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There’s no secret Comcast isn’t the world’s most favorite internet service provider. Heck, they probably don’t even have the` favor of a few innocent souls who don’t know the difference between dial-up and fiber. There’s no shortage of Comcast horror stories on the internet. We’re not sure why Comcast is so bad, but they are. And it’s about time we put a spotlight on some of the most troubling testimonials you’ll ever see.
This young man was put on hold by a customer service rep. By the grace of some supernatural source he actually waited. On the phone. For 3 hours. No one came back after said time, so he ended up being on hold until their customer service line was closed.
Granted, he most likely would have been able to get back through if he’d hung up and called back (could be a technical error), but it’s still remarkable. Power to those who can wait on hold for 3 full hours and not end up with your phone smashed to bit in the corner of a dark, cold room.
Here’s an hour and change of horrible customer service goodness courtesy of this guy on Reddit. The guy was passed around by customer service reps like a cheese plate at an awkward social gathering:
This fellow’s story in particular is interesting: not only is Comcast showing sings of environmental irresponsibility, but they’re overcharging for service that he didn’t even have. That they failed to rectify their own mistake months after the fact is enough for a grand ol’ face palm.
And the list goes on and on. Granted, there are likely just as many folks who are perfectly fine with the service they’re receiving from Comcast, and you can find horror stories about any fairly large company if you look hard enough, but Comcast’s name is by far the most cursed in the industry.
The saddest part is that despite all the outcries from customers, it appears Comcast hasn’t done a thing to help alleviate some of these complaints over the years. It’s even more startling when you think about the fact that some of these folks don’t even have better options — despite the issues, Comcast is still the best they can get.
It’s a problem that has plagued the American wireline industry for quite some time. Companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have a pretty significant stranglehold on many key markets, and while regional providers and the might of AT&T have tried to test their stomping grounds they still can’t offer enough to put a significant dent into those companies’ market share.
Speaking of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two are about to become a couple. A thing. A conglomerate that we all should be deathly afraid of. It’s a scary thought that absolutely should have you quivering in your boots. As a long-time Time Warner Cable customer for the past 14 years, I think I can speak with authority when I say they’re no different.
Quality of service has consistently declined since the early days I’ve had them. Some days I wake up and wonder if I’ll even be able to sign onto Phandroid.com and pump out articles. Customer service has gotten a bit better, but they still don’t give you the attention and care that a homely regional provider seems to be able to. And let’s not even get started on prices increasing year after year without any considerable improvements in service.
Sure, I could have gone with the only (and I do mean only) viable alternative in my area in AT&T Uverse, but their speeds don’t meet my professional needs, nor does DSL technology excite me quite like a traditional cable connections. Add to that fact that AT&T’s “half the cost of competition” price tag they like to advertise only lasts for the first 12 months of service (after which they become just as expensive as Time Warner) and there just hasn’t been anyone better.
But don’t let Time Warner take that quote out of context in one of their cheesy ads — there’s no one better because there’s NO ONE ELSE PERIOD. I long for the day that the Milwaukee, WI area finally gets a stout competitor that can keep these cable companies on their heels, but until then this is the reality we have to live in.
So yes, Comcast users, I do understand where you’re coming from. I understand the frustration. And as one bad company gets ready to merge with another I’m close to considering internet suicide.
It sucks, and the only thing we can do is to continue to express our distaste unless you’re fortunate enough to live in a market where you can vote with your wallet. Here’s to hoping something like Verizon FiOS or Google Fiber journeys to the rest of the country before Comcast and Time Warner are able to get a devastating death grip on the internet business here in America.
Comcast is definitely bad. We took them to court since they are the only high speed internet provider in our area and they tried to raise our price by 60% last year. Even that didn’t do a whole lot.
It’s pretty standard for a phone call to them to be over 1.5 hours just from holding, transferring, re-explaining your situation, and arguing. If you call back next month after your price has been raised, they’ll claim there is no record of your phone call, and you’re pretty much SOL.
You probably had a 60% discount. If you get an outsourced rep I’m sure it’ll be a headache but ask them for a local rep and you’ll probably have a better experience. Also, don’t call after 5. That’s when everybody gets off work and calls at the same time and you’re guaranteed to be on hold for a long time
Nah, we’ve been with Comcast for more than 10 years now so there’s no left over fancy agreements. They wanted to push us from $115 up to like $180 or 200.
