Anyone here work for Comcast?

[Pezzle]

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. 

[Selby]

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...

[Numtini]

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.

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

[Pennilenko]

I use a HD Homerun 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.

[Hawkbit]

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.