Anyone here ever use Comcast for internet, cable or phone?

[inthebrain]

What a fucking nightmare.

I've been using this utility for the past 5 years. The first three they weren't so bad but the last two they've turned into a complete nightmare. I constantly have service interruptions and haven't had a two week stretch where I haven't had to call them for some problem. It ain't just the internet that goes out but also the phone along with it.

At first I thought it was just my PC that was screwing up. Recently I did a search on the net and it looks like almost all their customers are having this problem. Many allude to the suspiscion that they may be doing this on purpose to gut corners and save money. Not sure how true it is but I am wondering if anyone is filing a class action against them. They absolutley refuse to refund on the bill for any period without service.

Right now I am looking to switch to Verizon but not sure if they are any better or worse. Where I live we have limited options and for years Comcast was the only game in town. Not usre if that's changed.

[babylonsister]

1. I use comcast and used to have a lot of

interruptions, but not so much lately. At times it is exceedingly slow.

[inthebrain]

9. MY big thing is not so much the internet

I have to wonder if anyone's ever had a medical emergency and had to deal with no phone service with them.

That's the first thing that goes through my mind when dealing with them.

[babylonsister]

12. I haven't been brave enough to hook my phone up to the 'puter.

I guess I'll wait now, too, even though I did ask for opinions about Majic Jack recently.

And how do you call them to complain if your service is down? Catch 22 there.

[inthebrain]

15. Usually with the cell phone

That's really a pain if you're at the end of the day and the battery is nearly dead. The phone line doesn't really run through the computer but comes out the modem they give you.

I have been looking to see if they've ever been sued over this. Haven't found anything yet. Just a lot of people complaining about the same problem.

[CreekDog]

27. I took the plunge and have Comcast phone service, which is fine unless the net goes down

it was no sacrifice to me because my old service from AT&T was horrendous in my neighborhood, with outages, static when it rained, etc.

[Frances]

2. When the technician set up my Comcast,

both my husband and I could use our PCs, but after a couple of weeks, we could only use one of the PCs. I think Comcast wanted us to pay a business rate in order for us to use both PCs.

[Booster]

3. I've had the same problem with AT&T for over a year. Even

had one of their reps say "Lady, what do you want me to do?" I said "since you're help is useless, I want you to hang up the God damn phone" and hung up on him. Every time I call it's the same "we're working on the problem". I'm right in the middle of L.A. and only have about 4 options myself, and reviews for all the options are negative. I'm hoping something else is coming soon.

[juno jones]

4. I think they like to choke off bandwidth every so often

just to try to get you to spring for more expensive service, ie faster and more bandwidth.

We'd notice this phenomenon during/after long internet sessions (usually games) or downloading.

We're on DSL right now and we've never had those problems with it.

[CBR]

5. I have them for cable and internet. During the election CNN and

CSPAN kept going out for days at a time. Weird.

[marmar]

6. I get phone, internet and cable thru Comcast.....

..... initially there were a lot of interruptions but it's been smooth since.

Now as far as Comcast the company......:puke:. But they've got a monopoly on cable service, except for the fledgling AT&T service, in my area.

[EOTE]

7. I have Comcast, my folks have FIOS through Verizon.

I know you can spend a good deal more for FIOS if you load up the channels for television service, but overall, the FIOS service seems a lot more reliable and faster overall. Their service in the 3 years that they've had it has NEVER gone out once. That includes internet (extremely fast, even if you've got P2P or torrent software running), cable and phone service. If I had FIOS available in my area, I'd definitely switch. I hate Comcast with a passion. Like you, I've found it nearly impossible to get refunds for our service interruptions and the only time we get any money back is if we make a service call and the tech inevitably doesn't make his appointment. So I end up missing a day or a half day of work and get $25 in return, hardly a good deal. Also, while I typically get good bandwidth with Comcast's cable modem service, as soon as I start running torrent software, bandwidth slows to a crawl. I don't pay $50 a month for internet just to have my bandwidth throttled for the only application I use bandwidth extensively for. Bottom line is that if FIOS is available in your area, I'd make the switch. Fuck comcast!