All we have is 1 HD box, 1 HD DVR, Phone and internet. Nothing really fancy on the internet or cable end.
Haha that’s awesome, who was “we” and who won that case? Was it publicized? I’d love to see an article about it.
I have Comcast, and have thoroughly hated them from the word go. Seeing as they are the only internet provider of high speed internet in over 80% of my hometown… they are the only provider with upload speeds quick enough to satisfy my home gamer needs.
One time, I called their customer service, JUST to verify that I hadn’t made a double payment, because their website was screwing up while I attempted to pay my bill. The first attempt, The options dumped me in a billing loop requesting that I make a payment… THAT I ALREADY JUST MADE!!
Then I hung up, called again, and halfway through connecting me to a live agent, the call DROPPED ON ME!!! Hung up!
I was furious at this point, and nearly broke my phone attempting to redial.
Went though that infuriating answering machine crap again until they FINALLY got me to a live person, who confirmed that I’d paid only once. After I reamed him about the machine… which wasn’t his fault i’m sure, but to have to call three freaking times just to find out something that simple… It’s ugh.
Point being, I hate Comcast. And I hope and pray Google fiber someday comes to Salem Oregon.
Try yoga I hear it very relaxing…
Just because you’ve had stellar customer service with them doesn’t mean everyone else has, dear.
I’m glad you have places you can look for alternative good fiber internet, others however, don’t have that luxury.
They are a monopoly in my area, so there is no alternative to Comcast.
Here’s a little tip next time you have a problem with comcast don’t bother talking to some low level employee , ask to be conected to Retention and that you are terminating your service, I’m sure your problem will be solved and if you say the right things might even get a 25 dollar credit , just a thought……..Have a Nice Day..
Why not check your card online to see if there were two pending charges?
Paid with my checking account information, which can take days to post to the account. I even checked bit with the mobile app but no information was posted so I had no alternative but to call to make sure.
Oh, I hear you. Honestly, it might be easier to use the debit card instead since you get an immediate response if it went through or not. Also if they did charge you twice, the credit card gets a faster refund than an electronic check and there are no returned check fees if it overdrew the account or any other check related failures happened. Hope it works better for you in the future.
And dont forget pay a fee for using said debit card…
Until recently I only dealt with my Comcast Internet account when I had to make changes (which I avoided if possible) and when I had to pay the bill. Lately, however I’ve had to reboot my cable modem and router more and more frequently as I’d lose DNS or connectivity. If I’m going to have to deal with frequent network failures my relationship with Comcast is going to get seriously scary.
I have to disagree with most of your assessment of comcast, I’ve been with them for 15 yrs , no issues whatsoever, I get excellent internet speed, average 75 down 30-up, I call every six months and they Seam more then happy to change plans or even give me a six month discount, as a matter of fact I just did it Friday, and got 30 dollars a month off my service with no changes to my services, I also find comcast representatives very professional, and timely I’ve never waited longer then 10 minutes for An agent, so am I the only one on the east coast that’s happy I don’t think so. I’ve compared what I have to Verizon at least 10 times only to find out there would be less then a 5 dollar difference per month, so I guess I’m sorry you do upset with comcast, I personally couldn’t be Happier.
You must be the entire world that is happy with comcast.
Well I’ll say this in response, I have 4 tv”s on the x1 platform, 2 laptops , 3 tablets , 4 cell phones when at home we use WiFi, all with zero issues , very fast internet , for 156.00 a month including taxes, I can switch to Verizon any time I want I’m under no contract, and I also have 3 Chromecast, so you let me know if you find a better deal and I’ll bee more then happy to switch…peace ,Happy Labor Day
That’s crazy. No contract. They clearly treat customers differently based on who they can choose from or if they have other choices.
I have AT&T here and yes it’s slower than cable, but I pay $35/ month and i have no contact of any kind. In fact, their advertising out here (South Bend, Indiana) highlights their “cancel, upgrade, downgrade with no penalties
You’re the exception, not the rule. Now have a cookie you special snowflake.
Or maybe it’s just because I am professional and polite and know how to speak when on the phone……….Buttercup
You’re from Philly, I’m surprised you know how to use a phone at all.
