f13.net

Let me know.

They're trying to pull some shit and I want it dealt with.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=2071

 :awesome_for_real:

Given the level of hate for Comcast around here, I'm not sure anyone who did would be crazy enough to admit it.  :awesome_for_real:

ha

Does nerf actually work for comcast?

I'm having trouble believing their csr wage slaves stance on purging notes from accounts among other things.

Nope, I just saw potential for webcams and government petitions.

Comcast is fucking with my shit recently too.

Meh.

Seriously? They told you they purge notes from their accounts? I guess its possible, but highly stupid if so. We still have running copies of the CRM we used prior to 2001, just so we can pull up historical notes on customers if needed.

Any idea if Comcast runs their own call centers, or do they farm it to one of the mega farms?

I don't know, but that's part of the problem. Short story, 3 years after returning some equipment, the girlfriend got a letter out of nowhere for $450 from a collection agency. they're now telling me that between 2009 and 2012 (specifically 3/2009 to 2/2012) they tried to reach her and weren't able to - though they had her forwarding address on file. There's no information on the account in the form of notes or access (because historical data is purged after X amount of time - a number they wouldn't provide me), and the people who accessed the account had access to her social security number among other things.

I'm just not buying any of it. Clearly their baked wage slave in Seattle didn't input some fucking information correctly when the account was closed and 3 years later they're trying to make a buck.

I think I'm just going to email Consumerist and treat Comcast like absolute shit very, very publically.

Bad Service (http://bad-service.livejournal.com/).  It can't hurt to search there and/or post this.  I've read plenty of times about similar things happening to cable customers and usually folks have some advice on who to contact or how to handle it.  Or just bitch about it and get commiseration from folks who've had the same thing happen. 

**N.B. - don't read this or the Customer Sucks (http://customers-suck.livejournal.com/) community if you want to keep any faith in humanity intact.**

I don't care about bitching to likeminded people. That's a waste of my time. I care about it being made public enough, with enough employee ID numbers and internal notes, that I get someone fired and cost them more money than they want from us.

Nothing on LiveJournal will ever provide either of things. Twitter, Consumerist, Reddit, and possibly Engadget will though.

If they've already sold the amount to a collection agency, then nobody at Comcast will help you.

So yeah, go nuts. Post links, plz!

A quick Google tells me they're outsourced centers. I take it that means the notes don't transfer as the contract switches hands?

Getting someone fired?  Most of the people who would have fucked your account have already been fired or moved on to other companies.  As you know firsthand the life of a call center drone is fairly short.   If you meant an exec, I don't think it's going to happen but go nuts.

A approve of any attempt to make Comcast do anything, or fire anybody.

I approve of anyone flipping the nerf out as long as they share.

Install webcams first please.

Find out if the collection is being handled by Comcast, was SOLD to a collection agency (which means Comcast should be 100% out of the loop) or if the collection agency was HIRED by Comcast (which usually means the files are within Comcast still).  If it was farmed out, get that agency's info.

They have to prove to you that the contract wasn't fulfilled.  They must provide you with a copy of the contract and all attempts they made to reach you (and the returned notices) when the equipment wasn't received. 

How was the equipment returned, by parcel or did their rep come and take it away?  If parcel, was it pre-printed label from Comcast?  Any record of the tracking information would be helpful, even if the shipper doesn't retain records that far in the past.  It at least gives you something.

Is your credit being affected?  If they aren't reporting it, then you might want to wait until they sue you.  It's usually a $250 filing fee to sue in small claims, which is more than half their claim.  Ultimately the burden of proof is on them to show that you didn't return the equipment.  As soon as possible, I would set the total amount aside for the bill - put it in savings and don't touch it.  Just in case shit goes downhill. 

Collection agencies are the fucking devil; they are relentless, evil entities.  Fighting it won't be easy and you might just be tempted to pay the money to get them to go away.  Many people do, it's not a right or wrong situation.  It's not a matter of principles or values, it's simply a matter of money.  As a business, collection agencies are going to do anything they can to get that money because obviously that's how they stay in business. 