[Badgerman]

8. ComCast the Microsoft of cable! nuff said n/t

[HopeHoops]

10. Cable "bandwidth" numbers are deceptive.

First, there is the upload vs. download speed. They quote download speeds but try to hide the fact that upload speeds suck. They also try to hide the fact that it is SHARED bandwidth and you'll only get the quoted speed if your neighborhood is at or below the maximum capacity for the line. Then they over-sell the service and during high use periods the Internet goes to shit.

DSL is a fixed rate both directions and the primary determination of that rate is how close to a CO you are (by line-run, not crow-flies). Mine screams. The cable users in my neighborhood are constantly bitching about the Internet and it seems Comcast has at least one van on the street every two or three days - I've seen four at the same time at different houses.

[inthebrain]

11. There are times when I have been wondering about that

That's interesting. So for the internet it's basicly one whole neighborhood on a single line. I live in a neighborhood of about 15,000 people. It's only one square mile though. Not sure how many people have cable internet around here. There are quite a few businesses so that might explain why during working hours the service is complete shit.

[HopeHoops]

18. DSL is plenty fast enough for me.

You do have to be close enough to a CO by line-run and the greater the distance the slower the speed, so there are places where it isn't a good option. If you're in a reasonably well populated area, it is probably a great option. I don't get cable TV (no interest), so Comcast wouldn't even GIVE me cable service if I wanted it - well, not unless I want to pay for the TV shit. Verizon worked out a package that bundles my Internet, phone, unlimited long distance, local long distance, and stuff like caller ID and I'm happy with the rate. I dropped AT&T for long distance and ended up saving money each month. AT&T was charging like $35 whether I made any calls or not (monthly charges and all kinds of taxes, fees, and other things they couldn't explain). The unlimited long distance is a nice feature!

[spanone]

13. comcast here phone & net...no problems

[Midlodemocrat]

14. Comcast user for many many years. Some problems, but nowhere near

the nightmare Verizon is.

[inthebrain]

16. So you had problems with Verizon?

Are they simialar to the ones I'm having with Comcast?

[Midlodemocrat]

21. No, I never did, but neighbors did.

My highspeed has to be comcast because Verizon's upload (at least when I signed on) wasn't fast enough for my work databases.

I had a similar problem to yours when I got Comcast phone, but they ran another line and I've had no issues at all since then.

[ohheckyeah]

31. I have Verizon DSL at work and it was a

nightmare. I had an outage at least once a week and sometimes it would be out for the whole day. Hated it.

Comcast has definitely been a big improvement for me.

I had Comcast go down once in over a year and all I had to do was reboot the modem and my computer. I use a router and run both of my computers off one modem with absolutely no problem.

[bikebloke]

17. Comcast Internet only

The only alternative was DSL, but there's a bad card in the central office that nobody wants to fix. I was paying too much for dial-up speeds. Comcast has it's ups and downs. I'm waiting for them to install FIOS in the building. But if they're working on it the same as they are with the lack of heat and hot water, I might be with Comcast a while :shrug:

[me b zola]

19. I have comcast and it is by far the worst service that I have ever had

We have had a lot of problems with interruptions, but that is not even the worst. About six months ago my son and his family moved in with us. He wanted to get separate service because he we have been told that once you split a connection more than 3 times you lose resolution and speed. He likes high def and likes to game on-line which takes a faster connection than we need and he probably wouldn't be able to get with so many splits. So for six months he payed for separate service on a much more expensive service plan. We had constant problems. After complaining constantly that he was not get high resolution tv or high speed for gaming, we asked my BIL who previously has installed cable for a living to look to see what the problem was. The diagnosis was that comcast had only one line running to our house, that my son was not getting any of the service that he was paying for.

Finally they came out and fixed the problems--they also had numerous splitters running off to nowhere--and credited my son's account for the amount that they ripped him off.

COMCAST IS THE WORST.

We are going back to dish network.