So now your suggesting that people from Philadelphia are not intelligent, well that just speaks volumes about your own maturity level and education, and yes I’m very proud to be born and raised in Philadelphia, you must have no life and be really bored Goodnight Buttercup’…
Been having intermittent problems with the service. Sites would go offline for me but others would be ok. I even tried to get onto Comcast’s site via my cell with the wifi turned off and couldn’t get on Comcast’s site. Talked to the rep on the line, typical Comcast response of it’s a problem with your equipment, we should reboot it. Told him it was a problem with Comcast’s DNS server. Kept insisting that I reboot my equipment. I told him I did all that already. He kept telling me that there is no service outages in my area. Told him I’m telling you you guys have a problem and he should get level 2 tech or NetSec to do something because their network is screwed. He went quiet, i hung up on him. I changed my router to use opendns servers and have not had a problem since. Comcast is just incompetent.
I’d honestly think there’s another underlying issue. If there was an issue with the DNS server my guess is the issue would be more widespread. Glad to hear its working though
There is a reason we switched over to using Google DNS at the router level instead of dealing with Comcasts DNS. Around here its either Comcast or dialup/saterlite internet. Rather have the 20/10 we are getting from Comcast then either dialup or saterlite the Latency of both would just kill any gaming/streaming I do.
I will say that within the last month or two my service has been pretty good but before that it has been inconsistent for years. I would switch but the fastest I can get with uverse is around 25Mbps where as with comcast I get 120 Mbps. And yes, their customer service sucks big time, I hate calling them for anything.
I forgot about the merger maybe the billing dept already merged seeing as last month I completely gave up. They disconnected my Internet I called to see how much they told me $86 my plan was $45/month that Friday when I got paid it was $250 to reconnect. Yeah they can go f#@% themselves with that bs hello fios
After reading these stories I can whole heartily appreciate my regional Cox service. I’m paying about $92-$97 a month for basic cable and 75mb of speed. Free upgrade (apparently) on October 1st to 100mb. Got an ouya and XBMC, 3 Chromecast and the right apps and I’m saving over $90 a month compared to 6 months ago for half the speed and a lot of unwatched channels. The savings in one month paid for the 3 Chromecast. Another month and I paid for an ouya at GameStop with enough to pat for all the apps I use. Now I’m just waiting on an official Android TV box as my Revue has seen better days.
We dumped comtrash for Verizon FiOS 4-years back, and it has been such a huge improvement. Comtrash frequently has service outages, and our digital phone would cut out all the time.
My FiOS cut out all the time when I had it and my Comcast works great. I’m sure different people get different result
“deathly afraid of” — do you hear yourself? Even if TW and Comcast disappeared entirely, life would certainly go on just fine.
I have a comcast horror story. Last year I moved and used their “moving hotline.” The moron from India who answered cancelled my service instead of transferring it to my new address. The entire point of the moving hotline is to transfer service not cancel it. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal except that they deleted all my email addresses in the process. My main email address I had been using for 11 years. It took me 2 months of fighting with them on the phone to finally get that email address back.
They’re a terrible company but are the only high speed internet cable company in my area so I’m stuck with them.
I’ve got a story also. When I just moved into my current apartment, I decided to get the Comcast triple package. The hd tv looked amazing, phone was good and my internet blew. I couldn’t even watch Netflix on the lowest quality and a speed test showed I was getting about 1mb/s.
I called many times with hold times up to an hour. I wasted my 4 day vacation trying to get them to come fix the problem. I finally got a guy to show up, he changed my modem/router and it didn’t fix anything. I ended up cancelling and getting a refund. I hate them.
At least you live where a major cable company cares to do business. Until last year, our cable provider didn’t even show up in the provider lists for most customizations. Their boxes have never been heard of by the folks who do the apps to control tv from your phone. Opening multiple tabs in a browser means that 2/3 of the time, all you get is “unable to connect”. An image heavy page means I get to play a quick game of free cell while I wait to see the pix. Video’s always buffer, but now that they have upgraded our service (to up to 15mbps) I can listen to music without pauses. I guess everyone else in town is running off our coax line before the bits get down to our end.
even with billions or dollars their CS still sucks eh?
glad i don’t watch TV anymore..
