Comcast vs our Internet. Round 22

Most of what I write has a clear positive message. I do not enjoy complaining just as I know others do not enjoy hearing complaints, so I tend to do as little of it as possible. As a word of warning, I am looking for the lesson in this story, what I can learn from it. So, I apologize in advance, if there is nothing positive for you to take away from it. Also it is a bit long and I just didn't feel like splitting it up. So, here it is.

A few months ago, back in January, I wrote about what a wonderful internet provider Comcast is (http://lnk.to/oFc0m) . Since January, we have paid them over $1500 and our internet still does not work properly.

When we call in and talk to the tier 1 representatives, most of them have no idea what we are talking about. What they are trained to deal with is people who have no internet signal at all. We get asked to do things like make sure the cable modem has power and that all of our cables are connected properly. When we inform them that the problem isn't whether or not we can connect to the internet, that the problem has something to do with lost packets, high ping times and signal degradation they start drooling and jiberring like their brains have been totally blown and are now oozing slowly out their earholes.

Each time, they want to walk us through this inane and completely useless set of steps that is designed to discover why you have no signal at all. Then once we finally get it through their heads that we do in fact have a signal, just that it is a crappy one, then they move on to asking whether or not we have a wired or a wireless network set up. When we tell them that our network is wireless, but that for testing purposes we have set up one computer that is hard wired and that it is getting the same results they latch on to the wireless portion of the conversation and then claim that they can't help us troubleshoot because our network is wireless which they do not support. We could just lie to them and say its wired. But, then we would be lying.

Through a combination of threatening to terminate our service and requests to speak to management we eventually move past that part and get to the part where they offer to send out a technician. And that is where the "fun" begins.

There isn't always someone available here to meet up with the Comcast technician. Sometimes one of us needs to come home early from work or even take time off just to be here when the technician gets here. And about half of the time, the appointment is not kept due to the technician not showing up. When we remember to complain about it, after the fact, Comcast is good about crediting our account for the missed appointment.

But all of that isn't what bothers me about this. What bothers me is when I originally blogged about this back in January, we had been having this intermittent issue with our internet service for several months. We are still having exactly the same issue. Many, many, many steps have been taken. But all have been shots in the dark.

See Comcast has this one major issue that a lot of other companies have, especially larger corporations. The problem isn't that they hire idiots or that they fail to train their employees properly. While both of these are contributing factors. It is that they do not have a centralized database that all of their employees can access.

They do have a database and when we call in some of the reps we have gotten on the phone have been able to look up notes from past calls but others have not. And something a lot of people don't realize is that the technicians that Comcast sends out do not work directly for Comcast. They are licensed contractors and have no access at all to any information about what has been going on in the past.

And THAT is what makes me mad. Whenever a technician comes out to our house, we are starting a fresh round of troubleshooting as if nothing has ever been done. They know that we have been having problems for awhile and each one wants us to see them as the super hero that fixes our problem. Each one of them has a different knowledge base and believes that different things will cause the issue that we have.

Sometimes it is declared that a new modem will fix things but they don't carry them on their truck. So an appointment has to be made to get a new modem. And then either that appointment gets cancelled without our knowledge or the appointment is kept, but a different technician comes out that knows nothing about the replacement modem we are supposed to be getting.
Then this new guy asks us what the problem is and we get to start all over.

We have actually had the cable modem replaced twice. We have run our system both with a router and without. We have used five different splitters, two of which came from Comcast( two others which "Comcast" technicians suggested but weren't supported by Comcast and one we bought from Radio Shack). Comcast technicians have twice run a completely new line from the box at the back of the house into our house, drilling a hole through our wall each time. They have run a new line from the pole to the box in the back of our house. We have been told that hooked up but unused coaxial cables for cable TV can interfere with the signal. All of our coax cables have been capped except for the main one we actually use to watch TV.

Every component inside our network has been changed, many of them more than once. Our internal network works flawlessly. We can see and interact with other computers on our network even when our internet service is down. We can have in-house Skype calls at times when there is "no internet".

