another Comcvast vent

[Larry Blanchard]

Last evening, one of my neighbor's pine trees shed a large branch which ripped the Comcast cable off the wall of our house. Still works, but it's laying on the ground.

So this morning I called Comcast. First I got a voice analyzer that asked me to state the problem. I responded with "cable down" - got "do not understand" - tried "cable on ground" - same response. After several iterations I hit zero and got another recording. This one told me how to reset my cable modem. I waited patiently through that one, thinking I'd get to a human afterwards - no such luck - a recording that told me how to reset my converter box.

By this point I had steam coming out of my ears so I pressed zero and held it down for several seconds. After another "this call may be monitored" response I finally got to a human being - in India of course.

It took a couple of tries but she finally understood what the problem was. Then I was put on hold for 2 minutes while she contacted the local office to find out when they could come out. Tomorrow at 9:20 AM she said they'll call - not come out, just call - we'll see.

If I were to walk into a Comcast board meeting with an AK47 and spray the room, there wouldn't be a jury in the land that would convict me :-).

Just in case the NSA is listening, I'm kidding. I wonder if they trigger on words like "AK47"?

P.S. I did take the "customer satisfaction" survey. You can imagine my comments.

[Keith Nuttle]

Service from ATT is no better. A couple of years ago I was trying to get a new connection made in a new house 700 miles from our current home. For various reason I could not be at the closing and had to initiate the Security service which require a telephone service at the closing for the new house. I was on hold for two days a total of 12 hours before I final got through to a person. All of the time I was on hold I heard their recorded message about the award winning customer service.

I suspect the award was for the worst customer service in the business. They never sent me a questionnaire, so I did not get to tell them what I thought of their service.

[Leon]

So what do you expect from a company that has a total employee count of

13? :~)

Now we know how third world countries operate.

[Lew Hodgett]

----------------------------------------------- That was your first mistake.

The only response you ever make is "OPERATOR".

After about the 4th or 5th "OPERATOR", you will be transferred to a people.

May not solve your problem, but you have the satisfaction of getting to a live person.

Lew

[dadiOH]

Have some cookies and milk...you'll feel better :)

[clare]

They are all the same. Up here it's Rogers Cable. Internet service. 5 dedicated IP addresses. Big office.

Last Friday we had a bad electrical storm. Killed a student at one of our local universities. It also killed our $8000 Watchguard fire-wall/router. Got a replacement shipped over the weekend - arrived Monday Afternoon. Installed it and it worked - but old firmware. Updated it Wednesday - after update and reboot - no internet. Called Watchguard. Everything checked out perfectly but still no internet. Called Rogers - modem off-line. All the lights said it was working - a litteral case of "lights on - nobody home". They tried all kinds of tests to see if they could "wake it up". It was DEAD Said they would have a replacement modem out between 5 and 8 PM and would call before they came. I called at 7:45 - and they had no service call booked. Said they would be out between 8 and 11am today - finally showed up about

2:45 PM. These big companies somehow make "service" a four letter word.

[Swingman]

No matter, they're all "automatic assault rifles" to the press/government.

[Just Wondering]

And if you're transferred to India, tell the rep his thick accent makes it hard to understand him/her, and demand to speak with someone you CAN understand. Keep demanding until they put someone on the line you can understand.

[Lew Hodgett]

-----------------------------------------------

Lew Hodgett wrote:

---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Just W> And if you're transferred to India, tell the rep his thick accent

------------------------------------------------------------------ Yep, the old I'm sorry but I don't understand you, may I please speak with your supervisor?

Works for me.

Lew

[krw]

That's not quite right. I heard one teleprompter-reader whining about someone with an "assault shotgun".

I saw a T-shirt that I wanted to buy but my wife put her foot down. It had a picture of an AR-15 with the words "is it because I'm black?" printed underneath.

[jo4hn]

...

Dish and I have a good thing going. My favorite story has to do with our previous home, at 7K feet elevation in SoCal mountains. The first year we were there, our first forest fire evacuation occurred. We returned home after a week and a half to no power and no cell service. Started up the generator and turned on the TV. We were getting local channels via Charter cable (no cable box) as the ISP. Cable was down. SWMBO wanted to watch her reality tv show on a local channel. OOPSIE. "Never fear!", shouts I. I called Dish (backup land line), asked for local channels, and inquired as to the timing. "They should be there now", came the reply. Problem solved.

This and other problems have been easily solved. It may take an extra day to get liveware to my site, but that is SOP. Oh and I don't work for DISH, etc. mahalo, jo4hn

[Swingman]

JarJar Biden?

pffft:

Love it.

[adsDUMP]

And when they do get there, they may not know what to do.

My next door neighbors still have Comcraptic. There's a service truck there almost monthly - several times there have been as many as three Comcast trucks there at the same time.

We have underground utilities and the neighborhood is about 40 years old. Care to bet that even good coax has a limited life when buried?

The last time I cut the lawn, I noticed there was a new "device" in the grass behind the cable pedestal at the corner of the yard. Looks like they've decided to put an amplifier in-line at the pedestal instead of running new cable under the neighbor's driveway.

For us, U-verse is a great improvement over Comcraptic. No more near-continuous pixellation in the evenings. No more channels just "going away" for minutes/hours.

[Richard]

All that kind of monitoring is done by software, not people.

Messages with "sensitive content" are flagged, but there are squillions of those messaged flagged ever day.

My bet is they correlate across several messages before the flag changes to a high enough priority that a human is notified.

So maybe a single message containing NSA, AC47, trigger and automatic assault riffle would get reviewed immediately.

Or maybe not.

If they raid you and haul you off, would you mind sending a last note so we know?

[Richard]

Gimme link.

I want one!

[John McCoy]

Larry Blanchard wrote in news:lusr6t$vo2$ [e-mail]:

I think you meant to say you called Comcast tech support.

I'll let you in on a secret (don't tell anyone I told you). The way to do it is to call the number for signing up for new service. You'll get a person, not a voice response system. Ask them to transfer you to someone in tech support. Usually that will go direct to a person.

John

[Larry Blanchard]

Nobody called, so at 10:30 I tried the on-line chat. Took half an hour - I suspect the rep (still overseas) was typing the responses to several people simultaneously - or was looking up the right response in her script.

Half her typing was "I apologize" or "I'm notating that". I finally told her the word was "noting". But the important thing was that she informed me that the normal response to problems of that type was 7-10 business days! Someone would call me today or tomorrow (no more "at 9:20" or the like) to set up the appointment.

@#$%!

But not 15 minutes after I finished the chat, the local Comcast office called and told me the service guy would have been out tomorrow but would be out today! He was, the cable is back up, and there was no charge.

Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!

[Puckdropper]

Richard wrote in news:BomdnTJx_oSip47JnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

We promise we'll take good care of your stuff... That would make a fun series of posts: Reviews of someone else's tools: Swingman obviously wasn't joking about his Festool Sander and vacuum. It shows obvious signs of use, but I agree with Leon that it makes sanding almost fun. It did a great job cleaning up the black paint on the Cherry I found.

Puckdropper

[Markem]

I believe John Browning made one for the Marines in WWI.

Mark

[krw]

Here's one: