Bad = Good
The last 10 days have been hellish around here, electronically. No problems if you want to watch a DVD or read a book, but if you want to work (I work from home, and 100% of my job is online), or watch a download via Xfinity/HBO/Hulu/Netflix/YouTube, you’re out of luck. Our service has been MADDENING. It all started awhile ago, I can’t tell you when any more than I can tell you exactly when a particular mole in the middle of my back might have appeared. But then, last week Ted took our cable box in to the local Comcast store to return it, because even though we cancelled our cable service a month ago, they’ve been charging us for the rental of the box. When he turned in the box, the helpful person asked him how he was enjoying the internet. “Well, it has some problems” he said, honestly. So they upgraded him to their ‘blast’ service (free for 6 months), and gave him a new modem, and that’s when all hell broke loose. Ted became super IT guy. Trying to figure out what the heck might possibly be wrong, trying this or that. Going through online forums that talked about getting your modem and your router to behave with each other, etc. Everything he tried seemed to work for a few hours, perhaps even a day, but then, again, it would all go to hell. The internet was horrid, but even worse was trying to watch Hulu/Netflix/etc. through our XBox. It sucked.
So we called Comcast again and again, trying this solution or that. Trying different new modems. Finally on Thursday morning, the service rep took pity on us. He suggested yet another modem (this one included a router, so if our router had gone south, this would solve the problem), and he also threw some freebies our way. He said our $70 a month internet service would now cost us $50 for 6 months, AND they’d give us free cable TV (no time limit on that…we’ll see if that turns out to be true, but I hope so!). Yes, that cable TV that used to cost us $50 a month is now free. Amazingly awesome, since, sadly, the whole antennae thing didn’t work out for us (we tried, but we only got 3 Spanish language channels, and we don’t speak any Spanish). They were shipping the cable box to us. Yay!
The solution to the issue that he suggested (new modem/router combo) did NOT work. Well, it worked for a few hours, but not consistently. So we called back, and ran some annoying diagnostic tests, and eventually made an appointment for a technician to come out and check the situation.
The same day of our appointment, the new cable box arrived. We tried to hook it up, but they sent one box, and the cable connector wires for a different box. Sigh. Thankfully, the box arrived BEFORE the technician arrived, so he could figure that out, and I think eventually ended up giving us an entirely different box from the one that was sent. He spent about 3 hours trying to figure out our internet issue. The issue that we were having with the internet is not fixed entirely (looks like some cables out in the front of our complex are having issues, yet so far as we know, we are the only residents to have this problem…and we are not the only residents to have the blast upgrade, so I don’t know). However, he found a go between solution, which I am very happy about, because now I can look at my email, and my blog, and I can even update my blog if I so choose. Also, I can look at your blog. And, I can get my work done. It’s a good thing. But best of all, we can now watch live TV again. I’ll admit, I missed it.
So now, our monthly Comcast bill that was about $110 a month should now be about $55 for the next 6 months, and go up to $65 a month after that. I love that. I love saving money, and I also love having some live TV in my house. I missed my cooking shows.
So that is our tale of woe/victory, where without the woe, there would have been no victory. Do you have one? Share?
14 Comments
Rain Trueax
I wonder if there is something going on with the planets as we had a glitch also last week but it involved the phone also. We can’t use cell out here; so we are dependent on the phone line which is also where we get our DSL which generally we are happy with. The phone though suddenly became inferior and no internet. Yet our neighbors had it. The technician arrived when she said she would and once she determined it wasn’t us, she went looking. A company doing work on the ditches hit into the phone cable. She did a temporary fix but not sure if that will be permanent 🙁 It was the one benefit of the dish for Internet– not tied to phone service. It was also though a lot more expensive. Dependability though is important to us also as my husband does consulting work from home as well as going out. Frustrating times.
J
Rain, my company had a lot of trouble with their internet this week, too. I work from home in California, and one of our company locations is in Massachusetts, and they were having crazy problems as well. So perhaps it was the planets. Or construction.
We still have a land line, even though I know we could save $35 a month by getting rid of it. I just don’t want to depend on cable phones (if our internet goes down, then no phone), and I’m not sure how they work if you’re on a wireless router anyway. When the power goes out, would they work? Then there’s the fact that cell phones are just different in how they sound and quality, etc. So I don’t really want to switch to that. I have a work phone that goes through our internet, and when we were having trouble with that, of course the phone didn’t work well, either. Sigh.
Nance
I’m glad you are getting a bargain and your cable TV too. It’s exasperating, isn’t it, when something you are so dependent upon goes kerflooey? Here, we have zero option: only one ISP is available. They can, and do, charge whatever they want, and their service is absolutely abhorrent. So, we cut the cable, but we still have to use them for the interwebs. What you are paying for both is what we must pay just for internet access, plain and basic. I could gurge.
