Comments on: Comcast Internet Problem: Part II

By: Pamela Purnell

Pamela Purnell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:47:39 +0000

Comcast Problems! My line ringing to other numbers – one occassion to my neighbor who has a different number. Incoming messages that come in two or more days late like a cell phone. Received calls that are logged digital 2 to 3 days later instead of one hour or so. Break in conversations from neighbors calls. False advertising of services. Privacy risk. Is it just my phone? Technology failures.

By: Ted

Ted — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:32:54 +0000

Wow this site is great! This will be one of numerous complaints I file against Comcast. I am a really nice person and I could not be any more angry than I am currently. I moved on June 11th down the street and simply wanted to transfer my service over. On the first appointment the technician said he did not have a long-enough cable to complete the installation. I said I have one at the old house and will be back in 5 minutes. He said ok. When I came back, he was gone! I called support, they said the techs have to stay on a schedule but they can reschedule the appointment. The next appointment I was ready for them, they didn’t show up. I called and they said the tech called to say he was on his way and no one responded. I was in a place where I don’t have signal but I would have been home at the appointment time for the entire window. The 3rd time, the guy simply didn’t show. No call, no nothing. I called support and without apology they said they don’t know why nobody came but all they can do is reschedule me. I asked for a supervisor and they hung up on me. I immediately ordered DirecTV and that has been installed successfully, the first time! But still no internet. I made another appointment since Comcast has a monopoly on internet here, and they finally came about 2 weeks later. 3 weeks for the first appointment date I got internet. Then I got my bill and it showed that my request for cable cancellation had not been received, AND they decided to start charging me for renting their modem, which I never did. I called 1800Comcast, and they said it was the wrong department and transferred me to Maryland, Maryland said since I lived in DC I would need a different number, and for some reason I got transferred to NY! They said sorry and transferred me back to 1800Comcast, who finally got me to the cancellations department…after 4 hours of holding and transferring!!! The cancellations department said everything was fixed. Then I got another bill-no changes. I went for the Live Chat and after doing that for an hour she said it’s all fixed hahaha. I just got my bill: $236.10 Nothing has been fixed, modem still on their, no payment credits, no missed service credit, cable still being charged, internet not prorated for June. And some late fees! I just contacted Live Support again. They said there is nothing they can do but a supervisor will be contacting me soon. Yeah right, I’m not holding my breath.

By: crankx

crankx — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:36:49 +0000

So by informing you that you will be charged for a service call if the problem was on your end is bad. I think he saw that your service was working on his end and that he let you know if your equipment was to blame you would be charged. I think you are being over sensitive to what may have been your equipment. I don’t know if you understand that when you are looking at a diagnostic report and it appears there is no problem the CSR must inform you of possible charges. You were being too sensitive and possibly acting like you were a better technician than he was because you knew what the problem was. Maybe if you were such a great technician you wouldn’t have had to call him and would have just fixed it yourself. Maybe the next time you will call you can understand that people on the other end of that phone can only see what is happening at that moment and are trying to help you. They are there for you. Stop being a pain and let them help you even if it involves sending a technician.

By: probs

probs — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:53:09 +0000

my modem is stuck trying to initialize hardware. First time it has gone down. I have the smc router. This sucks having to write from my iPhone.

By: steven

steven — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:18:53 +0000

I called comcast 3 days ago because my phone and internet went out. They said there was some sort of short, and it would be fixed within one hour. It turns out there was no short at all the customer service representitive was just too lazy to take the call. Comcast is a horrible service. Even when it is working I get random ~5 minute disconects. If we had another high speed provider here I would switch in a heartbeat.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:52:38 +0000

I had a similar problem when I went to Comcast business, I upgraded from Comcast home. When I first had it installed it was very flaky. I would get intermittent connectivity and speed. VPN, XBox Live, and Vonage were all terribly affected. I troubleshot with their technicians and we determined it was a bad Netgear cg814ccr Cable modem, which they promptly came out and replaced. After it was replaced I still had poor VPN performance (both Cisco VPN, Juniper SSL VPN) as well as poor XBOX live. All of which worked perfectly with Comcast Home internet service. Again I called and worked with their technicians, they verified the firewall on the Netgear was disabled, but it turned out to be Smart Packet Detection on the Netgear which was causing all the problems. They shut off Smart Packet Detection and everything has worked perfectly since. The symptoms I saw with this were most clear with Ethereal, showing severe packet loss (retries galore) when VPN’d, but clean as a whistle when not VPN’d.

I’m 90% sure it was the smart packet detection causing you issue as well.