Here's a couple of blogs that might give you a few ideas.  I don't know all of the information on them and I wouldn't use them as law, but they might spark an idea or two. 

http://www.brokeass-student.com/how-to-fight-back-against-collection-agencies/
http://www.collectionagencydebt.blogspot.com/

-----------

As an aside, I also have issues with Comcast right now.  They're our only provider here in Seattle and we have to use them for cable if we want it.  They quoted me a price over the phone, then sent the contract with higher rates and refuse to send me a hard copy of the new rates.  I've got about 8 days left in my 30 day return window, so I might just have to use it.  It's not that they are flat out refusing, but every time I call they say a supervisor has it and will send it out in 2-3 days.  Which, of course, I never receive and have to call them back, starting the process over.  I wish I could live without internet service.  More than anything I wish that my wife could live without cable. 

If you've got 8 days on your return do it now.  I'm willing to bet it says "Minimum 7 days processing time before request is registered" somewhere in the fine print.

I started weaning the family off cable 3 years ago.  They didn't realize my master plan but right now we're back down to total basic service on all TVs.  I figure in another year I can dump everything and find another internet provider.

What do they do? Read?

That, going outside, games & Netflix.

I'm vastly more OK with series Netflix than on TV due to all the goddamn commercials.   The amount of "i want this/ that/ the other" has been vastly reduced.  Plus less exposure to reality TV.  Hooray.

We just started an experiment to swap to basic/netflix/hulu/amazon, see if we can live with it for a month before actually returning boxes. Our tv cost hit 120 and even if we're buying everything on amazon at $3 an episode, i can't imagine we're going to hit anything close to that.

I have been living TV/cable free for decades. First I just rented VCR tapes and piped the VCR into my TV tuner card on my PC, then the internetz, then DVDs & Blu-Rays.

Its not only 'doable' but your life quality skyrockets when no longer exposed to the mental mush that is modern TV ads.

Even watching Hulu gets a bit annoying with the ads.

So, total monthly costs to us are:

Netflix, ~$45.00 (4 dvds & streaming)
Hulu, ~$15.00
Internetz ~$50 for 10 down 2 up with Century Link (Seattle based, sucks ass, but its that or comcast)

So a total of about ~$110.

My fiancee was really jonesing for a few things by the time our cable-less summer wound down last year. We missed both the Borgias and Louis season 2, and I think Game of Thrones, for starters. Then lots of little things like local specials, music (they tend to play full DVDs when they're released as promos), and history/nature specials.

There was very little on netflix/hulu/amazon that interested us. I was better off than she was, I spent the summer watching seasons 1-8 of SG-1.

As far as ads go, that's what the DVR is for.

Fair enough, but then you're not simply paying for basic cable, you're paying for HBO and stuff. No ads there, to speak of, but just a bunch of cash on top of your regular internet costs.

It all ends up on Netflix eventually. Maybe one has to wait a year for GoT to come to Netflx.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't snobbery. I watch as much TV as the next dork, but a bit delayed, is all.

I have not had a tv for 3 years. I hulu 4-5 shows tops. I don't miss it save for having a nicer display for watching movies on. Other than that, I HAVE to go with COMCAST for my interweb only subscription. Sucks, but it was either them or without... and I am not that crazy yet.

That whole principle of getting rid of TV really starts to break down if you have any interest in sports.

In my book that's just yet another reason to have no interest in pro sports.  Particularly as they're practiced in the US.

But if you insist on it, there's plenty of streaming options popping-up by the non-greedy slaveowners.

That's the only reason we bought it, and it was only for my wife as a birthday present for sports.  We really don't have any decent sports bars in West Seattle and its tough to take a 7yr old along to those places anyways.  

