$$ so they'd rather exhaust every other option first since you're probably the only one who noticed and complained.

 

[techs]

there is no legal reason you can't start your own ISP - telecommunications act of 1996.

I still would need permission from my town which granted a monopoly to Comcast. Plus, Comcast could put me out of business by using the money they get from their cable television service to subsidize their internet until I was gone.
In fact, Verizon put a couple of local DSL companie out of business by overcharging them for use of their telephone lines to carry dsl.

Remember, your cable company originally wired up your town because they had a guaranteed return on their money from their exclusive cable franchise.
Asking why I don't wire up a town without that guaranteed money is a specious comparison.

 

[Gibson486]

my buddy dumped them. he said it was great when it worked, but the routers were complete shit.

yup.....the on demand is F'n horrible too. The cable box is slow as hell and yes, the router is the suck. In order to get HD, you have to upgrade to the HD box, which is $11 a month extra on top of the service.

 

[techs]

How much market penetration does FIOS have at this point? Anyone know?

 

[Gibson486]

How much market penetration does FIOS have at this point? Anyone know?

depends where you live. In MA, if you live in the burbs near Boston, you can get it. If you are in a city itself, no, your chances get smaller.

 

[FeuerFrei]

you mean xFinity, right?

OP might want to put 'Xfinity' in his post, so anyone searching the web for 'Xfinity' will find this thread. Can't let Comcast dodge its reputation by a slick name-change.