Reader “Mr. Pants” writes us with the story of why he canceled Comcast. It’s all the reasons that everyone cancels Comcast wrapped up into one spiffy complaint letter.
Comcast:
- keeps billing him for his old service after he’s moved.
- can’t fix his crappy reception.
- is stingy with service credits.
- misses scheduled appointments.
- is overpriced.
Mr. Pants writes:
So I had Comcast.
Had.
It went like this. Back in February26-March1ish, my wife and I moved into our new home. I called Comcast and asked them to move my service. They told me, “No problem!” and we agreed on a date and time-block. I had taken all of my equipment from the apartment with me (Digital Cable box and Cable Modem). The cable technician showed up at 5:15pm, even though they told me that he’d be there between noon and five. Okay, no big deal, so you can’t get here within a 5 or 6 hour timeblock. Just give me my interwebs.
Fast forward 3 months. I had been paying my bill online using the same email address and password I originally created when I first opened my Comcast account 2 years prior. Suddenly my service is terminated. No TV, no www. Okay. What the heck right? I call Comcast, and they tell me, “Well you’re overdue by ~$300.00″ That’s odd, I think to myself. But you know, maybe I just missed some of the bills and forgot to log in and pay them. So I tell them I’d login and pay the bill, since they charge you a service fee to give a credit card to a person over the phone. The person on the phone kindly transfers me to the tech support department, and they turn my internets back on for 48 hours pending payment. I log in, and note that I’m current, but it will allow me to pay next months bill which is only around $110.
Great. Weird but fine whatever. 48 hours later, my cable goes back out again. Seriously WTF. So I call Comcast again. “Guys what the hell is going on. I KNOW I’m current.” They do some checking. And here’s where it gets interesting.
“Sir, which account are you inquiring about? I have two listed under your name. Location A (Apartment) and Location H (House)….”
Okay what the heck. I ask her, “Lady. I had you move my service, and I had a Comcast truck out in front of my house. Why is my apartment still active?”
“So you no longer live there?”
“No, my wife and I moved. Hence the service transfer.”
“Okay sir, let me close your account here… It looks like it’s all set. Now the matter of the H account. It appears you haven’t paid the bill for this account since it was created in March.”
“Are you KIDDING ME?? I asked you guys to MOVE my service, and you opened a new account in my name? Isn’t that identity theft? And do you not send someone to disconnect the old account when someone moves? And why am I still able to make payments online to that account? And why did you have to open a new account? Couldn’t you just change my address?”
“Sir I can’t access that old account to check anything, it’s closed.”
“Please get a manager on the phone right now.” So I sit on hold for around 15 minutes, all the while pacing around my house. I was Mr. Furious. Except I look like Wash from Firefly. So Mr. Furious with Wash’s face. No no I have it. Wash in Knocked-Up when he says, “Tight!” to the main character chick. His face is all mad looking.
Finally the “Floor Manager” gets on the phone. I politely say, “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, and the screwup is in the system some where but here’s what happened….” And I proceed to explain what’s just transpired over the course of the last 3 months, up to and including the last 45 minutes on the phone with Comcast.
She says, “Sir I’m very sorry about all of this, I’m accessing your old account now, and I’ll credit your new account with all of the payments you’ve made since you opened the new account.”
“Hold up there professor. I didn’t open that account. You guys did. We need to be clear on this.”
“Yes that’s right sir, sorry for the confusion. So I’ve credited your account with all of the payments you’ve made, which should take care of any problems you were having, and your balance is now ~$78.92.”
I said, “Wow that’s interesting. My old account was current, but my new account is somehow over seventy dollars in the red?”
“Yes sir.”
“No seriously, listen to what I’m saying. My OLD account was current?”
“Yes sir.”
“My new account, that I didn’t create and have no login information for, is somehow over seventy dollars in the red?”
“Yes sir.”
“And you’re the manager on duty?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is there a manager’s manager on duty?” This was Friday of the Memorial day weekend. So she informed me that no there wouldn’t be a manager on site until Tuesday. I told her that I was extremely upset and that I would like a courtesy call on Tuesday. I told her the phone number on my account was my cell phone and that they could call me any time.
Over a week passed and I did not hear from Comcast. I finally called back and talked to a gentleman that informed me that the $70+ was for the transfer of service or something. Possibly the new account activation. In any case, I was livid.
