Comcast Threatens To Cancel Your Service Over "Leaky Signal" That They Can't Understand Or Fix
Comcast keeps sending Andrew's parents letters insisting that "there is a leak of our electronic signal into the air," and that if it can't be immediately fixed, their service will be disconnected. Andrew's parents always immediately call Comcast to schedule a service visit, because nobody wants a signal leaking into the air, especially not one that "could interfere with aircraft and ship communications," but each time they call, Comcast has no clue why they sent a letter, or how to plug the leaky plane-gobbling signal.
Andrew copied us on the letter he sent to Comcast's Twitter-Jedi, Frank Elison.
My parents are at their wits end. Comcast has sent six or so letters over just about 1 year informing us that "TV signal we supply to your address via cable is emanating from [our] home [which] could interfere with aircraft and ship communications ...". The letter we received most recently on 2/13/09 is threatening cancel our service.We have responded in the manner provided each and every time we respond, however the agents are clueless as to what these letters mean. Finally, we got them to schedule someone to come today. As we waited, for him to come he decided to just call ten minutes before his deadline and say that he had no idea how to solve our problem and will call us tomorrow. We're done waiting until tomorrow.
We've nearly lost faith in letting Comcast solve even their own problems, so this is our last resort before canceling (or being cancelled).
Well, if Frank can't solve the problem, call the FCC. Tell them there's a leaky signal in the neighborhood that Comcast won't fix and that it's sinking ships and causing headaches, and could they please help? If nothing else, you will at least have an interesting conversation.
Update: Andrew adds:
Yes!ComcastFrank Elison fixed our problem!While dealing with the fiery behemoth of Comcast was not so easy, dealing with Frank Elison was. We exchanged a few emails and within 48 hours our problem was solved. An actual Comcast tech came to the house and fixed whatever the problem was with the lines. Thanks to Frank our Seinfeld reruns are safe. Oh, and as an added bonus, we no longer worry about planes crashing or boats sinking.
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I work for a small cable company and i have to drive around with a signal leakage indicator and if i find something that is around 20 or more micro volts i have to stop logged it down and then attempt to fix it. If i cannot fix it i find someone that can and if it is coming from inside a house i have to get in contact with the customer and try to figure out how to fix the problem. If the FCC where to come driving around downing their own sweep and find a issue that can cause local police or air traffic control issues (interference from leaking signal) then we can get a $100,000.00 fine.
It is most likely coming from a old Tv (small portable ones are most common) a VCR or maybe even a damaged line, either way it needs to be fixed and it should be up to comcast to do that if they want to keep a customer.
@Obijuan: Seriously??? You mean this is potentially legit? I would have thought this was at best a hoax, or at worst, some social engineering by a clever thief trying to gain access to homes by pretending to work for Comcast.
Where is this happening? I'm in Colorado and I'd hate to be responsible for sinking a ship!
Looks like they didn't punch the numbers into the computer.
4 8 15 16 23 42 EXECUTE
Does Mr. Dunleavy know why he sent the letter?
They don't mentioned they contacted Paul, the CSI Supervisor who signed the letter.
@Darren W.
This is very real. I work for a broadcast multimedia company and we spend thousands of dollars for testing of our products to make sure we are not causing any signal leakage.
We actually had a customer overseas who had problems due to our older, untested equipment. And he was on a sea vessel and he was having with surrounding helicopters. It could get dangerous, not just hilarious.
"Would you like to playa game?"
"Oh cool it's programmed to play games. Type in 'Global Thermonuclear Signal Leakage'..."
@Darren W.: No, this is too true. I also work for a cable company (TWC) and I've a tech friend that does the exact same thing. If you have an open cable line (meaning its an active jack but isn't connected to a tv or modem), its shut off by our guys. If your house has a broken line thats leaking a signal out they log it down and then try to trouble shoot it. You'd be surprised how many customers call in to get all their outlets activated only to find out that a year later that outlet is dead because we shut it off. Then I have to explain that the FCC fines us 100k just for leaking the signal like that. Rolling a truck to reactivate it is well worth the charge IMO.
I live in Pennsylvania too, and just about every other week, some tanker plows into one of my neighbor's homes. Its a real nuisance to clean up, we usually draw straws to see who gets the job. They usually don't get this far inland, but without a Republican in the White House guarding our borders, I'm really not surprised.
Little do Andrew's parents know... They're just pawns in the President's gigantic game of Battleship.
We've nearly lost faith in letting Comcast solve even their own problems...
It's only Comcast's problem if one of their installed cables is faulty. It's equally likely that some wiring inside the house, not installed by Comcast, is the cause of the problem. In that case, it's the homeowner's responsibility to fix the issue at their own expense.
If I received that letter, I would throw it in the trash because it doesn't look like official Comcast letterhead. Upon initial viewing, it looks like a scam.
I didn't know that an electrical signal traveling over copper inside of a shielded cable can transmit a radio signal. The signal is so weak to begin with that I don't understand how it could cause an electromagnetic signal strong enough to detect at a distance of over 5 feet.
@jstonemo: The reason it can is because it's a radio frequency signal, not an electrical current one. If there are faulty fittings, wires (or even equipment, as mentioned earlier) then you wind up with a tiny broadcast antenna.
Rest assured that leakage is a very real concern with CATV. It doesn't happen a ton but it does happen.
This is true and was cared for a month ago after the email. Cable transmissions are radio frequencies and if leaking, can cause interference with other devices. It is important when detected to have corrected as soon as possible.
Frank Eliason
Comcast
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com
The call is coming from inside the house!
Comcast used to tell us this also--and then say they trace it because "leakage" means someone is stealing cable. We got tired of it and switched.
Frank Eliason is the VP of customer service. I had service problems with Comcast for months and he didn't stop trying until it was fixed. I'd keep working with him. He was pretty awesome.
Frank_Eliason@cable.comcast.com
@jstonemo: The signal doesn't necessarily come from the wires. A CRT tv is basically one big radiation emitting machine: accelerated electrons, high magnetic fields, capacitors and wires out the wazoo. Check out Van Eck Phreaking, the signal is actually strong enough that you can eavesdrop someone's computer screen (in a manner of speaking).
@catnapped: Did you RTFA or are you just a dill weed?
Andrew understand perfectly how serious it is but Comcast can't seem to figure out why they're send the notices or how to fix the problem.
@Darren W.: I work for Comcast, and signal leakage is real. If bad enoguh, it can interfere with nearby radio transmissions, too. If leakage is detected, the tech attempts to fix the problem from the outside, and if that is not possible, they leave a letter like that one on the door.
...call the FCC. Tell them there's a leaky signal in the neighborhood that Comcast won't fix and that it's sinking ships and causing headaches
I love Consumerist's snarky concluding comments.
It specifically says "they" are responsible to fix it immediately.
Quote the letter back and tell 'em you'll report them to the FCC if they don't comply.
@comcastcares: That's all great and very well done to get it taken care of, but it seems like there is a hole in the process at the customer service line, where they had no idea how to help when the customer provided the info they received in the letter.
If that hole got closed then everything would be a lot better!
This happened to me once. Sans the letters... Let me 'splain.
One day, my cable internet quit working. Cable and digital cable kept working fine. I called the Comcast service line and got the "there is an outage in your area" recording. For three days. I finally got ahold of a real person that told me the same thing. For another week. Finally I got a tech support guy that told me I needed a new modem. I was fine with that (mine was 5 years old). So I bought one, took it home, and called to provision it, and it wouldn't work either.
After three weeks of contacting tech support (I started using online tech support chat from work so I could log them) I got exasperated enough to call my friend who ran the local Comcast head end (different department). He send out a service tech and, lo and behold, someone had put a block on my line because of "signal leakage in my home". He removed the block and told me to call for a service appointment.
Every time I called for a service appointment nobody would want to help me because my service was now working.
I called to get a month of credit on my bill and got chastised for calling my friend directly for help. When I offered to email her chat transcripts from customer service, she decided to take the matter seriously and give me three months credit.
It seems to me that the customer having this problem needs to NOT call the phone number listen in this letter, but instead call the number for their local Comcast office listed in the phone book. They should then explain the situation, and ask if there is a Paul Dunleavy working there. If not, they should ask if (610) 876-5000 is a known Comcast phone number within the company. If it is not, then it is obviously a hoax and Comcast needs to be given all the details possible. I'm sure their lawyers would be happy to help "solve" the problem
This is only one set of possible ways to track down this problem, which obviously exists within Comcast more than it does within this person's house. Since the letter (as mentioned above) is NOT sent on actual Comcast letterhead, it is immediately suspect. Calling the local Comcast number listed in the phone book and questioning each and every fact mentioned on it, including the supposed "CLI" department (of which Paul Dunleavy is supposedly the supervisor), eventually either someone who actually drove this van past the house will be tracked down and Comcast's internal communication problems will be resolved, or else it will be revealed as a hoax.
That letter looks very suspicious to me. My guess is that it is fraudulent; not just because of how hokey it looks, but also because they've been receiving it for a year without their service actually having been cut off as threatened.