Recall that they also provide internet service, which as the article states may be your only option unfortunately.
These stories make me appreciate the fact that I live in Kansas City where Google Fiber is being whored out! Time Warner is shaking in their boots right now and they are offering bottom of the bucket prices trying to keep people to stay… But to no avail! When you can update 3 to 4 apps on your phone in under a minute and I’m talking about all of them, when a Blu-ray movie takes a couple of minutes to download or Netflix is completely loaded before you sit on the couch speaks volumes! You get a terabyte of storage for your dvr and can record 8 different shows in HD and still watch TV in every room with no interruptions… Or you can opt for the Internet only option pay a one time fee of $300 for install, break that fee up over the course of a year and pay nothing else for 7 years after that! Why would you stay with said companies that offer half that and charge more knowing they can do more but won’t because they know they have a strangle hold on the market. I’ll watch paint dry or grass grow before I ever give time Warner or comcast anymore of my coin…
I’m moving to KC.
Come on!
Must be nice. I’m in Lawrence and Google supposedly came here quite some time ago, but they did not exspand across Lawrence, just near the campus. Would be great if they would expand more, and quickly.
Doesn’t surprise me. Verizon has a promotion in conjunction with Comcast. If the two of them, along with Time Warner, corners the market, I shudder to think what would happen to the Internet, cellular service, etc.
Verizons customer service is not nearly as bad as Comcast.
I’m happy with my $60 to Cox every month. They haven’t really given me a reason to complain. Consistent speeds, no major downtime/outages. My only beef would be their Techs assumption that all of their customers are technologically ignorant. When I send you a trace showing that your network is dropping my packets to another server, fix it.
I hated customer service when I had to call them. Sort of bitter sweet when I left college and had to go back to Comcast…
“Companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have a pretty significant stranglehold on many key markets, and while regional providers and the might of AT&T have tried to test their stomping grounds they still can’t offer enough to put a significant dent into those companies’ market share.”
I’m pretty sure all these companies have some major agreement to not really compete. U-Verse was expanding in my area for a while, few years down the road they stopped ALL expansion. There’s people here that have a neighbor with the service, but they themselves can’t take advantage!
I can’t wait till Google hits up major metropolitan areas, we need them.
I will happily suckle from the teat of Google. You’re not just paying an awesome company for 1000x better service – and really, a room of angry baboons with telephones is a significant step up from Comcast “support” – you’re paying for the deep, profound satisfaction of humiliating Comcast. Let’s bleed them dry, one city and fed-up customer at a time.
Sir that is an insult to angry baboons everywhere…
As soon as Google fiber appears in my area, I’ll probably jump like a bean.
CT is also stuck in Comcast’s stranglehold. Sure you can get UVerse in some areas, but most of us are stuck with Comcast or do without home Internet.
I think that this is a job for our intrepid Anonymous hacker team. I think that a concentrated attack on their servers across the US until prices, availability, and service are reasonable is in order.
That and Google setting up and getting their service into more homes will really hit these corporate a-holes in the only place that will hurt them, their bottom line.
I’m happy that if everything goes as planned I’ll move into a region where I’m not going to be a slave to time warner/comcast merger.
With all the Comcast bashing I thought for sure someone would mention their terrible monthly data caps. I stream MLB.tv games daily and use a cloud back-up for my pc. This puts me at or above the 300gb monthly cap.
I guess thats good news for me because I have CenturyLink and there is no way I could download 300gb if I set it to go download straight the entire month!
When I lived in CT for a while, the only option in that particular area at the time for cable internet was Comcast. Having come from a Cablevision-Optimum area that I had since it’s inception, I wasn’t about to tinker with the DSL option that Verizon had, or even -gasp- dialup. This lasted for about 1 year. Between Comcast’s horrible QOS, lack of speed, (Seriously, I was getting about 1/3 the speed I was getting with Optimum cable) and their general attitude that whatever the problems are, they exist on my end, I subbed out their modem for my old Motorola Surfboard modem, that I owned from Optimum mind you, after a degree fighting. The fight being them telling me that there’s no way my own modem, (“Old and incompatible technology” according to the reps) could work on their service, again this is after they’ve blamed my wiring and my computers, and my router… After EXPLAINING TO THEM how to activate a modem, (That A+ certification keeps coming in handy.) the random tech support guy begrudgingly did it, and guess what. Better more consistent service. However in the end, after they hiked the rates to some ungodly level I actually canceled service and went to DSL. From there I lived the rest of my time on DSL till I moved closer to home in NYC where Optimum was an option.