J
Nance, I believe that we just recently got a second option of AT&T for internet here. Always before it’s only been Comcast. And yes, the price we are paying is actually a bit less than the basic internet price, because that’s what we had already, and were paying $70 a month for. It’s horrid. We didn’t even know that AT&T was an option, actually, because every time we’ve looked into it before, we’ve been told, “Not yet.” But in talking to our neighbors to determine whether they were having trouble with their cable internet, it turned out that a few of them have AT&T. I don’t know if it’s any better or not.
I hope that the TV turns out to be free/included in the package they signed us up for. It is what I was told, but you know how that story sometimes ends. I’ll be paying close attention to our bills, definitely.
Nuvashini Devi
That was really frustrating for both of you, and taking such a long time to get it sorted out!
Well you are getting TV and all is well once again. I hate when life throws you these little glitches
J
SO glad our internet is working. That was MADDENING.
V-Grrrl @ Compost Studios
Last year, we discovered that showing up in person at Cox got us amazing deals. We have had cable for less than a year and have negotiated the price down twice. Our internet, phone, and cable are all bundled, and they have upgraded our box and router for free (and installed everything so we wouldn’t have to).
I got frustrated just listening to all you went through. Tech glitches, wherever they are, are so maddening. I’m glad you got it all worked out AND saved money.
J
Interesting about going in getting you good deals. I’ve only gone in once or twice, and not had any kind of deal offered, whereas we have gotten some good deals over the phone, and even on the chat service. They technically rent us the modem, which doesn’t seem like a good deal when you could buy one at the store for the price of maybe 3 or 4 months of rental fee, but in a case like ours, where we had to go through 4 modems to find one that would specifically work, I’m glad we rent. Now that we know which one it is, I don’t know…maybe we could try buying it. I’m a bit afraid of messing up our already fragile situation, though.
MAS
Technology is not always our friend. is it, J? We maintain our land line, too (rarely used yet still costing $65-$75 per month with all the fees and surcharges).
Issa
It’s always funny to me that when you have enough troubles and complain enough times they can suddenly find a cheap solution to keep you as a customer. I have DirectTV and Quest Internet, but I think I need to go back to Comcast for cable.
Ted
It turns out that that the tech identified a problem in one of the boxes that’s not on our property. It was beyond his ability to repair it, so Comcast is sending the “next level” of techs out to fix the problem. The other thing Comcast is doing is doing a system-wide switch of the cable frequencies to one that’s on the lower end of spectrum. They say it will decrease the number of connection dropouts. Plus, they will be able to increase the speed of downloaded information (including streaming services like Hulu and Netflix). From what I understand, the Internet “blast” was supposed to get up about 50mbps, but we need a modem with four channels to handle it. Because one of the lines that feeds our house has a defective channel, we were only getting three channels — which could have been the source of the “broken Internet syndrome” we were experiencing. Once Comcast fixes that line and shifts the frequency, we should be able to go back to the “blast” if we want. Right now, we have a single channel modem that downloads info at 30mbps. It seems plenty fast for the most part. However, I still notice that we have interruptions on Hulu and other streaming services. Nothing like before, but it still hangs there for a good 20-30 seconds every now and then. I can only presume that it’s because of the single channel modem we have coming into the house.
OmbudsBen
OMG–you remind me of what happened to my friend D. Comcast had him driving back and forth to their store and trying cable boxes, too. Which didn’t work. They even assessed him extra fees. He finally flipped and wanted to shut the whole thing down. Cold turkey. Back to books. No cable at all, a pox on all their houses. And they told him he had to call a different department to cancel. And put him on hold.
He was livid by the time he finally got to the person who would pull the plug, and they — gave him a hellaciously good bargain. A quarter the regular cost, for a year. They know people love bargains, and will think about the savings. So, is this why our costs keep going higher? It’s so fiendishly evil, you can just imagine their demonic horns and spade tails.
He signed up. Sometimes I think about complaining vociferously about the problems we have, just to see what happens when I call to shut off service. But you just hate to go there, ya know?
J
HA! Yeah, I suspect those of us who are getting deals cost those of us who are not a bit of cash. Mine wasn’t a cable issue, it was an internet issue. I’m really glad that we didn’t have unscrupulous behavior with extra fees and different departments and all. When I cancelled our cable TV, they were fine with it. When I complained of issues about our internet, they worked to fix it. Yes, it was a pain in the butt, but I’d say that we actually got pretty good customer service. Shocking, I know.
Gina
We just cancelled DISH network because it was a) too expensive and b) we found ourselves pretty much never watching live television any more.
We also had some problems that required a “next level” technician or whatever, and it took about three days to resolve it even after he came to the house.
Glad you got all your connections fixed!