It is my personal opinion that these are all just shots in the dark. Nobody actually working directly for Comcast knows or at the very least is willing to admit that they know what is causing our problems.

Multiple technicians have come out and told us that they have received nearly identical complaints from some of our neighbors. We have been told multiple times, in person, that Comcast is aware of issues with their infrastructure in our area. I think the Comcast technicians know exactly what is wrong but are contractually obligated not to tell us because it would make Comcast look bad. They know that they can't fix the problem for us and aren't allowed to tell us that. So they make up some story that will let them leave as soon as possible and make it some other person's problem

Most recently we were told by a technician, at our house, that our neighbors had improperly set up their service and that as a result their signal was spiking and "slicing" across ours and causing signal degradation and loss of signal altogether at times. Another appointment was set to have an installer come out to their house and fix the problem. Comcast cancelled that appointment without telling us or providing a reason for it. Then when we called in to find out about it nobody seemed to know what we were talking about. A technician came out today and ran a new line from the box to our house. Yay another hole in our walls.

Surprise! It didn't fix things. It seemed to work fine for about ten minutes, just long enough for the cable installer to be gone. Then we started having trouble again. They are sending someone out again in another two days. We asked for billing so we could talk about getting a credit and billing suggested we wait until the trouble is fixed so they can give us the proper credit. Does anyone in their right mind believe they are going to credit us for the last 9 months or so that we have paid for a service that hasn't worked as described?

I don't believe in complaining without having a solution. But in this case there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. Comcast offers the best consumer service in our area. AT&T is a distant second. We would go with satellite but it has its own problems that are just as bad if not worse.

Perhaps there is a provider that offers high speed internet for businesses that we could convince to work with us. We are currently paying around three thousand dollars a year. That has to fall in line with what some of the business providers are charging for similar service. The only other thing I can think of at the moment is finding out what would be involved in becoming our own ISP. I am looking for other viable solutions.

Are you responsible for what happens in your life? Pt1

The following actually occurred this past Friday afternoon. Names have been changed to letters for anonymity.

Comcast sent out a technician to troubleshoot the internet problems that we have been having. As part of his troubleshooting he needed to test all of the coaxial cables for line noise. We all live together in a big house, but all have separate schedules. Sometimes we do not know who is home or awake or what their general status is.

One of the rooms the technician needed to get into was behind a closed door. He asked if it was alright to go in and check the line in that room. This sequence of events is what happened as a result.

Person A asked person B if person C was home. Person B said they did not know. Person A asked person B to check. Person B checked the door to person C's room, found it unlocked, opened it looked in and said person C was sleeping. Person A replied that was not useful information and that something more would need to be done. Person B then went over to the sleeping person C and woke them up.

Person C was understandably upset, one about being woken up in general, and even more upset at being woken up by person B standing next to their bed and calling their name. Person C felt that their privacy was being invaded due to the fact that person B did not even bother to knock before coming into their room.

Not surprisingly, an argument started, it was minor and not very heated. But, still, it was enough that the Comcast guy did not get to test the line that day.

Person C blamed person B for the circumstance. Person B claimed to just be following directions and blamed Person A. Person A admitted responsibility for the situation. But who was really responsible for the end result of the Comcast representative not testing the line? Was it person A, B,C, or was it the Comcast tech?

It's actually a trick question. The correct answer is, it is everyone's responsibility. A,B,C, the Comcast tech, every person that observed what happened and even those that did not. The whole world is responsible for everything that happens, everywhere, if they could have taken an action that would have made things different, no matter how indirect or not connected that action might be.

Person A could have stopped Person B from entering Person C's room without knocking. Person B could have used common sense and not entered without knocking, Person C could have locked their door before going to sleep, or could have been awake or not home. The guy from Comcast could have found another way to test the line that did not involve going into that room.

Comcast, in general, is responsible for the trouble that we are having with our internet because if they did not exist we would not have their service and thus we could not have an issue with our Comcast internet service. AT&T is responsible for this circumstance as well, because if they provided a better service we would use it. It was our choice to go with the internet service provided by Comcast. But it is every other company out there's choice not to provide better internet than Comcast does.