Since getting the cable box two weeks ago, I haven't watched it once, and my daughter watched it about an hour on the first day then went back to Netflix.  If it wasn't a bday present, I would have already sent this shit back.  

I just subscribe to MLB.TV, and if there's a football game on I desperately need to see live (and I'm actually free, which I never am on Sundays right now) I go over to a friend's place.

Right now they're a pain in the ass to get working properly and often are really spotty on uptime.  That's why I did cable.

Small talk with you at a party must be agonizing.  :oh_i_see:

Less than your mookish desire to discuss Jesus and Football.

 :why_so_serious:

Baseball is better to listen to than watch most of the time anyway.  :why_so_serious:

Broadcast TV, MLB streaming via ps3 and amazon instant keeps us very entertained. Internet is about 50 a month, 100 a year for baseball, and some small amount for amazon instant. I got so angry at comcast a few years back for a similar issue that I was ready to start tossing cinderblocks through their van windows (their service lot was near my apt.) I went with AT and T DSL service, but it was ungodly slow and still 40 bucks a month. Had horrible outages and CSR interactions with them as well. The Fiancee ended up talking me into going back to Comcast but putting it in her name. I wish I could get the service I'm looking for without having to do business with a company I've had horrible experience with in the past, but it is what it is.

You follow one sport right? Soccer? Something?

I don't really care what guys watch as long as they follow a sport. A dislike of all sports to me is just odd as a dude.

I haven't had cable for almost 4 years and haven't missed a thing.

We switched from Comcast to CenturyLink a couple months ago for their Prism service (high-speed internet + TV via fiber/DSL).  Haven't looked back since.  The Xfinity upgrade was a joke...if I wanted to watch banner ads as I'm browsing the TV guide, I'd just plain go to TVguide.com and watch shit on Hulu  :why_so_serious:

Do e-sports count?  I kinda follow competitive LoL and DotA 2.  :oh_i_see:

 :facepalm:

Unfortunately, there are blocks of the US where Comcast is pretty much it. I have a choice for TV - Comcast, AT&T Uverse (with the shitty CS experiences I've had with AT&T, not really a good alternative) and satellite which I can't get because I don't own this house and there's huge trees blocking my sky. I'd drop Comcast in a second if there was something like Verizon FIOS. Their customer service is bad enough to give me an aneurysm. We ordered a second HD DVR for the upstairs bedroom, the box got shipped and I go to install it. Call in the number it tells me to call to activate it, their shitty voice recognition bot asks for the serial number on the box.

Now, the label on the machine has a shitton of numbers on it, none of which are labeled as a serial number. So I pick the one that looks most likely but the bot reads it back wrong. So I tell it "NO" and read it again. It tells me it can't find that serial number. So I press buttons to talk to a rep, who tries it, is unsuccessful and has to transfer me to a higher tech level. I'm transferred, the phone rings, is answered by a machine that says the place is closed. Then it hangs up.

Rage... building...

Call back. Talk to an actual person, who tries to input the serial number again (we've made sure it's the right number) but is unsuccessful. She finally says that she can't add this DVR to my account but to fix it, she'll OVERNIGHT me a new box and a return kit for this box. How shittastic is your customer account database that you can't just add a box to it at that level? And think about how much they just pissed away in shipping costs to get not just this box to me, but the old box back and a new box overnighted? How does this company continue to survive?

Oh right, overcharging, under-delivering and buying up all the local competitors.

Sounds exactly like my area, except we have Charter as our local monopoly.  If you want anything faster than 6mb AT&T DSL you get Charter, no other options.  I could write pages on just one issue I had with them a year or two ago.  It was BAD, even at one point had a tech come out and say "Hey, this is the problem in the area - blah, blah, we're aware of this.  I should have it fixed, but if you still have the problem give us another call."  only to call the next day with the same issue and have the guy on the phone tell me "We have no issues, it must be a problem on your end, would you like me to send a tech out?  You will be charged a fee for the visit if it's found to not be a Charter issue."