By: Dan Taylor

Dan Taylor — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:45:45 +0000

Hey all, Vonage contracts its tech support with Endeavor. I have been a tech with Endeavor and, to work for them, you have to have 2 mil worth of liability insurance, a laptop, cell phone, and a telephone test set. They pay you a set fee per call and expect you to give them 50 miles before they give you any additional compensation (right). Also, they have an online training video, which is essentially a joke. In my area it seems that they are having trouble recruiting and keeping techs (no wonder). I try to help the customer all I can (within reason), but there are time limits because Endeavor does not take kindly when their techs reschedule calls (to spend longer at one site if necessary). All the ‘benefits’ of outsourcing are for the top shelf, and being an ‘independent contractor’ sucks when you add everything up. These companies should go back to basics by providing their tech(s) with secure employment, a van, and proper training, but you (the customer) wind up getting that THEY pay for.

By: Mimi

Mimi — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:53:31 +0000

All,

It is comforting to find others who had similar experience with Comcast. My experience with them has been very unprofessional. First of, the service is terrible and is not stable at all. I am an online instructor and the gateway has led me to cancel my class twice already from home. Customer Service does not communicate that with you and always say that they have sent a technician and have had times when nobody showed up. I have already called support so many times and finally decided to get rid of the gateway and use my own router and their modem thanks to some of you that suggested that.

By: Mike Emm

Mike Emm — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:56:18 +0000

I am aslo having a running probem with Comcast in my condo building in South Florida. This area has always been an issue for signal problems and now in 2 different units off the same tap we have Comcast internet disrupting wireless routers and we have to refresh the ip address to get the service working again. I can only assume that since if you are wired to the connection it stays up it might involve a timeout or wireless vs wired connection feedback that creates the problem.

Mine is a linksys router on a Toshiba cable modem

I think most of my internet problems comes back to poor service and a lack of competition. Call your local city franchise office and make them aware of a chronic problem and they will at least give you better lip service.

By: HMRQ

HMRQ — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:49:46 +0000

Comcrappy is upgrading their format – and, now, my personal webpage doesn’t work . The tech said this is a “national” problem with no time frame for when it will be fixed and then he closed out my trouble ticket! Also, email stopped working – had to change all passwords all of a sudden, and Comcrappy techs would not support Outlook.

By: Paul & Janet Z

Paul & Janet Z — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:12:15 +0000

Talk about big brother … go to be at night and wake up with your internet service changed to a new site that does not work. You would think that before they stuff a change down our throats, they would make sure it works! Well … I’m not waiting, Quest sign us up!

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:19:22 +0000

This issue manifested itself today as I was set up last night with the Comcast Netgear business modem, coming off a residential account. All initially went well until today I was on a conf call on Vonage line #2 and my wife dialed out on Vonage line #1. Next thing I know…both our calls are dead…her call didn’t complete and I got booted off my conf call.

I started unplugging and replugging stuff in…I called Comcast local (Denver) business support and the guy had never heard of anything like this…so I called Vonage and they said “Well, you might not have enough bandwidth.” I was just about to freak out as I saw my entire night being lost to troubleshooting this issue when I came across your post. I immediately called the Comcast sales rep who orignally hooked me up with the business account and was shocked to hear that I had received a Netgear as he said I should have received an SMC.

So, now I wait for the new SMC router to arrive…and hope that it makes this issue go away. I’ll post again with final results.

By: Ben Oddo

Ben Oddo — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:42:39 +0000

I was one of Comcast’s first internet users in my area. I started with the Motorola modem which they provided. I bought a Linksys router, which they did not support. They still had the policy that if you had multiple computers you should pay for multiple IP addresses. Then when they upgraded to DOCSIS 2.0 I went to buy my own Motorola Surfboard modem. I’ve built on that initial set up to include an 8 port switch and WAP (both by Linksys). This setup has been working fine for years but occasionally I do suffer disconnects. Once Comcast admitted that they mistakenly blocked the MAC address of my modem. Since that time, I am skeptical whenever I have a disconnect and call Comcast then, suddenly my connection comes back without me doing anything to reset my modem or router.

My point here is, that you’re better off researching the home networking hardware available and getting your own. It’s a better alternative than relying on the stuff that some salesman pitched to the ISP.

By: Jonathan Flusser (osxdude)

Jonathan Flusser (osxdude) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:44:27 +0000

I am on AT&T Yahoo DSL. Yes, ADSL. Supposedly they have no caps, and their router/modem combinations (by 2Wire) are fully reconfigurable. Fully. Actually, its overall neat that they have the router and modem in one box. They don’t (seem) to cap at all. They don’t flash your router with firmware, as I don’t even think they even can do that over a special phone line. But the connection works, man. It works. The only problems I have right now with that router is that over wireless it won’t assign IP addresses to certain OSs.

I would switch if you can…

By: Jesse V.

Jesse V. — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:16:24 +0000

I to fell for the BS and stalling and after 34 days of excuses and dissapointment I called the (local) main office and in my frustation I slipped with the F word and the ” I’m too busy to deal with a foul mouth” lady receptionist put me in contact with THE business manager. (finally!) Now, after 25 min. worth of phone brawling and taking up his valuable time got me a months free credit and a new cable to the house. It wasn’t the netgear gateway after all.