Off The Walt

I’ve blogged & podcasted before about Earthlink downgrading my service to 384k down/ 64k up. Lovely.

Since I need to uploaded several hundred megs of podcasts each month, I need a good solid upstream and preferably a downstream, so I finally called Comcast. What a waste of my time! The rate seemed pretty good and cable television was bundled with it, so I specified that no technician would enter my home, that I could perform the installs. The friendly and patient rep I spoke to initially assured no tech would enter my home, he could just hand me the box and I could do it myself.

Why? Firstly, I don’t like anyone in my home for any reason aside from my wife or children. I don’t like anything moved and don’t want to have to answer questions about what something is. I especially don’t want anything stolen and have heard bad stories about this sort of thing happening in my area.

I’ve been a computer tech for more than 22 years and have built infrastructure buildouts for entire floors here in Downtown Fort Lauderdale where there were thousands of connections. I think I can handle a cable box with a phone call to tell them to flip a switch when I get my stuff connected. I already owned my own cable modem, so I just needed the cable box to connect to the back of the television. We don’t watch TV all that much, but I do like to veg out to documentries on Discovery, etc., so we went for both.

When I made the appointment for connection at the pole, I asked for the latest possible time, she told me it’d be around 7pm. My wife and I would be home by then and I figured it was the perfect time. I got a phone call around 4:45pm on that day and an apparently upset woman, without announcing who she was with, asked me, "You home?" Clearly not my wife, I asked who she was. As if distracted, she repeated the question slowly and much louder suggesting I was 4 years old, "ARE….YOU….HOME?"

I repeated my question to her in the same method she used…VERY…SLOWLY….AND…..LOUDLY. Did I ever mention I hate getting phone calls at work? Anyway, she finally revealed she was with Comcast. Well, to be precise, she revealed she was with "Comcass". Maybe there was a shortage of "T"s? I was clearly wasting her time. I told her I would be home shortly and the tech could start working on it, I’d hand him the agreed upon check and receive the install box with the cable box in it.

She told me this was not an acceptable arrangement. Well, precision dictates I quote her, "*sucking of teeth, really long* Mmmm, mmmmm. That ain’t gonna happen, Baby." I asked her to elaborate and she let out an enormous sigh, I clearly should have known better. She informed me that the tech must come into my home and personally install the equipment. I explained my technical knowledge, but my protest fell on deaf ears. Either I was going to be home in 2 minutes (not happening) and letting the guy in, or I wasn’t getting cable. Since neither was going to happen, I cited time to get there and promised to call back, ever so politely.

I don’t even remember getting a "Thank you," but I do remember getting hung up on in mid-sentence. My turn to sigh.

I called back Saturday to reschedule and explained my technical skill and told the girl on the other end of the phone that I’d just take the box and go with it from there. She told me it was policy to have a tech do it. I politely explained I could tech the technician a few things and she kept citing "policy". I hate "policy". It’s just an excuse, rarely born from logic.

I politely thanked her for her time and signed up for AT&T DSL. It’s 1/2 the speed Comcast… errr… Comcass was offering and with no subsctiption television (yet… they were testing in my area for it!), but I’ll take it. Amazingly enough, I’m allowed to install it myself, in fact, they prefer it! What a great combination!

I’ll be talking about this on my podcast next weekend. How amazing it is when you have a couple thousand listeners and have some influence, eh? I don’t think I’ll ever have Comcass service wherever I am. I’d rather get satellite for subscription television and use DSL. Sure, it’s a little more pricey, but I’ll deal. I wonder what sort of feedback I’ll get from the podcast net weekend… we’ll find out soon!

Update 2008-09-14:
In the past week, I got phone calls from Comcast Corporate Customer Service and also discussed the situation on one of my podcasts , Kore News. Once the corporate folk got hold of my problem, things went much smoother, but I still didn’t end up getting Comcast service. The two main reasons why are simply the 250 gig bandwidth cap is unreasonable and they were trying to lock me into a 12-month deal for a decent rate, then were going to jack the price up 250% once I had forgotten to renegotiate the rate, etc.

AT&T’s DSL package should be here this week, I’ll be much better very soon. I uploaded 4 episodes for my podcast group today and have been uploading since 6am this morning, no exaturation. It’s now 7pm. I’ll be glad to get this stuff up faster in the future!

Good work on the customer service Comcast. I am truely impressed with the level of customer service after my mention in my blog , but it’s too bad it had to go that far. I’ve already gotten a few comments from listeners telling me about them being tired of this, too, and switching themselves. I’m glad. Comcast will need to get its things together or wither away. It would have been nice to see what the service was like, but I’m not going to get tricked into a promo rate.

Walt Snider is a Computer Technician and Webmaster in South Florida that operates Kore New Media , the fourth largest podcast group in the world, Florida’s largest podcast group. More about Walt Snider can found at www.WaltSnider.com or on his blog at www.OffTheWalt.com . His podcasting group, Kore New Media , can be found at www.KoreNewMedia.com .