(It's been my experience with Charter in our area that the techs that come to the house are very knowledgeable, friendly guys who are great help.  The phone support is someone overseas and their entire script is just "Have they reset the modem?" repeated 10 times.)

Every time in 7 years that I've made any change to our service such as dropping HD or lowering our cable tier they continue to bill me at the old rate until I call and complain multiple times.

I remember way back when I had comcast.   I got access to some of their internal systems by using the username "tag" and the password of "florida"  :why_so_serious:

I can't wait to move into my house and get fios.  Fuck Comcast.

I know Comcast isn't the greatest, but I must be the lucky one cuz I've been with them for like 9 years with no serious issues.  I wonder if it's more about the area you are in as well.

I also have no options beyond Comcast for my service, since I live amongst cornfields.

I've had very good CS from Uverse. After 3 months of TV+Internet service, my bill doubled for no apparent reason. I called CS, and after about 30 minutes of polite whining, got them to drop it to an introductory rate on a permanent basis. At least until they decide to arbitrarily double it again. But the CS was helpful.

I've had Comcast for 12 years and haven't had a problem.  I suspect that part of it is due to living in the burbs where the infrastructure is new and living within driving distance of their local office rather than trying to use their CS group.  It hasn't all been puppies, unicorns and rainbows (there was the night I lost internet 5 minutes before I was due to log in to a customer system and start an 8 hour upgrade) but I have decent upload/download speed and have only had a couple service outages (none of which lasted more than an hour or two) over the years.  That said, I'm working on weaning the family off cable since I'm not a fan of having to buy channel packages full of crap we never watch in order to get the few channels we actually watch.

It's ok, I find worshiping an invisible sky-god odd as well so you've got me twice.

How dare you not be obsessed with sweaty men in tights?

Sports generally just take too damn long to hold my interest.  Something that lasts about 45 minutes would be just fine.  Three hours, no thanks.  I could watch a movie or read a book or do any number of other things in that time.

The first hockey game I ever saw was in college and I was all excited that it was over in a reasonable amount of time.  Then it turned out there was another quarter (third?) or period or whatever.   :cry2:

At least football is relatively DVR-friendly, to bring this back to Comcast.  If you DVR the game and fast forward through the huddles and maybe watch the last five minutes at live speed it's not too terribly long.

And speaking of Comcast, ours had a long stretch from about 2008-2011 of being really horrible with the DVR.  It would not record things we told it to, would record a black screen (and we were watching that channel live at the time as well so we knew there was a picture), and would reboot and lose all the guide data about once a day.  I swapped it out twice to no avail, which to their credit was pretty hassle-free, and the problem eventually just went away this year (at least so far...)

The cable modem has been pretty good though, had that since 1999 with them and aside from a couple days when WoW first came out (that's how I remember the date, because I couldn't play it graaaa, and they eventually replaced some lines in front of the house) it's been pretty solid.  The price keeps rising, though.

There is no service on the face of the earth quite so bad as satellite internet.  Stay the fuck away.

Oh there's no way I'd do satellite internet in a million years. I was speaking of satellite for TV. I loved my DirecTV when I had it and miss it greatly.

112 million Americans watched the Super Bowl.

While "odd" is relative, I find most of you odd around here. It's half the reason I tend to stick around. If I wanted to be around people who all thought the same stuff, I'd go to my church.

Thanks for the sky-god troll, btw. Quality moderation.  :why_so_serious:

Oh, okay, that's understandable.  Satellite TV isn't a shitshow run by assclowns who oversell their bandwidth until their service is worse than dial-up.

No, it is just a shitshow run by a bunch of evil assclowns. DirecTV is at least as evil as Comcast.

Other than the DVR's interface from 1995, our Comcast experience has been stellar on the product side. More basic channels in HD than DirecTV had, clean picture on SD channels, reliable service, installers showed up on time, and I laugh when people tell me the internet isn't actually 12mb, it's not it's 15.