Long story short, DSL was better than anything Comcast could put out and their hardware is either poorly configured or gimped from the shop. Sure the speeds suck, but at least it’s consistent.
Furthermore, the issues at hand are:
-Some people don’t have a choice.
-Those that do have a choice and don’t chose someone else, probably don’t care about the internet and were talked into a triple play pkg because it was somehow, “cheaper”.
-Those who don’t switch were probably intimidated into staying.
Easy fix, get your municipalities to stop signing limited contracts with internet/cable/phone providers. Hell, incentivise competition if it’s possible. It seemed to work well in KC. Here in NYC, I moved from an area that was TW exclusively to an area where Optimum, FIOS and TW are choices. (I’m back with Optimum internet only now, cause, why not?)
Comcast is the worst service experience I’ve ever had and I’ve had to deal with them regarding multiple accounts, both business and personal.
U-Verse is supposed to be fiber to the curb and they sell packages at “up to 45Mbps” where I live. I actually have the 18Mbps package and it is much faster than what I’d get at my job with a dedicated line (well download speeds, upload speeds are a different story). Maybe in some areas that real U-Verse is unavailable, they give you regular old DSL?
Uverse has a couple of different systems in different cities, while technically it is “dsl” vdsl2 running on a fiber to the node (think a couple of blocks not curb)(their most standard setup) is a far cry from the old copper phone line based adsl. They generally offer between 18mbps-45mbps depending on a ton of factors. My problem with them, is they throttle netflix and amazon video like crazy sometimes for no reason. Thats why there netflix speed score fell off a cliff. They also have terrible tech support people if you actually have a complex problem.
I’d have to disagree anytime I have an issue with my uverse let’s say my cable stops working I call they correct the issue and give me a 15$ credit each time it happens also they gave me a lemon cable box and I got through to customer service very quickly they apologized and offered to send a tech out next day to replace the box with a wireless box for no extra cost whatsoever. At times the person maybe a little difficult to understand but they’ve always done an A+ job at correcting my issues and I’ve had them for 3+ years
Uverse was awesome when I first got it, I was one of the first people in my neighborhood/city to get it. The problems started this year which is like 6ish years later. They started throttling netflix during peak times randomly, so even though my speed tests pull 18mbps, when you actually try to use it to watch video the speed would fall off a cliff. I forced them to replace my router with a wireless N router, because my wireless signals also started flaking out, even though i only have 2 neighbors wifi in range (which honestly is like 6 year old technology now, it shouldn’t only be in their most advanced router). Then after fighting with techs forever they finally sent a manager, who decided that the line faults i’m getting must be caused by wiring, so all the coax they ran originally had to be replaced with cat 5(i asked for cat 5 originally, but they only would use coax because it was cheaper). But since the router only supports 4 ethernet ports, and they didn’t want to provide me a switch and run more cat5, they gave me 2 wireless boxes(which are crazy hot even when idle and use 4x as much power). I still get hard faults after replacing every piece of equipment and wire in my entire house. So they call a line technician, he determines the lines are good (well except the part the technician installed 2 days earlier and did a horrible splice on). The line technician tells me my card at the node is ancient, because i’m an early adopter, and it needs to be replaced. BUT corporate refuses to issue him a work order for a new model of card, so his manager comes back and instead spends 4 hours rewiring the lines back on my house’s end of the cable again, even though he knows thats not the problem.
They are incompetent, there were like 50 other ridiculous steps i skipped, but I realized i was ranting. To be fair, I have been getting like a $40 discount+ free internet upgrade+tv upgrade in exchange for singing a 1 year contract w/ their customer retention policy and in exchange I basically gave up trying to get it to work perfect, and sometimes my network goes down, which means sometimes my dvr recordings/tv have 2-10 minute chunks missing. so you know 23.5/7 cable tv lol. o but they also raised there prices like $15 dollars this year, so the discount wasn’t that big.
