Last week, Dan returned home from work to find that Comcast contractors’ vans had blocked his driveway in. Not just one, but two vans from Kabletown had parked across the end of his driveway. Sure, Dan could just park on a neighboring street and walk for an extra minute or so, but his brother had a bigger problem: he was blocked in. What could they do? Call the police? Comcast? The homeowners’ association? Jack Donaghy? Dan wrote to us while the brothers were weighing their options. One interesting piece of information: the brothers are disgruntled former Comcast customers.

Here’s a photo of the two vans in position.

My brother and I moved to a house in [redacted] a year ago. We’ve both had a myriad of problems with Comcast in the past, so we opted for Verizon FiOS after the move. (That didn’t prevent Comcast from wreaking havoc on us anyway, since Verizon was striking at that time, but that’s a whole other story.)

A year with Verizon has gone by with no complaints. But Comcast is still screwing us. In addition to a host of bills we’ve been issued for a service we never purchased from them, today I came home from work to find two Comcast vans parking me out of my own driveway.

You can see from my picture the street alongside my house is not very wide, and shares neighbors on the other end, and the few feet they left me would not be enough space to make it up my driveway, at least not without running over my own neighbors, and only then if they didn’t have a vehicle of their own in their driveway. So I parked at a neighboring street and walked to my home, to find my poor brother had beaten the truck there, and had effectively been parked in.

We’re debating calling a tow truck. I feel like that’s low, but for Comcast, somehow appropriate. If I was forced to walk 5 minutes to my house (from a public spot with PLENTY of parking available), I don’t see why they couldn’t have made the same effort.

That was during the standoff. We wrote back to Dan to see how things went, and who finally made the call to get the vans towed.

We decided to give them an hour or so, and then call the homeowner’s association to see what we should do. They beat us to calling a tow truck on them, but not before my brother could compose this passive aggressive note which left by his windshield. In case you can’t read it, I’ll translate for you:

“Greetings Comcast Technician!

It appears that one of my neighbors has made the wise and prudent decision to partake in your extraordinary services. Although I fully support the continued growth of your company, I must admit to a dissatisfaction with your choice in parking spots. In consideration of your outstanding reputation in customer service, I am confident this incident will be resolved swiftly.

Certainly by now you may assume that I’m speaking sarcastically, and that I have no realistic expectation for this van to be moved any time soon. Your company has caused me countless hours of inconvenience, and though I dropped your services long ago, still you manage to haunt me. I would sooner rely on an intoxicated teenager to drive me across the country than rely on Comcast to provide high speed internet to my household.

Your reputation precedes you.

Sincerely,
A Happy Verizon Customer

P.S. [Redacted] from the [redacted] service promised me a refund for over payment of $20.49 on Ocyober 14th, 2011. I have yet to receive it.”

Well, it probably felt nice to get all of that out of his system, even if the terrible parker isn’t a Comcast employee

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