However, the price is just not sustainable. $125 for the video portion and we don't even have any pay channels, just the top level of basic in HD with a DVR. I went through our season passes and if we'd bought all the new stuff from amazon a la carte that we've watched since January 1, it comes to about $100 for all three months.

200 million Americans didn't, Mr. Accountant. :-P

Well TECHNICALLY 177 million watched 6 minutes of it.  :awesome_for_real:

Well, at least more Americans were smart enough to know they were watching shit and change the channel. :why_so_serious:

If the world brought back gladiator fights to the death, I'd watch sports.

Unfortunately sports as they are is simply some of the worst shit on TV.

Next to televangelism of course.

Though televised baseball may be worse than a preacher convincing white trash to hand over money.

Yes but back in college, nothing beat getting high as a kite and watching Benny Hinn.  :why_so_serious:

You can be entertained by grass growing and paint drying while high. That isn't really relevant.

In a world of evil, I'll take the evil that doesn't make me want to stab a motherfucker through the phone lines every time I call customer service for anything. In the 7 years I had DirecTV, I had less problems (that includes outages due to weather) than I've had in the less than 1 year I've had Comcast for TV.

How is it that this thread has 2014 dates on responses?

Dredging it up because my beloved TiVo is malfunctioning, and I've resorted to using a Comcast DVR.

Putting it nicely, Comcast's DVR is completely inadequate. I thought TiVo suing Comcast meant that Comcast had copied TiVo's interface but obviously Comcast has not. It has a terrible interface. 4th year college students could design a better interface. The program guide shows 4 channels at a time, and only shows the next 24 hours.

We've used TiVo for over a decade, and we're used to it. I think when we got our first TiVo, the cost was $6/month for the TiVo service; now it's $15. If the alternative is this shit Comcast DVR, it's well worth it. Why Comcast doesn't buy TiVo or make a deal with them to use their service is beyond me.

Now I have motivation to find out how to get my TiVo fixed. It just started to turn itself off and on again and cycling through that. I suspect it might need a hard disc, although we tried to Spinrite it and it just hung, so maybe it's more than that. I don't know.

Watching without a dvr is not worth watching at all. Maybe it is time to cut the cord.

Posting from the future!

(This was because the server had the wrong clock for a while a while back).

Comcast had infringed on some TiVo patents, which were basically "basic things people expect a DVR to do" like sorting the recorded programs into folders when they were different episodes of the same program.  Essentially, the Comcast DVR sucks because nearly everything people expect a DVR to do when it comes to menus and organization is under patent by somebody, and Comcast either won't or can't license the patents.

TiVo, and Dish (bought ReplayTV back in the day) own most of those patents and have cross-licensing with each other, and they mostly won't let the cable companies have a decent DVR.

--Dave

There's a lot of places that Comcast services in which they're the only service available.  For as large as Seattle is, Comcast is most people's only choice.  Unless you're 'lucky' to have the Century Link areas, but that adds another shitty service to the mix.

For as long as there's no direct competition, Comcast has no reason to spend the money to upgrade.

Yeah, there's a lot more "won't" than "can't" in the suckitude that is Comcast DVR's.  There's a few things Dish/TiVo won't license, but they're mostly minor stuff.  Comcast just looks at it and feels that the DVR quality is not a deciding factor in whether people go with a Satellite provider rather than them, and except for a handful of markets they don't have to worry about competing with other cable companies.

Comcast is in the business of lobbying local utilities commissions to give them or let them keep monopolies.  Uptime and service delays are the only things that seem to have an effect on that, followed distantly by cost to the customers (actually, they can easily push through rate increases just by cutting the relevant authority in for a chunk).  Feature-completeness of their DVR functionality?  Not even on the map, from their POV.

Me, I would rather pay Hulu and Netflix $8/month each, and use *cough* other methods *cough* to fill out whatever that leaves out, over the wireless broadband I pay Clear.com $50/month for.