I told him to rot in hell and that there was no way that I would pay that after I was already paying them over $1200/yr for their service, and that if they couldn’t handle a change of address, they didn’t deserve my money. Of course, this is after I had to re-explain my situation to the poor guy, which probably took a good 10 minutes.
He apologized and had the charges dropped from my account.
I was pretty pissed, but we had our services, and everything seemed on the up and up. I felt like Comcast should have given me some token of their appreciation for me not stabbing someone through the phone for all of the bullshit, but whatever. So they’re a shitty company. I had my service.
Fast-forward a month. Our digital cable starts getting pretty flaky. The screen is getting blurry (pixelated?) and the sound keeps cutting out. I call Comcast. They tell me there is a known outage in the area and that they’d have it fixed. I ask them if they’re going to credit my account since the service outage is effecting my consumption of said service. They claim that it won’t be a problem. A week goes by, I call back. Same conversation. A week goes by, I call back. Same conversation.
Finally the 4th or 5th week that I call and complain that our digital cable is screwy they tell me that there are no reported issues in the area. They schedule a tech for service. He comes out and replaces our digital cable box. Comcast offers to credit me for the time I called to the time the technician was on-site. The latest call mind you. A whopping $17 credit.
Wow. I call again and complain. They tell me that I could call as soon as I have a service issue. I told them that I did, and that the CS personnel need to do a better job tracking who’s calling.
A week goes by and my digital cable is screwy again. I call. A tech comes out the next day. He shows up at 3:15 after I asked for them to come between 5 and 7pm. He calls me on my cell phone. Great. Luckily I was running errands in the area so I could stop home. He turns on the cable box, and low and behold everything is working perfectly. He says, “There must have been a service outage in the area.” He tightens my coax connections and notes that it was a possible area outage on his call sheet.
Great.
Next. Fricking. Day. My digital cable is pretty much out. Blurry, pixelated. Just ask Zach is so messed up I can’t understand a word he’s saying, but luckily I’ve seen the ad enough to know that it’s about Rain-Fade on the dish.
Last nerve is reaching critical mass.
I call Comcast again. Explain to them that I’m extremely upset. They say that they can schedule a tech to come out. Fine, but put me in touch with your billing department, I want to ask about my service and what I can do to save some money.
So then I talk to billing. I ask what would it take to step down one internet package? I’m paying $45/mo. for 6mb. I don’t really NEED 6mb, and I’ve played games and downloaded stuff on my parents 3mb DSL that they only pay just over $20/mo. for.
She tells me that they have a $24.99 package, but it’s only 768k up/down.
Holy shit. That’s highway robbery. I politely tell her that internet bandwidth, while awesome, is kindof like McDonalds. It’s yummy and will fill you up, but over a certain amount you won’t notice it anymore and you feel shitty regardless of how much more you eat.
Then she says she could save me money by putting me in a Digital Cable package with more stuff for only $80/mo for 6 months. Well holy crap what is it after 6 months? “The regular cost of 119.95 sir.” Oh. So then I’d be at around $170/mo instead of my $120?
“Well… Yeah I guess you would..” She replies.
So I ask her if I can just cancel my TV and keep my internet. She tells me that if I do that my internet service will go up by $15/mo. because I don’t have any television services.
OMG are you serious? $60/mo. for this?
“Bag it. Cancel it all. I am so sick and tired of you guys.”
“We’re sorry to see you go sir.”
NOT. SORRY. ENOUGH. Obviously.
So I have no internet. The DSL equipment should be here this week. I will be back online as soon as I have a dial-tone. And on the bright side, DirectTV has the Big-Ten network. Finally I can watch UofM games again should my wife and I decide to get TV service of some sort. In any case, we don’t pay money to have people treat us like this. Too many people do, and I don’t think they realize there’s a shiny new world of alternatives out there.
They will though.
(Photo:Tyler Durden’s Imaginary Friend)
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i wish i could play the tiny violin right now…
I hate cable.
I stopped reading at ‘rot in hell’. Shame on you. Poor guy, indeed.
