In June my Internet broadband service from Comcast in the Trenton, NJ, area was off and on for three weeks. Technicians at the national 800 number set up a service call from the local office, but this call resulted in only a temporary fix. Less than an hour after the technician left (all he did was diddle with wires at the pole), service was off again.
After a week of witnessing incompetence from a parade of local dimwits (coupled with attempts to call the Trenton office, which has a defective automated phone service, I contacted a Comcast executive, whose name, address, and phone number I had kept from an earlier bout with Comcast. During the next two weeks, he and I exchanged numerous letters and phone calls. He tried very hard to resolve the problem, but it took him that long to get to first base with the local area.
To make a tedious story short (it’s painful just remembering it), Comcast eventually located the problem, which they themselves had created three weeks earlier while “upgrading” their system. It took them that long to find a serious blunder of their own making, and they were meanwhile blaming everything from my modem to heavy traffic on the lines. When it was apparent that even a corporate executive could not resolve a customer’s continuing problems with service, I looked into another option.
Fortunately, Comcast no longer has a monopoly in this area – and its monopoly was the only reason I paid for the service to begin with. Feeling that nothing could be worse than Comcast, I switched to a competitor’s new fiber optic (FiOS) service. The new service has been 100% reliable and faster, though I pay less for it. I kept Comcast until my billing period expired; then I canceled.
This wasn’t the end. Even though I was assured that my Comcast bill was paid in full, Comcast followed up with a statement saying that I should pay $31 or return the modem. Their claim was that the modem belonged to Comcast. It did not. I bought it myself and never paid a rental fee for a modem (as Comcast’s own records verified). I called the 800 number (no point in dealing with the local idiots, I knew) and was assured that the charge would be wiped out. Two weeks later I received a letter from Comcast threatening my credit rating if I did not return the modem in a mailer that they sent. Furious, I fired off letters to Comcast in Newark and Trenton and to the corporate executive. The executive investigated and assured me that the charge would be removed and that he had instructed the local office to send me a letter of confirmation and an apology. I thanked him, but weeks later I have still not received that letter, nor any confirmation of the letters I sent to Newark and Trenton.
This tale of Comcast’s blundering, which is merely a sketchy outline, is mirrored by hundreds of similar anecdotes from hundreds of Comcast users. I teach at the local community college, and when I mention Comcast’s rotten service in my class, students smile knowingly. If it weren’t such a huge rip-off, it would be a joke.
My advice to Comcast users and potential users: Check out the competition. Even if there is none, make no long-term commitments, for competition may arrive. Although competitors may have their faults, a company would need to be really bad to be as dysfunctional as Comcast is. For those who can, chuck Comcast TV unless you want to build a spare room to house the Comcast technician. The TV service is even worse than the broadband service (which at least worked well for a while). Years ago, we switched to DirecTV satellite service. Despite one bad experience with them, which caused us to briefly try Comcast cable again (that was an unmitigated disaster), satellite is more reliable, offers more for the money, and has better (truly digital) picture quality.
If you can, avoid Comcast. They deserve to be put out of business.
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