--Dave

Also try the BBB.   I've had terrific luck using them.  They've scored 3/3 times I've used them.

Hello. Local government employee and former negotiator for a cable franchise license.

Actually, no. Not whatsoever. You have not a single clue and have no idea what you're talking about.

Per federal law there are no cable tv monopolies. NONE. Zip. Zero. Nil. Nada. Zed. Most municipalities would love to have a second "overbuilder" come in, but the realities of the market are that in very few cases can a company make a profit doing so.

There are no kickbacks, we are limited to 1% franchise fee and anything in excess of that must be put into "PEG TV production costs" ie, putting your local yahoos on tv. But we can't pay for other things with it. God, if we could, we'd love to. But we can't. Period. And if we let a second carrier in, we'd ding them and we'd get MORE money, not less, so the economic incentives are that we want more more more cable TV companies, not a single one.

My selectmen would kneel down and suck Verizon's cock if they would even consider wiring us, nevermind the idiotic stereotype that we'd somehow "protect" comcast. My God. No. We're stuck with them and there's nothing we can do about it. As long as they run a system, we have no authority to not renew their franchise because, after all, any other company is free to come in and compete. Except they don't and they can't.

Basically a cable franchise is "awarded" on the basis of "is there a cable tv company" and other than that a local licensing authority has zippety do da to say. No history channel. Not relevant. $1,000,000 ONE MILLION DOLLARS per month for HBO? Not legal for us to even bring up. The only thing we can negotiate on is whether or not you provide some form of CATV and what % you give us as a franchise fee, which is dedicated to putting the local chuckleheads on TV. We can't use it to pay for a park. We can't use it to pay for my salary. We can use it for PEG (public, educational, government") channels only. Period.

We can't bitch if they have only 10 channels and they decide to charge thousands for them. We have absolutely no power. Our legal ability is only that if the local franchise sucks, we can't do shit, but we can award another one.

But in reality when you have a second cable franchise, most people don't switch. Cable is a "natural monopoly" not a legal one. That makes it very hard for the situation to get better and we in local government can do absolutely nothing to fix it. If we deny a license, they just got to federal court and appeal and your taxes go up and they still get a license because legally they are entitled to one according to federal law.

The reality of cable costs is that it's driven by programming--the networks not the local franchise or Comcast/Warner/Fios/DISH/whatever. It sure as hell isn't local government. It's ESPN, Disney, etc. who are the big costs.

(If this is incoherent or hyperbolic I'm sorry. It's a long holiday weekend and it's rained the whole time. 've had more than the normal share of martinis. But I spent an idiotic amount of time talking to attorneys and trying to fix this and there's jack shit we at the local government can do and it's a pet peeve that we're the first ones blamed.

Also I have a TIVO and it not only works, but it even gets COMCAST "on demand" stuff. If your TIVO isn't working get it fixed or get a new one. It's the best way to push things to change.)

Well, I guess I learned something.  Putting aside the issue of how Comcast keeps their monopolies, I stand by the part about why their DVR sucks: Because it works well enough to keep people from switching to satellite, and that's the only reason they offer it.

--Dave

My Comcast horror story. 

Not long ago I had Verizon DSL.  I was a happy and satisfied customer.  It was DSL, but it was fast (for DSL) and reliable.  It worked all the time, and if there was an issue it was resolved quickly.  Then Verizon sold out that part of the business to Frontier.  Within 2 months my service turned to shit.  When I complain that my speeds got halved, at best, they sent me a new modem.  They sent me a new modem but it would not provision.  They sent another, it worked until I set up my router, and never again.  I remove my router, it still does not work.  I have 4-5 of their stupid modems now.  In the end I removed all of them and hooked up my original gear which worked.

I hate Comcast but they are the only option I have left over using scissors.  I do some research and buy my own modem and get a new router since I was in need of an upgrade anyway.  The techs come out and wire me up, connect my gear, we are off and running!