Cable TV signals are meant to be kept tightly sealed inside coaxial cable. The frequency range used for cable TV signals runs across the whole radio spectrum and includes critical 2-way communications bands such as VHF aircraft, VHF marine, and numerous public safety bands. This isn't a problem as long as the signals aren't radiated into the air. The FCC sets minimum limits about how much signal can escape the "closed" cable system and radiate into the air. Many cable-TV service vans are equipped with special "sniffer" receivers that look for a specific signal that's intentional injected into the system and is easily pinpointed if there's a leak.
I've seen cases where there was so much garbage radiating from the cable system that it did interfere with public safety communications and we had to call the local cable company to fix the issue.
I've also heard of cable companies using this ploy so they can gain access to somebody's apartment to sniff around for illegal decoder boxes and unauthorized "taps" running to neighboring apartments.
Can anyone link to an authoritative article about supposed "signal leakage"? Because if Comcast gets pissed about active coax jacks I'm not using, then I'd hate to see what kind of nastygrams I'd get from the power company for electrical outlets I don't have things plugged into. Think of all the electricity that's spilling out!
The letter looks fake. Comcast letter heads are not in black and white and should have their company logo on it. This letter looks like someone typed it up for kicks.
When calling 610-499-2358 to inquire of Mr. Paul Dunleavy as to why the proper technicians are not being dispatched to address this problem, what is the result?
My guess is Mr. Dunleavy may be getting quite a lot of phone calls on Monday.
@ Hippybear:
I agree, try to get ahold of Mr. Dunleavy through the front office.
Personally, I think the letter is a hoax. The letterhead doesn't look official, the date is fill in the blank and there is no signature. In addition, it doesn't look like the letter is addressed to anyone either.
FYI, I searched for the address on the letter via Google Maps, and it brought up a large commercial building with numerous trucks parked behind (south) and to the side (west) that look like could be the white vans Comcast uses. Searching the web via Google for the street address brings up a few pages that reference Comcast. Searching for The phone numbers at the bottom (610-499-2358) gives no results. Searching for the number indicated to call gives pages that indicate it goes to a different location (probably a CSR office). Searching for that location by map gives what looks like a small shopping center. But in that search Google tagged on a "sponsored link" with a Comcast ad in it :-)
@RobinB: This is *sometimes* the case, when people splice into lines and taps and do crappy jobs the RF spills out and is easily detected. Or it's just a nicked line, bad fitting or bad tv or box.
CLI techs is the same label Bright House uses here in Tampa as well. Though if the leak is bad enough we just cut them period and door tag them to get them to call in if they aren't home at the time.
@comcastcares: Maybe Comcast cares. But a lot of CSRs clearly do not. Even some managers do not. I have direct experience and even documented one that rightly annoyed the hell out of me:
If Comcast really cares, it needs to do some major training or retraining of its employees. If Comcast really care enough to actually start listening to people, I'll post some of the other troubles I've run into (many of which have been fixed only after wasting a lot of CSR time ... and my own ... trying to get the point across). Feel free to open a line of dialog with me, if you like. I'll tell it like it is.
I have a friend who used to live downstairs in a house with two apartments. He had an off-air antenna on the roof and did not have cable at the time.
His upstairs neighbor had cable TV, and the leakage from his cable was so bad, it interfered with my friend's reception from his antenna on channels 2-13. You could actually see one of the local cable access channels which ran on a channel without a local off-counterpart.
He tried to call the cable company (Cablevision in CT) but they wouldn't talk to him because he wasn't a customer of theirs. He finally filed a complaint with the FCC, and Cablevision was at the house within two days. The FCC takes this interference thing "very seriously", especially when it interferes with over the air TV and other two way communications.
If open jacks are really an issue, why don't they have dummy loads to screw in. It would be a lot easier than shutting a jack down. It's pretty straight forward to stick a 50 ohm load on the coax.
If you have uncapped and live cable TV leads at outlets, you need to cap or "terminate" them with a screw-on cover. Example: [www.homedepot.ca]
@comcastcares: How was this solved? What was the problem, and what was done to fix it? I understand there is a posting delay here at Consumerist, but with all the confusing surrounding this situation, it would be nice to hear 1) why official company letterhead was not used for this letter, 2) why there were threats made to the customer about a problem with Comcast itself seemed to be unable to verify, and 3) what exactly was finally done to resolve the situation.
I hope you read this, and thanks in advance for your increased transparency about this customer service issue which we are ALL curious about.
@johnarlington: Many times an open jack isn't an issue since the signal isn't transmitting very far. Dummy loads/caps aren't that commonly used as a result.
The dorms I used to live in provided cable as part of the housing, so every room had a live open jack. Never had an issue with the FCC over it while I was there.
Well when ships and planes start crashing into Andrew's house he'll understand just how serious this is!