08-31-2010
August 31st, 2010
Uguu, long time since I updated this. I guess it’s about time I tell you about my ISP woes. Get ready for a really long post.
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First, through out my senior year in college, AT&T’s internet speed has been steadily dropping. At the start of the year, I was getting about 2.4 Mb/s (~250 kB/s). Toward about April I called since I was getting about 1.4 Mb/s out of the possible 3 Mb/s that we’re paying for. Apparently, their excuse was that my city was one where they didn’t have good lines at. They then suggested that I downgrade to a max of 1.5 Mb/s. I figured that was a good idea, since I was getting about 1.4 Mb/s, I would get my money’s worth, right? Wrong. After the service reduction, they dropped my speed to about 0.4 Mb/s (~50 kB/s) which is unusable and was down like 85% of the time. I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore and called Comcast.
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Now here is where the Comcast ordeal all began. I called them to get an inquiry and got a deal for $45/mo with 12-15 Mb/s (~1300 kB/s average) with unlimited local + long distance phone. Good deal right? So I decided to wait to consult my dad about this. I called back when I got the go ahead and the new guy tries to get me with the same deal, but for $60/mo. I called him out on it and he decided to give me my original offer. By then, I already thought it was shady. However, I figured I needed the internet, so I let it go and made an appointment with the technician to set everything up. The representative tells me that he’ll be here from 07:00 AM to 08:00 AM and he shows up at 08:00 AM at the wrong house… Go figure. The rep on the phone somehow mistook a 4 for a 9. How? I don’t know. They’re not near each other on the keypad nor do they sound alike… Anyway, he wants to reschedule, and I told him that I specifically drove 90 miles back to my parents house to oversee the installation. He calls his boss and he gets the green light to do it as long as I call to make the address change ASAP. He installs it and set everything up and all is well until I make the address change. Once I made the address change, I headed out to buy a new router since my old crappy one broke. When I got back, my internet service was down but my phone was still up. I was confused so I called Comcast and they told me that it was down because of the address change and would be back up by midnight. Because of this, I decided that it was time for me to head back up to Davis so that I could get to work. It was about half an hour before rush hour, so I figured the traffic would be all right. Well, the traffic was horrible and I missed work because of that and I was back in Davis so that I couldn’t be at my parents’ house to take care of the Comcast thing. Midnight arrives and I call my dad, who are still awake, to check to see if the internet was working. Nope. It wasn’t. So the next day, I have a friend come over to reset the modem since I figured that once I reset it, it would work. (I couldn’t ask my parents to do this because they didn’t know how / understand the terminology.) That didn’t work. I called Comcast and the rep told me that it was on Comcast’s end and that they would resolve it in two hours and he would give me a call once it was done. Well, the call never came, but it was fixed after the two hours and a modem reset. So after that, I tested the phone lines and everything and it was all working. And then I thought my ordeal with Comcast was over…
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5 days later, I return to find multiple bills with one to my correct address and one to the wrong address. In addition, there were various other info letters (and duplicates of those to the right and wrong address). It turns out that they opened a new account for me with the correct address but didn’t close the account with the incorrect address. At this point, both services were working, so I figured that I would go on Comcast’s Live Chat to sort things out to make sure I don’t get double billed. I get on Live Chat and chat with the rep to get things straight and after an hour of having him explain everything, I was satisfied and believed everything was resolved.
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2 days later, I get a call telling me that the phone was down, but the internet was working. I hop on to Live Chat in Davis (90 miles from my parents’ house) and the rep immediately tells me that it was on their end and that it would be resolved within 72 hours. Since there was nothing I could really do at this point, I accepted his word and went on with my life. During the 72 hour period, I periodically checked to see if it was resolved by calling the number and seeing if I got a ring.
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72 hours later, I get a call from my dad informing me that BOTH services were down. I decided that I would have my parents wait a few more days for me to return to their house so that I could deal with it. I return home and noticed that the internet required activation, which would force me to install bloatware. I pull out my junky laptop and attempted to take care of that only to end up with a “404 Not Found” error. I reboot the modem and it resolves this issue. I run the activation and install the crapware on my laptop and restored the internet. The problem with the phone service remained. I hopped on Live Chat once again and attempt to resolve it with the rep. 3-4 hours later of over 9000 various tests, it is determined that the problem is on Comcast’s side, but she could not access it. She then opens a ticket to have a technician to access that information so that the issue can be resolved. She told me that the ticket will start immediately, but not to expect anything before 72 hours and would not give me an ETA. Before we ended the chat, I asked if it was possible to be reimbursed for the downtime and she gave me the generic Comcast number to call.
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At this point, after noticing the rep reconfigure my phone modem multiple times, I had a good idea of what was wrong. I may be wrong about this, but I think that the Comcast mainframe assigns a code to modem for the phone and another code for the internet. If the codes match, it works. If it doesn’t match, it doesn’t work. So since I had the address change, the codes changed on the mainframe, but not the router. Because of the situation I went through, I believe the codes were not changed at the same time, so that I had to resolve the issues separately. In addition, by observing the actions of the rep, I can tell that they had access to the internet code + both codes to my phone modem. However, the rep didn’t have access to the phone code that the mainframe assigned.
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24 hours later, I decide to hop on Live Chat and hope for the best knowing that I was told that I shouldn’t expect anything before 72 hours. After she reviewed the notes from the previous rep, she tells me that she is able to resolve this with yet another reconfiguration of my modem. I was slightly skeptical about this since it didn’t work the day before, but I didn’t have much of a choice but to let her do it again. This time, however, I noticed that the lights for the phone jacks turned on and stayed on rather than going off after a few flashes. I pick up the phone and I finally hear a dial tone. I ran some more tests on the phone line to make sure everything is in order and ended the session with the rep. I immediately call Comcast’s billing department to demand a refund. Unfortunately, the billing department isn’t around 24/7 like the tech support department is.
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The next day, I call again during business hours to demand a refund of some sort for the weeks of downtime and the hours of frustration involved with getting it to work. The billing rep didn’t put up a fight like I thought she would have, but would only refund 2 weeks worth of payment for the downtime but wouldn’t give me anything for the frustration. I decided that I was sick and tired of dealing with them, so I just accepted it and hung up. So now, my internet and phone are finally both working properly.
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In conclusion, this incredibly frustrating experience with Comcast all resulted from a simple address error / change. It’s unbelievable how annoying it was just to correct such a simple mistake, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT WASN’T MY FAULT. Please excuse the poor tense consistency with this post as it is 04:40 AM right now and I’m tired. All in all, I still despise Comcast and AT&T, but in these cases, there are no other decent alternatives.
Unfortunately, her English was nowhere near as good as May’n and Megumi’s so everything went through a translator. The rest of the day that I didn’t mention above was spent going “Excuse me! Can I get a picture of you?” to the cosplayers who I wanted a picture of.
Anyway, here’s my bracket pick.