[bbernardini]

20. Used to have Comcast for internet and cable. Switched to Verizon for both. Couldn't be happier.

We already had our home and cell phone through Verizon anyway. I, too, got tired of Comcast's ever-worsening internet service, and got tired of the cable going out every time it got a little windy. Haven't had a single problem since we switched. I got the 20/20 tier for internet, and the speeds are consistently blazing, even when using P2P. (My ratios on torrent sites have never been better.) The picture quality on both SD and HD channels is much better as well. Comcast's HD broadcasts were always extremely pixelated and blocky, as they were always trying to cram as many channels into as little space as possible. Haven't seen anything like that with Verizon.

[inthebrain]

23. I paid for NHL center ice one year and constantly had tiling problems

It was a nightmare trying to get them to fix it. They refused to have someone service it and the people at the other end of the line would put you on hold and never pick up the line.

We wound up having to go to their central office here and swith the box. Not too many problems with that anymore excpet for certain channels. We don't watch em anyways but the box came with a remote that never works. The other remote we have that does work constantly auto selects channel 3.

It's so ridiculous the problems you have with them. I have to wonder if more people has more choices if they would stay in business.

[woodsprite]

22. Used to have it, but switched due to

mainly cable tv issues. We'd pay for a 'pay per view' and we'd have the blue screen of death come up, or we'd see it but it would have no audio, the picture would be pixelated or just 'stop' and freeze.

I did like their internet better, but we went with Verizon FIOS. We have issues now with the wireless in our house working intermittently. Works fine if you plug in. BUT, the pay-per-view and cable hasn't had one bit of problem since installation.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Internet and basic-basic cable only

I have Vonage's super-economy plan for phone, since I don't even come close to using the phone for 500 minutes a month.

No problems except having to reboot the modem every few weeks.

[soothsayer]

25. cable's fine, internet is ok (but modems are crap) and phone is really sketchy

As long as you don't remind resetting the modem every week (it craps out once a week it seems) internet works ok. But if you are relying on a cable phone instead of landline....I wouldn't.

[pnutbutr]

26. left comcast about 10 years ago after they lied to me

Had a static IP on cable internet for 3 years. Reinstalled windows and it would not connect. Called support and was told I never had a static IP. When I asked how I had been using the same IP for three years they told me I hadn't. I had them transfer me to customer service dept so I could cancel right then and there. Then I received a bill for the cable modem I owned.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

28. I use them for all 3

We can't get DSL here, so for years we've used DSL Cable Internet. We had AT&T for our phone and DirecTV for tv.
During a promotion we signed up for "Triple Play", which switched our phone and TV service over to Comcast as well.

We've cut our bills about in half by combining them, which is great.

We barely use our home phone so I haven't noticed an issue there.

As for the TV, we certainly lost some HD programming -- in this area anyway, DirecTV has more HD programming -- but we gained the ability to use a TiVo Series 3 box, which is amazing: we get Netflix and Amazon streaming, as well as YouTube, direct connection to our computers for music and photos on the big TV, as well as all of the great features of a Tivo.

So...overally it's a win for us. We've had to have Comcast out here once because we had a lot of internet failures, but they gave us a new modem and it's much better. As with any monopoly, their service is lacking, but DirecTV wasn't great either.

[RebelOne]

29. I've had Internet and cable with Comcast

for the past 6 months. So far, no problems.

[ohheckyeah]

30. I have Comcast for

Internet. It's pretty much my only option unless I want to go back to dial up. I have found them very responsive to any problem I've encountered and the problems have been few and far between. Maybe because of this?

BRISTOW, Virginia - She was fined and got a suspended jail sentence, but Mona Shaw says she has no regrets about using a hammer to vent her frustration at a cable company.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21379720/

I had a special price with Comcast and when the year ended the price increased dramatically. I called them and explained I was unemployed and they gave me another special for 6 months. They've done that twice for me.

As I said my choices are limited. The only other options for me are satellite and that's pretty expensive.

[Scout]

32. comcast for cable ... no real problems, a couple small glitches

but otherwise A-OK.