I also live in Milwaukee no one right now can beat time Warner speeds I’ve been with them for 6 years now but where I work at they have at&t which is very slow compared to my home.
Okay guy who probably works for Time Warner
I have TWC Internet in Charlotte, NC. I love it. I hate Time Warner Customer service, but they are better than the alternatives… (DSL or Satellite). I tried Clearwire and that was a f’in nightmare. DSL is a joke at 3mbps for more than I pay TWC.
The price is awesome as well, but I am in the minority on that front… ($39.99/mo) after 2-4 hours of haggling on the phone per year.
It’s only because of ISP’s holding a monopoly in different areas. It even crazy how its legal… That’s the only reason why ISP’s like Comcast can defecate all over us. If there was acutal competition between ISP’s in the same area, I’m sure they’d think twice before giving us a hard time.
Where the he’ll is the Federal Gov’t? They broke apart AT&T back in the day and now customers are effectively forced into One true broadband provider like Comcast/TWC. Damn it come on Google install fiber and let the American consumer have their freedom of choice.
Wrong direction. Get the federal government OUT of regulating private businesses, and stop granting them favoritism. Let the market decide what succeeds and fails, not corporate whores lobbying for monopolies and oligopolies. That’s how we got AT&T in the first place! Stop protecting these asshats and stop giving our (aka the taxpaying public) money to billionaires.
(After being disconnected three times) the best thing you can say is, “you’re moving out of state” when you FINALLY get to a rep that can disconnect service. Otherwise they’ll send you to the “retention department” for several more minutes of badgering and cajoling. You still have to physically get to the main office for box dropoff (what a sh*t hole that place was while waiting FOREVER in line). I switched to AT&T Uverse and couldn’t be happier: Less than half the price, high data speeds, great installer. But I still knock on wood everyday.
Comcast hired FIVE former congresspersons to patrol the halls of D.C. to further its agenda.
Tell everyone you know–crony capitalism has got to go in the U.S.! No more lobbyists, no more crazy tax code to benefit those who contribute to campaigns, and no more of the government picking winners and losers!
Comcast is one of the most EVIL entities in the U.S. and must be STOPPED!
I’m not going to argue with you about Comcast as a company, but up here in Redwood Valley (Mendocino County) in NW CA they have been awesome for us, good thing as the only other option is 768 Kbps DSL from AT&T, YUCK! We have the Blast Tier, which was just bumped up from 55 Mbps down to 120 down, for free, though I wish they’d bump our upload up from 12 Mbps. We pay $66.95 a month for that, we just have their HSI though, Directv is our tv service, they are a lot better for tv.
I’m not going to argue with you about Comcast as a company, but up here in Redwood Valley (Mendocino County) in NW CA they have been awesome for us, good thing as the only other option is 768 Kbps DSL from AT&T, YUCK! We have the Blast Tier, which was just bumped up from 55 Mbps down to 120 down, for free, though I wish they’d bump our upload up from 11 Mbps. We pay $66.95 a month for that, we just have their HSI though, we have Directv for our TV, they are tons better than Comcast Digital Cable here. This is what we see 24×7
http://stage.results.speedtest.comcast.net/result/615704784.png
This is a very rural area too.
Its crazy, I just moved to a Comcast area from Charter and the speed difference is night and day. I have Comcast 50 mbps compared to Charters 30 mbps and I can say Charter is 100x better in consistency than Comcast. My webpages load up sooo slow on Comcast, in fact I had to go and buy a much better router just to maintain the aweful speeds I am already getting. If it wasnt for the promotional I would def switch to Uverse which is still better once you get the max speed package. F Comcast.
Just FYI charter is upgrading their 30mbps to 60. And keeping the price the same. I just got my upgrade last month and the doubled speed is very noticeable.
Thanks for rubbing it in!!! lol
Yea well I get 8mbps with CenturyLink! And cant get TV! So there!
Edit: I lied, I PAY for 8mbps but really get 1.5mbps…
I haaaaaate Comcast. I pay for 50 Mbps and for the longest time was getting 200 Kbps.. On a good night it would be 3-4 Mbps. The people on customer support told me just reset the modem and be done with it which works long enough to get me off the phone. Finally I took a screenshot and tagged It with @comcast on twitter. 2 weeks later someone from Comcast reached out to me and sent a technician I thought wow! I’m finally gonna have fast internet again! He replaced my modem and splitter and I was getting 25 to 40 Mbps. I was thrilled and thanked him. He left and 2-3 hours later it’s crap again… Wish I had other options. I heard att is about to start laying gigabit fiber service here in Houston but that may take awhile to roll out.