I don;t live in a comcast service area (Cox here) but all I can say is why would anyone at anytime voluntarily sign up for anything with Comcast. It’s obvious that they suck yak ass to the nth degree, and if you have no other choice I can understand that, but if there is a choice, why would anyone do it?
@chili_dog:
We ALWAYS have a choice. Television is not a necessity . Even though, because of my location, I can’t get any television servcie other than Comcast cable, I am canceling. I’ll get my news via the internet and radio. Comcast service comes at too high a price to my self-respect. I call on all of those in this abusive relat ionship with Comcast to join with me in boycotting them until they learn the meaning of customer service and fair consumer practices.
Um, I don’t really see how this is any different than what every other cable company does. In fact, it seems like I’ve heard this exact story a million times on consumerist. And I think Mr. Pants has it wrong–there really isn’t a “shiny new world of alternatives out there.” Most people are stuck with a single cable company, with the only alternative being satellite for TV, and one phone company for DSL.
Too long to read…
I lucked out. When I called to move, after navigating their phone tree to the Move or cancel service line, I was told (by recorded message) that all operators were busy, please call back at a different time. After the 3rd time, I just assumed that if they don’t want to take my new information, that they didn’t want my business. So when I did get through, I used the cancel portion of the Move or cancel.
@chili_dog: A lot of us don’t have a choice. Particularly if you live in an apartment where the lease specifies that you can’t put up a dish. It’s Comcast or forget it. Sucks to be us.
@Cogito Ergo Bibo: If I’m not mistaken, I think apartments, condos and HOAs are not allowed to forbid satellite dishes. There was some federal law passed about that a while ago.
@chili_dog: I’ve got Cox too and they really aren’t any better. Monopoly isn’t just a game a McDonalds…
i definitely agree with the above posters – i live in a cox area, so i dont deal with comcast anymore, but i definitely had my problems with them. I canceled my service, which they never actually canceled, so I was charged another month. of course, it was auto-bill online, so my credit card got charged. Took them 2 months to reimburse me since the rebate check kept getting “lost in the mail”.
Cox has been a bit better, but nothing stellar…and since i live in a condo, i have no choice – cant put up a dish.
I tried a year of DirecTV because I hated paying Comcast’s high rates. It truly wasn’t worth it. Every time it even looked like rain – the TV went dead. Rain fade, my buns! Rain Death is more like it. We had the dish adjusted and messed with many times. It didn’t make any difference. So back to nasty old Comcast I went. I don’t like it. The pixelating is terrible on the Digital cable. I could step down to the basic service, but it would save me less than $10 per month. The whole thing is a pain in butt. If I didn’t have kids who like to watch things on Cable channels, I’d pull the plug on TV altogether.
Quit harshing on the guy. This is an entertaining letter and the only problem is that its probably preaching to the choir in this forum. And people, you always have a choice.
@schwnj: As always, my experiences with Cox were pretty much perfect (techs always on time, service rarely going out on their end). Any time there was a problem, it was usually fixed or a problem on our end (bad wiring)
I recently moved, and we have Comcast here. The internet has gone out at least 7 times in the two week or so I’ve been here.
Comcast unilaterally removed the NFL network from my list of channels. Good move Comcast, getting switched to Verizon FIOS on the 25th. Congratulations, for the sake of chiseling a few dollars per out of me you lost $1100 per year.
PS I pay my bills 2x per month. For some strange reason I was always behind on my Comcast bill. It was almost as if I was paying 13x per year. Anyone else feel that way?
Stay tuned for part 2: “Mr. Pants realizes DSL service is worse than Comcast.”
Coming to a consumer web-site near you.
@Cogito Ergo Bibo: If you have an exclusive use area (e.g. balcony or patio) with a clear view in the direction of the satellite, see this page for potentially helpful information.
I feel this guys pain. I hate comcast too. We’ve had them for years and our signal has always been crappy. It’ll work fine for months, then get fuzzy, start cutting out, etc. Then you deal with the missed appts, etc for a couple of weeks. These dumbasses left me on promotion promotion price way longer then they probably should have (3 yrs) after I called and complained so much. They just now took me off promotion. The first time this crap cuts out again, I’m cancelling too.
I had considered switching to Comcast from RCN when I moved this summer. Good to know I stuck with the lesser of two evils here in Boston.
