OT: Comcast vent

[Larry Blanchard]

Had a bit of trouble with my Comcast modem. Had to reset it once or twice a day. Called Comcast and they said they'd been having line problems and it would be fixed shortly. It wasn't.

After 2 weeks or more of this I called Comcast again. Still got India but this time they told me my modem had been obsoleted by their upgrade and I needed to exchange it.

Got on the website and found the only service center was about 10-12 miles away right through the middle of downtown traffic. I thought that couldn't be right so I called India again the next morning. Yep, that was my only choice.

So my wife and I drove up there Friday and found an empty building with lots of construction going on. There happened to be a Comcast exec in the parking lot and he informed us the "new" service center wouldn't open till Monday. He apologized for the mistake.

So we had to go to their main office. Somewhat difficult to get to because of our screwy streets (a river runs through it) but at least no

10 miles the other way.

Arrived to the usual "take a number" melee with lots of people waiting and only 3 of 8 work stations occupied. After 15-20 minutes my number was called and I went to exchange the modem. The woman asked how I was doing and I explained I'd just been on a wild goose chase to a non- existent office. In her best chirpy manner she responded "Well, at least now you know where the new service center will be".

No, I didn't kill her, although it did cross my mind.

[Larry Blanchard]

Had a bit of trouble with my Comcast modem. Had to reset it once or twice a day. Called Comcast and they said they'd been having line problems and it would be fixed shortly. It wasn't.

After 2 weeks or more of this I called Comcast again. Still got India but this time they told me my modem had been obsoleted by their upgrade and I needed to exchange it.

Got on the website and found the only service center was about 10-12 miles away right through the middle of downtown traffic. I thought that couldn't be right so I called India again the next morning. Yep, that was my only choice.

So my wife and I drove up there Friday and found an empty building with lots of construction going on. There happened to be a Comcast exec in the parking lot and he informed us the "new" service center wouldn't open till Monday. He apologized for the mistake.

So we had to go to their main office. Somewhat difficult to get to because of our screwy streets (a river runs through it) but at least no

10 miles the other way.

Arrived to the usual "take a number" melee with lots of people waiting and only 3 of 8 work stations occupied. After 15-20 minutes my number was called and I went to exchange the modem. The woman asked how I was doing and I explained I'd just been on a wild goose chase to a non- existent office. In her best chirpy manner she responded "Well, at least now you know where the new service center will be".

No, I didn't kill her, although it did cross my mind.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I think at least a smack in the head would have been appropriate.

ATT is "upgrading" to U-Verse and now my network printer won't work on the network. Hours on the phone with tech support is fruitless. They sent me a new modem and not only did my printer not work, neither did my phone.

[Just Wondering]

Buy your own up-to-date modem, return Comcast's, and stop paying them monthly modem rental. That's what I did, and because the one I bought was better than theirs, I noticed an immediate and significant download speed. It cost me about $120 up front, but the $8/m I no longer pay Comcast paid for the modem.

[Leon]

When we built our new home in the fall of 2010 our new neighborhood had Uverse and we gave it a try over what we were using, DirecTV. We switched back to DirecTV. And while DirecTV has been in partnership with ATT and in the process of being bought by ATT the actual bang for your buck is pretty reasonable and predictable,

We had every thing Uverse and ended up hating it the longer we were on it. If the Uverse service is down, everything connected, TV, Telehpone, Internet, is down too. If you have a DVR your recorded shows will not work either. The Uverse idea is fatally flawed and operates way too much like cable.

[G. Ross]

I got sucked in on UVerse for internet and telephone for $67/mo. After a year it went up to $92. It worked ok but when the power goes out at night that loud beep every 10 seconds drives one crazy. Getting hold of a live person takes forever, then they have an accent worse than mine. They promised to go back to the $67 rate but it never happened. A&TT is pretty poor.

[Grant Edwards]

And $120 is pretty high end (fancy built in WiFi, firwall and Ethernet switch, perhaps?). If all you want is a modem, you can get a good solid DOCSIS 3.0 modem for $50, and a high-end one for $90. Comcast has a pretty long list of brands/models that they've tested and will support, so it's a very good idea to buy one that's on the list. Otherwise, they might try to claim it's not their fault when something doesn't work.

[Larry Blanchard]

But then I'd have had to buy a new one because mine was obsolete. I probably still would have saved money, but not as much as it sounds.

[adsDUMP]

When we went with Uverse (anything to get away from Comcraptic's TV service), the wifi on my existing router (n) was faster than the wifi on their router (g) so I just plugged my router into theirs (RJ45 cable), tweaked my router's configuration and have had no problems with my one wired network printer or the two wireless network printers. Now have five wireless IP cameras online and plan to add a couple more (all the cameras are wired/wireless capable so could go hard-wired if needed for security).

[adsDUMP]

There's a mute switch on the front of the power unit for the Uverse router we have. Take a closer look at yours.

I have a half dozen other UPS units in the house, so what's one more beep?

[adsDUMP]

$8/month = $96/year. If you replace the modem yearly for $90, you've still saved $6. If you only replace it every 2 or 3 years (much more likely), you have serious steak money ;-)

[Grant Edwards]

Once upgraded from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS 3, things aren't going to change for a long time. DOCSIS 3.0 was released 8 years ago, and some providers are just starting drop support for DOCSIS 2 modems. Some are just starting trials with DOCSIS 3.0.

There's supposed to be cross-version compatibility in both directions across all versions of DOCSIS, so I'm not sure exactly what they're doing that results in "required" modem upgrades, but I have a feeling that having old modems out there is somehow cutting into profits.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------------------- A few years ago changed my mother's LD service away from AT&T in what I thought was a simple procedure.

Checked the next day and AT&T was again my mother's LD carrier.

ATT&T in some far off distant land had "slammed" her account switching her LD service back to AT&T.

Had to go thru the whole process again.

Needless to say, AT&T shall NEVER be a supplier again.

Lew

[EXT]

I get sick of people who jump to the first thing that is not under their control to blame for problems, when they haven't even tried to fix the problem. A few years ago I worked in a large corporation department that was responsible for printing and stationery and photocopiers. Boy, people love to complain about photocopiers, but when you get the serviceman complaining that he cannot fix the machine because we were using the wrong paper -- according to him ONLY Xerox paper would work, and we did not use Xerox paper.

When we signed the contract for about 50 copiers Xerox agreed that we could supply our own paper which we bought from a large paper wholesale company to the tune of over ton of paper per week. The copiers were installed in our head office, remote offices around the city and in other cities in the region. When they needed paper we would have our wholesaler drop ship paper to their office. This same paper was used in all 50 machines with no problems and in all the local printers as well.

One distant office had a lot of problems with one of their copiers, the serviceman was called, and immediately blamed the paper. So the local people who believed him called us and had him speak to us about the "substandard paper" we were supplying. After his rant, we calmly informed him that we were experts in paper, and we even service the Xerox machines ourselves, in our building, and that the paper we sent to the remote office was the same paper that successfully worked in all 49 other machines. We suggested that he service the paper path in the copier and replace any parts causing problems because the paper was not the cause, or we will have to call the Xerox district manager in charge of service for the region if he could not make it work.

He made it work. Now that I am retired I wish I had such power over the cable/telephone companies as I had over the photocopier servicemen.