Long story short. Screw comcast
I had Time Warner back in 2008- It was OK.
I had Verizon ( Not FiOS) it was cool for the first year..and then price skyrocketed a grip!! And I was under contract.
Then, in 2011 I moved and it was either Uverse or Charter.. I chose Charter.
They upgraded their network from 30MBPS to 60 at no charge. Which meets my needs.
Almost every time I call in to pay my bill, they give me discounts or they will update my service to “New World” pricing which means they lower my payments..I went from $99 to $164 to $133 to $124.
And if I wanted ( but im not that cheap). I can always cancel and go restart to go back to the $99 promo price.
Customer Service, in my opinion is great..if something is wrong with my box, technician is out the next day. I’ve had Charter for 4 years…#HappyCamper
To those who do not have the luxury of having options I will honestly keep you in my prayers..Internet is just about a necessity for us and companies take advantage of that. #Sad
They are all awful because there is not enough competition period. They have bribed government officials to the point of being like the old railroad barons. In short we are paying for terrible service because there is no alternative.
For me Verizon Wireless June 2014 I went in with my wife to get a new phone for her and reduce our bill. I was told out bill would go down and I could even get a new phone upgrade as well. So I bought the sales PITCH and changed my plan around to get this all to work.
Next bill arrived, guess what it was HIGHER. So I called customer service and they said, don’t worry its because of the alterations and next billing everything would be OK. I said ARE YOU SURE because I have no trouble taking taking the phones back and getting my old plan back, they said OH YES we are. Month goes BUY and SUCKER!!! I am not paying even more than the previous month. Called customer service that basically told there was nothing they could do. THIS IS BORDERLINE FRAUD. Spent hours of my life waiting on hold to be told this. SO all I can say is BEWARE VERIZON LIES
Oh God.. please let me find a way off Time Warner, please. I pray for and have very few wants, but God, I beg of you, have mercy, strike down the scourge that is know as Time Warner and rise up a better, stronger, more reasonable offering to your children. Amen!
I remember reading an article on Kotaku or Gizmodo….it mentioned for cloud gaming to be lagless and have the ability to compete against the console market, a total of 89 Billion in infrastructure needed to be built nationwide…it sounded like alot….but if highspeed broadband internet was a major national priority, taxing the approx 225million working americans for at least 1-3 years to gather funds would most definately pay for Fiber optics to be laid out across the country….id be willing to chime in my tax for a publicly funded huge project like this…it would benefit everyone…I calculate about 3.57-about 7 bucks from everyones weekly or bi weekly pay would gather more then double the 89 billion. you maintain a very minimal tax rate year after year at less then 1-2 bucks to continue providing somewhat of an emergency fund when natural disasters tear up infrastructure, and emergency repairs are needed. u open up the infrastructure for upstart companies to start popping up everywhere..we would be on par with South Korea and their cheap monthly payments.. but Comcast and all the big time companies would reject this like a cat rejecting a baptism in water…hair standing, shrieking and all..
thats a project that i would gladly pay taxes too…
I was in one of the earliest FIOS areas and switched from Cablevision (Optimum) as soon as I could. My main reason was to encourage competition, not for any expected service improvements or price incentives, which I knew would be temporary. FIOS did have a few channels I wanted the Optimum wasn’t offering at the time (e.g. BBCAmerica), but I can’t really say the service is markedly better or worse.
The local cable monopolies served a purpose 30 years ago, when they wanted to encourage faster build-outs, but it’s long since time to open it up more in some areas. This won’t help everyone since some areas aren’t populated enough to warrant another company moving in, but large cities and suburbs shouldn’t be so limited.
Comcast customer service and the company itself is the worst of the worst.
Can we talk about how terrible DirecTV is next? I’ve always hated Comcast but DirecTV is even worse. I’m currently stuck in an extended contact I did not authorize because they had to replace a broken dvr! I later found out they extended my contract at that time. They claim they transferred my call to a service where I agreed to the contact extension, which they absolutely did not. I have repeatedly asked to be played a recording of this agreement which doesn’t exist, and they have promised to do so, but have never once actually done it.