My only real complaint about Comcast is that it’s too expensive, but until we’re willing to give it up altogether, that’s useless. There’s nowhere for us to cut down more in terms of service. They did make moving a total pain, although not as much as for this guy.
With Comcast, if you move you lose all promotions on your account (cheap internet, free HBO, whatever). So do what we do:
1st account was in my husband’s name. The next account is in my name. The next account will be in in my husband’s name.
Bam. Brand new customer, and new customer promotions.
Mr Pants makes it hard to sympathize with him.
You residential guys are lucky. Try opening a business account……this would have been a much longer article.
Heh, Comcastic indeed!
Not all cable sucks. In Louisville, a company called Insight offers cable/phone/www for under $110 a month, and I’m pretty happy with their service. It included a HDTV dual tuner with DVR too.
No, I don’t work for them, but I am truly happy with them.
@Bloberry:
We have a dish (in Florida mind you), & for the weather to mess up our signal it literally has to be raining buckets outside. I’m talking sheets of rain.
With the lightining that almost always accompanies that type of rain, you generally won’t want your TV on anyhow.
Comcast pretty much forced me to become a bigger data pirate than I already was.
Not long ago, I returned a digital dvr box of theirs to get a regular old digital box. A month later, I am being charged like 500 for the box I returned. No amount of pleading, begging, or yelling would get them to budge.
I had to cancel because I could not afford the 500. Now I have to steal wifi and download any tv show I want to watch.
I have it pretty nicely set up (via Mythbuntu), but I’d rather just go back to being a paying customer. Oh well.
@Spencer: if you returned the box then you should have some kind of proof. they cant make you pay for something you dont have and have proof. unless you dont.
I’d switch if there were other services out there that had the channels I want, including HD, and which worked with CableCard and therefore my Tivo Series 3.
@r4ygun: I woulda had a lawyer write them a nastygram.
Comcast sucks. I have a simple basic & extended cable, no box, no movies, etc. Before Comcast took over the old cable system 3 or 4 years ago, the price I was paying was $30/month. The price has increased to $52 month as of Jan. 2007. I watch the same channels and Comcast has added nothing new in channels that is of interest to me. Now, this Jan 2008, it is going up to near $60. So effectively a 100% increase in 4 years?
This is what happens when there is no competition!
Could we have 500 word limit on rants? I believed the aggrieved could still make their point and there would be at least be some change we will read it.
It was kinda long but Mr Pants has an entertaining style and I read the whole thing.
Here’s my answer:DSL and a computer with a few ATSC tuners and BeyondTV and Netflix. I pay $50/month for DSL and $9.99/month for Netflix. Probably lots of cable only shows I’m missing but I’ve always thought less TV is a good thing….
Yup. sounds like my experiences with them, except that my cable boxes actually stopped working the same day after the techs had been out to fix them. Yup.
With all the shit I’ve been put through with AT&T, I’d love to put up with what Comcast has to offer. I don’t think any of these big internet companies deserve anybody’s money. I’m ready to cancel out of it entirely and just use internet at work.
A agree with CAUSTICITTY… To long to read.
So, all this just to say that Comcast screws its customers like every cable company screws its customers, right? I mean, $100 a month is totally reasonable for a sometimes-on “high speed” Internet connection and sixty channels, of which you only want maybe ten, of which six are available in HD and for free OTA.
I had the exact same problem this guy was having.
The issue is pretty simple. The reason your getting the random pixelation is because you share bandwidth with all of your neighborhood. This includes the TV signal. Also Comcast was forced to degrade the signals at the main hub for each location.
You see comcast runs fiber obtics to a main hum and from their they run copper lines to the individual homes. Comcast was forced to lower the power of the signal to offer phone service. In my neighborhood we started having the same problem (myself and several neighbors) and Comcast tried to tell all of us our wiring was bad and wanted to rewire the entire house. This ofcours was a lie since I just had my home re-wired by one of their own techinicians. I had them put an amplifier on the main line just inside my house and that solved all the problems.
Then Verizon FIOS came in my neighborhood and I switched!
@schwnj:
You’re right, but your window still needs a clear view of the southern sky if you want satellite.
Cablevision in CT is competent, and I haven’t had too much trouble, but like any monopoly, I have no expectation that they’ll be useful if anything goes wrong. I need a landline, so their triple play is a good deal, but rates are going to shoot up when the promo period is over, so that will be interesting.
