Girl Geekette

I work for a phone company. I work with DSL everyday. I have worked with networking computers for over 10 years doing repairs, installs and the like - from the phone companies wiring center to the network iitself. Unfortunately this time around, I do not live in the area of where I work. Sucks to be me!

At first, I thought getting Comcast triple play would be a great deal! (Alex, I will take the Wrong Answer for $200 and counting please!)

• I would not be paying the competition for DSL.
• The prices seemed about right.
• I could get it all on one bill for around $100.

or so I thought.

Even before the Comcast Bandwidth cap announcement, I had been having problems with my Cable Internet, Voice and Cable TV. At least 2 calls to Comcast to get our NID outside replaced were never addressed. Of course a technician came, but never knocked. One time my husband woke up just as a technician was leaving but could not catch him in time. As my husband went outside to look, the only change to the nid was it was tied shut. The NID still dangled and wires were exposed.

On average, I have called Comcast tech support about once a month. It started with little things.

• The NID itself (which a technician even pointed out, but had to send the order back for another to replace)
• One TV would work but the other would not.
• Menu time outs on the OnDemand channel and programming became frequent and annoying.
• The Cable programming for our TV would work but not our Internet connection.
• A cable box died (which mu husband took in and had to exchange)

I am almost positive by now, the local technicians know our name by the address when they see it on work orders. From CaTV and internet we upgraded to VOIP phone as well to have a phone and save some money.

It started out fine, but then it seemed month after month there were problems.

We had already had the modem replaced once before the VOIP addition. Then, we had to get a new modem for that. Ok, I can live with that. But then, our internet connection got slower and slower.

Multiple calls to tech support said it was on our side, not theirs. Then came mega outages for the internet stemming from hardware failure an hour away.

More calls resulted in useless dispatches. The technicins that we spoke with - to replace a modem, to replace another modem, and to fix the modem all noted the NID was not good. We even have copies of the order for the NID to be replaced, yet it never was.

The last call was the direct result of the modem going bad. It took a hour on the phone with tech support to acknolodge it was not on our side, but our modem. This was an hour AFTER the technician first told us he saw bad cells coming from the modem. There goes yet another hour of my cell minutes since the VOIP or internet would not work - yet the CATV worked fine.

And, it would be 5 days befefore a technician could get a new modem to us. In the meantime, my husband went and got a modem for the Internet for us at Walmart. At least we had internet connection, but by changing out the modem, we did not have CATV or VOIP for almost a week. Yet, we still had to pay for that week.

When the technician got here, he told us that there had been an upgrade push done to the modems, and about half the people on our block had the same problem. The Internet Connection and VOIP was down but the CATV worked. So, he upgraded our modem by hand. That still did not cover the time we were without service and had to still pay for it though. Because of their upgrade failing too.

Now, beginning yesterday, our modem has started failing again. The TV works, but the Internet and Phone go out. It started with once yesterday. The solution was to unplug everything from the modem, wait till the two lights at the top start blinking and then plug everything back in. Now, we have Internet and Phone too. Well, that is, we did.

Today I have counted 8 times between noon and 8pm that I had to do the same thing. Stop what I am doing (in the middle of uploads to my sites, checking work, working over the internet for a project, websites for other people which I was to be paid for, and my husband working on his online company,) Walk over to the modem, unplug all of it, wait for the battery in the modem to reset and plug it all back in. This can take 10 minutes sometimes. And, when I get service back, I have to start all the tedius uploads again.

Talk about a pain in the ass!

I have figured out I can tell when it is about to happen by running a continuous ping. when I start to see packets drop, I know it is about to happen. That is - outside of the normal 15% of them drop to begin with. When I see 5 or more in a row within 5 minutes, I know it is coming. Sigh.

This is getting expenisve and costing me money. I cannot do my work like this. And, this is on top of slower than normal speeds multple times a day. Supposedly we pay extra to get up to 8 MB bursts down. Keyword is UP TO. Throughout the day, generally I am lucky to get 2 MB speeds down to begin with. And dont even get me started on the 128 upload speed.

Not to mention I called 3 different techs just to find out what the upload speed was - and they could only quote me the download speed - not having a clue on what an upload speed even is much less what it actually was. It took my husband getting 3 different people on the line to actually answer the question of what the actual upload speed is. And then he was told it was 256.

Yet from another call, we have been told it is 128 and yet another said it was 384 and that it was the fastest. I would have thought that might be right if yet another tech had not told us that there was a higher package for upload speeds as well - contridicting the one that said we had the highest. Sigh again.

Enough is enough. I am through with Comcast. I may stick with them for the TV… but the phone and internet are going to be history. I found a deal where phone and internet is even cheaper than the phone and internet together on the “triple play”.

And a note to those who read from the tech support manual and tell the female customer to reboot - it will fix everything becuase it is on her side, not theirs - think again. You might get embarassed quite a bit if it is on your side and the ‘female customer’ actually HAS a clue! Some of us only call in if it is a real problem.Most likely we have already been through the troubleshooting before we actually call - mainly because we know how annoyed we are going to be when we DO call and no one takes us seriously because its ‘a chick on the other end of the line’ so of course it is assumed we have no clue what we are talking about.

It is bad enough that I have to talk to my own customers who think that girls do not know what they are talking about, but then to have that same attitude from a tech support that I HAVE to call into.. (I DREAD calling into becuase I know I will get an attitude), it makes me want to switch services that very moment. I am surprised I have waited this long.

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