Actually, we’ve had nothing but good experiences with Directv.
Never had a problem with Comcast but I’ve also never had a reason to talk on the phone with them which I’ve never heard anything good about. Internet stays at about 45 mb/s plus or minus 5 and the new x1 has been the best cable I’ve ever had.
Fiber will rule.
so sloooooow to roll out.
Maybe in urban areas, the rest of us may never see it.
We have not had Internet or cable for over 24 hours. Every time u call the guy in parts unknown says “2 hours”. It’s a joke. Can anyone tell me about dish Internet? We have dish at our hunting cabin n it is awesome but not sure about switching the internet. Anything is better than nothing
The main problem is that governments have granted virtual monopolies to these companies in some areas, oligopolies in others. Until we get competition into all markets, these chuckleheads will continue to suck. I mean, what’s their incentive to do better?
I will say when i lived in new york optimum cablevision was kind of amazing. We got more than the speed we were paying for. Payed for 15mbps for $35-bumpted to $40 after the first year. But we always got between 18mbps-22mbps. We could’ve upgraded to a 50mbps plan as well, but they advised me against it due to my apartments old wiring probably not being able to handle much more than we were getting. Plus optimum natively supports netflix super hd, by allowing netflix to place servers in there substations, no throttling, always 1080p. In fact we often pulled 2 1080p streams, and 2 720p(on laptops) and still had plenty of overhead left over. And in 1 year they only went out maybe 5 times and never longer than 30 mins, and that included superstorm sandy.
I had AT$T business phone and internet for about 4 years (those 4 years were littered with problems with inconsistent billing, being charged for services we weren’t receiving, and poor customer service) until we moved. AT$T moved our phone service to our new location for “free” but required us to sign a new contract in the process. Phone lines worked immediately, and they told us internet would be up in 72 hours. 4 days passed with me relying on my smartphone for all of our internet needs, called AT$T and they said internet wasn’t available at our new location. I called Comcast, in less than 48 hours they had our phone and internet up and working. I then had to fight AT$T to get out of the contract we had signed when they couldn’t hold up their end of the deal. Comcast has been pretty good, had to get them to send the install tech back because of some sloppy work, but other than that no real issues. Internet has been down maybe 4 hours during business hours over the past 2 years, billing has been very consistent, still within about $5 of what it was 2 years ago and still cheaper than our cheapest month with AT$T. I have read of some of Comcast’s evil practices, but I see them as the lesser of the two evils that I can choose between.
I’ll also mention I had comcast way back when for cable tv, not internet, but the original reason I switched to uverse, was people kept stealing cable somewhere upstream of my house, and destroying my signal during primetime (not enough power left at the end of the line). Hopefully they’ve solved that problem in the last 7 years.
#fuckcomcast
Even more ridiculous, before we had comcast, our cable lines were owned by a variety of other companies….including for 2 years at&t(not uverse actual coax cable). They even installed a coax jack in one of my rooms…then got bought out by comcast. Than years later I switch to uverse, and at&t refuses to want to be responsible for servicing that coax jack, because “they” didn’t install it, mind you it had an at&t logo on it still.
#fuckat&t
tl:dr: Monopolies are evil, telecoms are evil. We need competition….OR we need to nationalize telecoms, eitherway I’m happy. we broke up the bells and the baby bells immediately really consolidated.
I used DSL for many years longer than I wanted to because the only option was DSL, or Comcast.
I’m glad Comcast will be selling my local TWC market to Charter if/when this goes through.
We’ve had okay luck with Comcast. Only had one run-in with them over the phone when we moved. Two separate people quoted my wife a price for Internet that we agreed to. When we got the bill it was a lot higher than the price we agreed to. My wife called them and after three hours of arguing they basically told her too bad, the two separate employees that quoted a lower price were both wrong.
That being said. Never had trouble with speeds or billing. I returned our rental modem to a service center with zero trouble and they took the rental price off of our bill immediately after I purchased our own modem. I made sure I got a return receipt and then made multiple copies of that.
Now I use the chat system when contacting Comcast because there is an option to print out the transcript for my records.