[www.youtube.com]
I have a different story, but ultimately the same outcome. We dumped Comcast almost 3 years ago (the date is actually burned into my memory). The dish is lovely and wonderful and I guess the only question is “why didn’t we do this sooner. Much, much sooner”.
BTW, Mr. Pants’ story is funny, if a bit long, but his nom de plume is a bit too reminiscent of Mr. Hands.
And that’s just yucky.
Why anyone bothers with any cable service now is beyond me. Between network websites, itunes, joost, etc, there are much better ways of watching television now. And without(or very very limited) commercials no less.
@Cogito Ergo Bibo:
FYI, if you have a balcony, that lease provision is invalid. If you have outdoor space (balcony or patio) that belongs to your apartment (not shared with others), then you have the right to put up a dish, it’s Federal Law.
[www.fcc.gov]
@jeffjohnvol:
You’re about to become part of either Comcast or (more likely) Time Warner Cable, FYI. Insight is being split up. You’re either in the half that is going to Comcast, or the half that will (likely) get sold to Time Warner.
I got lucky. I had to deal with Adelphia where I was, and about two months before I moved, Adelphia was bought by Comcast and I received a few form letters from the higher ups explaining the new move. My cable bill increased by abot $.20, which wasn’t a big deal, but when it came time to move, I was so happy that I didn’t have to move service or anything. I just cancelled and all it took was 3 days of battling phone transfers and 15 minutes with a real, live person. In light of this guy’s experience, I’m glad Adelphia installed my cable, not Comcast. Adelphia sucked, but the guy showed on time (sort of – he was early, so I wasn’t home, but luckily a friend was), and they never gave me spam.
To the OP: Same-ish area, same boat. You just took longer to get the same point I was at (about a year ago). And for the exact same reasons.
Got DirecTV, DSL, and a hard-line for about the same (maybe a little less) than I was paying Comcast before. Much happier, despite the once or two instances of rain-fade I get per year with the dish setup.
It’s a sad day when I have to come out and defend Comcast. I’d take a shower after typing this but I’m on my lunch break and I don’t have the facilities to do so.
My room mate and I originally had AT&T basic phone service and DSL. It worked out to about $49.99 per month. However, AT&T’s entire accounts receivable department must be dyslexic. They would send us itemized bills which “seemed” reasonable only to give us a “refund” for overcharging us a month or so later.
After the third time we received refunds for being “overcharged” we were ready to just stick with our cellphone service and bit the bullet and get Comcast Cable highspeed Internet.
If I can’t read an itemized listing of fees and feel confident that those numbers aren’t just being pulled out of someone’s ass, I don’t want to do business with that company.
Comcast isn’t great but at least their billing is consistent. I’m pretty upset about their bandwidth throttling and packet shaping though.
Moral of this story is , for a country that loves free markets and competition so much, we seem to not see hypocrisy of allowing unchecked monopolies to run wild. Not many people can say “I have a choice, and the businesses I do business with respect that” when they talk about the local utility.
@Cogito Ergo Bibo: It is against a federal law to do this. you are allowed to put up a satellite dish.
I would rather have my teeth pulled than use DSL from Verizon or ATT.
Should I leave Comcast for Verizon FIOS internet (have Dish TV, but contract ends fairly soon so could switch that too. Also work pays up to $50 a month for broadband).
Comcast can’t go bankrupt soon enough. For eleven years, yes, 11 years, I’ve asked for service. They have a cable that ends at my mailbox. Seriously, the wire’s already in the ground. I want the whole package – phone, internet, digital HD service, easily $140 a month. I’ve got two dozen neighbors that want service, too.
Comcast won’t give us the time of day. They only provide new service to new neighborhoods – if you’re not already wired and getting service, you will NEVER get it in my county. Almost 45% of my county of 100,000 people can’t get service, and Comcast is the only cable provider allowed.
On me alone, they’ve missed out on $13,000 in the last 11 years. I’ll never understand how this company stays in business.
@mconfoy: I would rather have my teeth pulled than use DSL from Verizon or ATT.
Compared to dial-up, Verizon DSL has been a godsend! Did you know you can watch video on the intergoogles? How long has THAT been going on?