Two months later my service stops working.  Resets do not work, none of my gear is getting an IP, nothing on the internals.  It was as if there was never a connection.  CS sends a tech (the local guy is pretty good and friendly and the same guy who did the install).  Somehow, my modem was not in the system.  He does not know why, and eventually gets escalated to someone who actually works for Comcast, which is beyond his supervisor.  This guy is sitting on some sort of monitoring at a major hub.  It is important to note that by this time the techs phone had died and he is on MY cellphone calling this guy.  I hear the guy on the other end saying that I must know someone at Comcast who got my rental charge waived so he yanked the modem out of the system. It is a Comcast modem and not mine.  The retail box for this modem is 15 feet away at this point.  I nearly explode.  The tech tries to explain that he knows it is MY modem (I handed it to him on the install) but the asshole on the other end continues to accuse me of theft and shit while talking to the contractor on MY cellphone.  The contractor has the receipt in his hand at this point, but this guy continues to deride me to the tech. Somehow I managed to not end up in Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax.  It was not the contractors fault.  You could see the panic in his eyes, pleading for me not to flip out.  Service gets restored, the guy thanks me for not going into Goro mode and that problem is solved.  The next day I call in and after some prolonged conversation I end up with almost a year of free service.

Stick to your guns!  Force them to produce more and more records.  Dispute everything!  Believe me, if there was a viable choice I would be off Comcast yesterday.  Please please give me Google fiber or something similar. 

I guess I must be the only person to have never had a problem with Comcast.  Although I still wish I could go back to Cox, they just aren't in the SF Bay Area.  My only REAL gripe with Comcast is the fact that for a DVR, basic cable, and high speed internet somehow I am being charged $149.99/mo compared to the introductory rate of $69.99/mo.  So if I get suckered into paying for HBO or something on one of their specials that they are always advertising to me I can actually spend less per month...

The DVR is an atrocity. Seriously consider getting a TIVO. The only reason not to was on demand and that's now offered in I think every major market.

The real simple answer to why all cable companies have defacto monopolies is that it's impossible to make money unless you're the first one in.

Numtini, that was very interesting, thank you.

I have had absolutely no problems with my cable internet, and our TV cable has been good in terms of few interruptions.

But my God. Comcast DVR is an abomination. From the cheap shitty counter-intuitive remote (there's no back button that I can find; menus to negotiate and no back button?) to the horrible advertising taking up as much space on the screen as the program guide, it's just fucking awful.

Back to TiVo it is, or cutting the cord.

We do get DISH and Direct here, but neither offer the local government meetings that Comcast is mandated to carry, and I like being able to watch them without going to them, and better yet, being able to record them so I can zip through the regular characters' comments that come to every single council meeting to complain about being poisoned by chemtrails or wifi or cell phone towers or tobacco smoke or car exhaust or whatever.

I use a HD Homerun Prime (http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/) and a nice windows 7 computer with windows media center as a DVR. Works good man. An advantage of the Homerun Prime is that it is a network device so any computer in the house with appropriate software can pull down and use the tuners to view tv with.  DVR software is extremely scarce and support for media center is atrocious which is why the good people at Silicon Dust are turning the Homerun Prime into a DNLA server than handles the view flagging for protected content at the tuner instead of the software. Their next step is to work with the community to create a nice DVR software option. That said, I have used my Homerun Prime with media center for several years now and it is pretty solid, and only once or twice required me to fiddle with Comcast because of Comcast's screw up provisioning the cable card to my account. One should note though that they screw up most cable card provisioning even when its used for Tivo.

We had Uverse back in Ohio, and it was bar none the best service ever.  The UI was sleek and very responsive.  The only downside was the modem and router were built together, so a brownout would reset the TV and internet connections.  We quickly put the modem on a UPS to prevent a 5min cycle up whenever there was a spike.

Our experience with ATT was really good, from the cable angle.