One reader’s Comcast outages have gotten so bad that they could get him fired from his job at Adobe. Here’s his letter of complaint:
Mr. Brian Roberts
Chief Executive Officer
Comcast Corporation
1500 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102Mr. Roberts,
I have never taken my valuable time to write a letter like this before and to further use snail mail to send a letter of complaint. I have been through hell and back with Comcast trying to set up my internet for the last 3 months from the time I moved into my new house at [redacted], Princeton, NJ 08540. I have had at least 8 technicians come out for a total of 10 to 12 visits to my house over the last 3 months attempting to fix my internet issues. I have taken time off of work in order to meet these technicians at my home each time, as has my wife….
I have received conflicting attempted resolutions each time someone has come out, saying the problem was the Ped, the modem or the Amplifier in the area which is known to have issues and various other attempted resolutions according to the last technician. I estimate that my wife and I have spent over 30 hours on the phone and with technicians at our home trying to resolve the various internet issues since we moved in. I am an Executive with Adobe and work out of home, so the damage these issues have had to my productivity are enormous and my Manager, VP of Sales for Adobe, recently threatened my job if he hears one more time about the internet issues I am having delaying my ability to respond to him.
Here is what I request.
1. I would like someone from your office to call me at [redacted]
2. I would like the ability to leave my existing contract at any time so I can move to Verizon FIOS. This contract assumed that Comcast had some idea of how to provide internet service and not waste my valuable time and cause major money losing work issues for me that have tainted my reputation within Adobe.
3. I would like to have my installation fees waived.Please have someone call me immediately and have someone in a position of authority to take this issue over and fix it.
Regards,
[redacted]cc: Board of Public Utilities
Attn: Cable TV Complaint
2 Gateway Center
Newark, NJ 07102cc: New Jersey Consumer Affairs
124 Halsey Street
Newark, New Jersey 07102cc: James Paul
Lead Comcast Technician
Comcast Corporation
1500 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Here’s what happened after our reader sent this letter:
1. Got a call from “LaToya” of Comcast telling me she was on it and would reimburse me once Comcast fixed it.
2. Once they finally fixed the internet (still has issues, but much improved), I called LaToya a month ago and asked for my refund.
3. Never heard back from her and so I called again today.
4. LaToya called me back and apologized and is giving for 4 months refund, $263 for the first four months that the internet hardly worked.Despite the refund, Comcast is the worst company I have ever dealt with.
Let’s hope the check makes it through the mail this time.
(Photo: cmorran123)
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or even a treo on a hsdpa or evdo connection would work for email. Honestly this guy has a lot of patience to go through the BS. I get frustrated when i call Time Warner Cable in charlotte, I place the call at 9 pm, and then get put on hold, and then get transfered to the raleigh office who can not help me because the Charlotte office closed at 10pm. Thats how much they suck. oh why do I keep hoping that they will pick up within an hour
THere needs to be a lemon law when it comes to services such as cable. If the cable company consistantly provides shitty service (cant find out what the problem is…. then they deserve to be punished).
Sadly the cable lobby is too powerfull.
@RottNDude: EVDO is laggy. While I’m not the original poster, I have a job where reliable ‘net access is mandatory. VoIP won’t work over EVDO (if anyone’s figured out how to do VoIP via EVDO, please share your tips!) and EVDO’s latency really screws with some of the timing-sensitive commands & work I do. Windows Terminal Services /VNC / PCanywhere can be very challenging to use via EVDO as well due to the latency.
Ultimately, Comcast should be able do make their product work and it shouldn’t be a huge hassle to do so.
If my ability to do my job relied on a reliable Internet connection, I would have a redundant path of some sort. That translates, in this case, to Comcast and FiOS.
Incidentally, my job does not so heavily rely on it, but it is very helpful. As such, I have Road Runner and Verizon EVDO, because it can save me a 45-minute trip to and another back from the data centre.
From there, you can start the bitchfest that Comcast so clearly deserved, without finding yourself in a zero-connectivity situation while you wait at home for the technicians to show.
I had a similar problem in OKC with Cox. Mine affected both my digital cable and internet service. The problem started in last week of october, we didn’t give it much attention since we were going on vacation and figured its a glitch and will probably be fixed when we got back. It wasn’t. We were missing about 60% of our digital channels and conveniently all the ones I normally watch and the modem would not connect. 1 month later, after having spent 3 hours on the phone, missing 30 hours of work to meet the 8 different technicians, and having 4 line technicians including one of the most experienced ones, the problem was resolved. What really irked me is line is only a two block long spur, pretty easy for them to trace the line and find the break. If the DSL around here wasn’t limited to a 6mpbs connection I would have left already. In the end they discounted my service for a year, so that made me slightly less angry.
@lusnia: You really NEED more than 6 megabits down? If I could get that on DSL it would be a viable option, but the MAX they’ll offer in my area is 3 meg and who knows what it would actually be by the time it crawls down ancient copper to my house?
@FLConsumer: True about EVDO. I’ve found similar problems using Sprint & Verizon cards, where they’ll connect to VPN (which VOIP uses) but then block certain traffic or simply not do anything. Definitely not a sure bet like some people are saying.
“Executive at Adobe,” reports to “VP of Sales” = commission-earning work-from-home regional salesperson. His base salary probably does have a 2nd digit, but it’s not the kind of money that can easily spring for a second service, or even the additional expense of a ‘business class’ service.
Yes, the whole “business class is for business, residential is for non-commercial only” line of crap exists, but come on people, a byte is a byte, and a connection is a connection. People who trot out the whole “shoulda paid more” line are apologists for crappy service. It’s in the cable companies’ interest to provide crappy service to force that kind of upgrading… Why sell residential service when you can charge more for the business service?
The solution here is not charging for what’s not provided, and offering a useable service in the first place – including not saying cable is available if the local repeaters/amplifiers/cabes/ are so screwed up as to be unusable.
Comcast doesn’t require contracts for service, but they will try to get you to “lock in” a certain rate for 2 years…they’re doing that with the Triple Play.
Thank God for FIOS, I remember these problems interfering in my Warcraft raids. Definitely get FIOS if it is available.
I don’t understand how he had a contract? I have never heard of a Contract for Comcast.
@rhombopteryx: Yeah, either this guy’s a crappy “executive” with executive-level expectations and poor problem-solving skills, or he’s a sales guy. Last I knew, you could make tax deductions for a home office, so the extra money would come back to the “executive” at tax time.
Plusly, though, Comcast shouldn’t charge him for service that doesn’t work. I’m just playing the world’s tiniest violin for anyone living in Princeton (and owning a home there) who doesn’t even have to go to work every day.
I wouldn’t even consider switching to FIOS until they’ve worked out their bugs/issues. I work indirectly with Verizon FIOS and it’s a pain in the @ss dealing with them.
Um, you chose to take time off work.
Taking time off work to get your interwebz isn’t covered by FMLA.
Ouch, that sucks. But there’s a reason home internet doesn’t have an SLA…