One might say well what about all the Chinese and Indian people out there that are half a world away from you? They aren't responsible for this are they? Actually, yes they are. Any one of them could invent the next new bit of technology that makes internet usage through coaxial cable obsolete. Every man woman and child, everywhere, that has failed to do so is responsible for the problems that we have with the internet in our home. If there were no planet Earth we would not have the exact problem we have here and now with our internet. Therefore everyone that has not blown up the Earth has contributed to us still having trouble with our Comcast based internet service.

Am I suggesting that anyone should destroy our planet? No, not, even slightly. I am just using it as an example to say that anyone and everyone could change our circumstance and that everyone that does not, is responsible for the circumstance continuing to exist

A person can take the victim stance and blame everyone else but the fact of the matter is that they are responsible for what happens in their lives even if they choose to ignore or deny it. Also, there is no such thing as partial responsibility. Persons A,B,C and the Comcast tech are not each 25% responsible for what happened. They are each jointly and severally 100% responsible for the outcome because any one of them could have taken an action to change the outcome and none of them did.

Comcast provides the fastest most reliable internet service in our area, which sucks.

Our home is a veritable hot spot of internet usage. Sometimes we are downloading a game on our desktops while playing another game on our laptops and using our phones to check movie times or to map out a route to someplace new.

Between streaming movies and videos from one computer to another within our network, torrenting movies, music and games from the internet, playing online games on our computers and Playstation4, checking email,  and just general web browsing we use the internet for just about everything.

We are loyal Comcast customers. But not because we have any real choice. Satellite internet has way too much latency for serious gamers. And AT&T, Comcast's only real competition in the area has much slower service. When AT&T offered 20MB service Comcast offered 50. With AT&T recently offering 50 Comcast upgraded all their 50MB customers to their new 105MB service.

And it really is blazing fast. Sorta. Sometimes. With a wired connection the speeds are often close to 100MB. There are two problems with that statement. One is the word often. It isn't consistent. It's good say maybe 30% of the time. They don't promise any specific speed, just up to 105MB. And two who wants to be stuck in one place all the time? Wireless is the way of the future. They will not guarantee and in fact will not troubleshoot wireless speeds at all.

In fairness Comcast almost never has an outage in our area. They have better than 99% up time. That means they average less than 14 minutes of downtime every day. When they do have an outage it's usually fixed within an hour or less. And there's probably about one every other month or so.

But, we have been having a problem for over a year now that they have failed to be able to do anything about. We have an intermittent issue. It comes and goes. When it shows up we get lag in whatever games, streaming or web browsing that we are doing and we start losing about a third or more of the packets being sent out. It seems to be more of an issue with the upload speed at the time than download speed, but often both are affected.

We have switched out every physical component in our network and we still have this issue. New routers, new cable modems, new splitters, new video cards, you name it we've swapped it. It happens on every one of the over a dozen computers in the house. So it is not a specific setting on a specific computer that is causing the issue. And the same computers do not have this issue when connected to other networks. It is only with the signal we are getting from Comcast that there is an issue.

Each time they promise to send out a technician and each time they do, eventually. About two out of every three of the appointments that we make get cancelled for no specific reason, without them saying a word to us about it being cancelled. We only find out about it after setting time aside to be home for the technician who never ends up showing up. The best part, is Comcast even calls us to tell us that the technician will be coming by shortly on the day of the appointment, and then he or she never does.

Then when we call in to find out why the tech never showed up and what we need to do in order to get one to come out, invariably the rep on the phone asks us to hold while they find out if there will be a charge for sending a technician out to our home.

When a tech does finally come out they say something that contradicts what the last two or three techs to come out have said. They always want to replace some part that they don't have with them and need to set up another appointment. And then...that tech doesn't show up for the appointment and we get to start the whole dance all over.

It's too bad that Comcast provides the fastest most reliable service in our area. Because at this point if I heard that Hitler and Genghis Khan were alive and well and had teamed up to sell internet service that was as fast and as reliable as Comcast, I'd jump ship and go with whatever it is they were offering.