Up Yours, Comcast Cable!

i live in san francisco and have been a reluctant comcast cable customer for over four years. before then i was a customer of at&t broadband, a company comcast purchased in order to bolster their stranglehold on the bay area cable business. [indeed, today very few companies in corporate america actually earn their customers; these days most companies just acquire customers by buying other companies.]

i live in an area where comcast really is the only choice, so they do in fact have a monopoly in my area. i can't get at&t u-verse, and the building i live in doesn't allow satellite dishes.

over those four+ years i have seen the cost of my comcast cable bill increase by more than 35%, with no corresponding increase in value to me.

• better picture? no. the damn thing is still pixelated at times and the signal is interrupted more frequently than it should be. we're talking several times an hour.


• better channel lineup? not for me. i still watch the same ol' channels i have been watching for the past several years.


• better customer service? not on your life. that's the motivation for this blog entry. read on.

over the past several months i realized that I don't watch many of the channels i'm paying for. so I decided to downgrade my service and save a few bucks. no big deal, or so i thought. here's a chronology of events:

[wed 05/27/09]
about noon i called the comcast cable customer service line. i waded through their automated phone-lady system and i pressed the digits to indicate i wanted to downgrade my service. i got connected to jasmine. jasmine is in the retention department, where they try and get you to not abandon comcast.

as near as i could tell i wanted to move from my current 'digital gold package' (which they no longer sold) to the 'digital starter' package. but their website didn't contain an accurate channel lineup, so so that's one of the things i spoke about with jasmine. turns out that on their website none of their channel lineup names match the package names, and even customer service can't really tell you the channel lineup for a given package. so if you care about the real channel lineup, beware, because in the end a large part of it is a crap shoot. for example, for package name 'digital starter' the corresponding channel lineup is 'starter video'. i suppose that was an easy guess, but it was a guess, and it goes downhill from there.

so i downgraded to the 'digital starter' package ($59.95 a month). jasmine threw in the starz package for free for 12 months (an $18.99 a month value). at the end of twelve months i could renew it for another 12 months at 50% of the going rate. after 24 months i was on my own. jasmine assured me that the few channels i really wanted to have were in fact included in the digital starter package to which i was downgrading. the net net is that my bill was cut in half and i still got all the channels i wanted.

i also still had two motorola dct700 digital converter boxes. one was included in my rate, and the other was costing me 6.99 a month. so my next task was to return one of the boxes, and pick up two no-cost motorola dct50x digital transport adapters (which comcast says you'll need to get any of their digital channels, and which jasmine assured me would let me view all the channels in my channel lineup).

so i said i would go to the local comcast store and drop off one of the two digital converter boxes and pick up two dct50x boxes.

i thought jasmine was nice, and complimented her at the end of our call.

[fri 05/29/09]
i get to the comcast store about 9:50 am. there's a long line. i wait in line for just over an hour. i turn in one of the dct700 boxes, and leave with two the dct50x digital transport adapter (dta) boxes.

i return home and plug in one of the dta boxes. following the instructions, i call the automated activation line, which informs me that the box has already been activated. i'm getting no signal so i call the technical support line.

N.B.: at this point i should mention that i steadfastly refuse to deal with any support people who are not in the united states. i live here, i work here, i do business here, and damn it i'm going to insist that you do business here, too, at least when you're dealing with me.

i made many many phone calls to the support line and all of them ended up in the philippines or in mexico. i would get a support rep, ask if they were in the united states, and when they were not i would hang up on them.

eventually i got in touch with someone in the united states. his name was frank, in the san jose office. he stated that the equipment i had picked up (dct50x) was not capable of displaying the channels i was paying for, and that i was not getting all the channels jasmine told me i would be getting. (i guess jasmine wasn't such as good rep after all.) a very lengthy phone call with frank ended like this: he was going to (a) add the channels i was supposed to be getting, (b) send me the packaging and ups label to swap out one dct50x with a box that would decrypt the channels i was getting, (c) charge me $6.99 a month for the box he was sending, and (d) credit my account $15 a month for 12 months. i also told frank that if he was able to get a message to jasmine to tell her for me that i took back the compliments i gave her. the net was that i was going to get what i was supposed to be getting at the rate of $51.94 a month: 59.95 + 6.99 - 15.00.

[wed 06/03/09]
ups delivers a package containing a motorola dch70 digital receiver, and the packaging to return one of the dct50x boxes.

i connect the dch70 digital receiver and get no signal. i call the tech support line again (again, hanging up on those not in the united states). i finally speak to a tech named lee in the san jose support center who tells me that the brand new dch70 box i have is defective and that they'll have to swap it out. i ask to speak with a supervisor. i get connected to lynda in the san jose office.

after an ungodly amount of time on the phone with lynda (it's now about 1:50 pm) about all she can do is credit my account for two months' service and "assure" me that a tech will be out between 2pm and 7 pm that same day to fix the problem, and that someone will call before they show up.

7 pm comes and goes and there's no phone call and there's no tech. gee what a surprise.

[thu 06/04/09]
i call lynda. i tell her i'm sick and tired of spending my time trying to get comcast to fix their problem. she says "i've been spending a lot of time on this too." give me a fuckin' break! i tell her that at least she's getting paid for her time. all she can do is to "assure" me [yet again] that a tech will be out friday. right, just like she assured me a tech would be out on wednesday? that's not good enough for me, and i demanded to speak to her supervisor. she gets lisa on the line. lisa says there's nothing she can do. lisa doesn't have a clue what's going on. with regard to what's going on, lisa can't even keep the equipment numbers straight. we review what's happened and the service and the equipment i'm supposed to have and all lisa can tell me is that my bill is almost $70 a month. i end up very pissed off, unleashing a torrent of expletives at her, and telling her to cancel my service completely. (finally, on june 9th, the service was canceled.)

[the end]
the end result is that comcast will not see another cent from me. ever. i don't care if they are the only company in my area for cable service. comcast earns 2.5 billion dollars a year in net income. i hereby proclaim that none of that is mine. i'd rather take the money i'd spend every month with comcast and buy or rent dvds. it's that easy.

i launched into a tirade of expletives against lisa, and i'd do it again in a heartbeat. (what else was available to me?) i only wish i could do it with her face-to-face. not a single person -- not a single person -- that i dealt with over the course of this debacle actually really knew what they were doing or talking about, and no-one would take ownership of the problem. anyone ever heard of follow-up?

it bears repeating: their service doesn't even approach 'great', their service is overpriced, their customer services sucks beyond belief, none of their employees gives a rat's ass about anything, and none of their employees takes ownership of a problem.

hey comcast: i have four of your boxes sitting at my house. i've already spent hours and hours trying to get you to fix your problem and i'm not wasting any more of my time. if you want your boxes you'll have to come and get them. and if you bill me for them then be aware that i'd much rather spend the time in court suing you than waste it directly with you.

to paraphrase a friend: "fuck you, comcast cable!"

p.s.: if you're ever having a problem and need to speak with someone in the retention department, call lynda at 408.201.8500 extension 782011. and tell her i said to whole-heartedly "fuck off".