10.41 Million Reasons to Hate Comcast

I was in Philadelphia recently visiting a friend, and we had the opportunity to eat lunch downtown. On the way to the restaurant, we took a detour to one of the city's newest attractions: the amazing Comcast Center.

As it turns out, the towering skyscraper that is the Comcast Center, resembling a square donut at the top, is actually quite a marvel. The light wood-paneled lobby is not wood-paneled at all, but something more like LED-paneled. And it's not just a few LEDs, either--probably more on the order of millions. One moment you think you're examining slabs of pine, and the next there are small human figures scrambling up and down the walls, or giant collages of vividly-colored photographs flying before your eyes. The display is impressive enough to make you think that you might be hallucinating--which also makes you think that on top of the cost of building the skyscraper in the first place, it must have been rather expensive to create.

There's a certain amount of irony in that thought: that Comcast, a utility company, spent a lot of money. Utility companies usually don't have very much to spend, as they are often considered borderline non-profit organizations. (This tends to be especially true when the economy does poorly and customers delay paying their bills.) Not only that, but based on the performance of its actual cable television and internet services, you would think that Comcast qualified for some sort of government assistance program for failing businesses. Indeed, if Comcast had spent the millions of dollars on its cable network that it did on lobby decorations, I might not even have to write this essay.

But alas, I do.

My cable internet service has not worked properly since about February 2, 2009, a day I remember because on that day, it failed to work at all. (Granted, I'm fortunate to live in a country where cable service is even an option, but given that it is an option, and that I work hard to pay for it, I expect a certain level of service in return.) Comcast decided to upgrade its network to a new cable standard called DOCSIS 3.0, presumably to increase the speed of the connections it could offer, but the upgrade didn't go very smoothly. Ever since, my service has been spotty.

Sometimes my Comcast connection is slow, and not just a little bit slow, either. From Palo Alto, CA to Google's web site, a typical ping response time (measuring the time it takes for a TCP/IP packet to make the round trip from point A to point B) might be 12 milliseconds. Yet with my "Comcastic" internet connection, ping times can average 1,200 milliseconds, or 100 times slower than a respectable DSL or working cable internet connection. Not to mention that all too frequently, the packets I'm sending out simply don't come back.

There have been four Comcast technicians who have visited my house so far. The first, Victor, was able to quickly discern that the problem was on Comcast's network, since he could tell that there were problems on the line by hooking up his JDS Uniphase testing equipment while standing on a ladder near the utility pole in front of my house. He promised me that a network technician would call me the next day. No one did.

The second technician, Eric, was less certain and had a clear anger management problem. When I told him that the first technician had already diagnosed a network problem, and that the customer service representative on the phone was able to verify that there were connection problems, he resisted.

"You should replace your modem. These Motorola modems, they don't always support DOCSIS 3."

"No one told me I had to buy a new modem to support DOCSIS 3," I told him.

"You don't, but you know, sometimes we just replace the customer's equipment and it works."

"There's nothing wrong with my modem," I told him. "The first technician already diagnosed the problem at the pole outside. The modem doesn't even factor in."

Repair Technician Eric left without actually repairing anything, upset that I refused to let him replace my modem. Later that day, he called after speaking with Roger, the elusive Network Technician who had apparently visited my home twice without letting me know.

"He said he did come out there actually twice, once in the morning and once um, in the afternoon, and he also said that If there was a problem at the tap, that more customers would be callin' in regarding the same issue and we don't have any other complaints regarding that from any other of your neighbors that are surrounding you..."

"Well then how do you explain the fact that you had network loss at the pole?"

"He came out here after that is what I'm saying," he said. "He came out there when Vic created the ticket for you. He came out there."

"Right. And I'm saying that I'm still having the same problem," I said. "Regardless of whether my neighbors are, I don't know, but I'm having the problem."

"Right," Eric persisted. "So the next steps would be that we could swap out the modem and try a different modem and see if the problem, if it persists."

As it was already March 26, almost two months after I had initially started having problems, I had long since had enough, but I attempted to stay calm.

"But as I told you, Victor was having problems at the pole outside, where my modem was not involved."

"Right! Right!" Eric said. "And Roger, the network technician, came out there is what I'm tellin' you!"

"Right. But apparently whatever he did did not fix the problem."

"But how do you know... You're not even giving it a chance to be your modem!" Eric exclaimed angrily. "You're.. You wanna point your finger at us! And I'm tryin' to troubleshoot it!"

Somewhat shocked at the suggestion that I should throw logical deduction out the window in favor of chance, I tried to explain myself as clearly as possible.

"I don't have to give it a 'chance' to be my modem, because the problem is outside. Because that's what your diagnostics show!"

"Well he came out there an' fixed the problem! You not.. I'm sorry sir, I don't know what you want me to tell you."

The next time I called Comcast to schedule a visit from a technician, I requested that the technician be someone other than Eric. As a result, I got Jeremy, who suggested after re-grounding my already new outside cable wiring, that I replace my modem.

"These Motorolas are some of the most reliable modems that we've got out there," he said. "But we should swap it out."

"I actually checked," I told him. "My neighbor is having the same problem. They have an open wireless network, they're a Comcast customer, and their connection is terrible. There are constant network timeouts and slow ping times. Also, my TV was having problems last night, turning black and white, turning off, freezing, showing pixellated images... My TV doesn't use the cable modem." Jeremy shrugged.

"You're using your modem to get your neighbor's wireless," he pointed out. Unfortunately, he was wrong.

"No I'm not, that's the whole point!" I said. "When I use their modem, I still have the same problem! So it couldn't be my modem!" I wrote down the neighbor's Comcast IP address and gave it to him so that he could figure out which house was affected and solve the problem.

"My supervisor says to replace your modem," he told me, oblivious to the solution I had just offered him. Frustrated at having had to waste my afternoon waiting for him to first show up, and then re-hash the same inane arguments I had already heard, I gave in. Yet he didn't seem to do much except sit in his truck once he had the go-ahead.

"What's going on?" I asked after waiting about ten minutes.

"Oh, normally I can swap out a modem on my laptop, but to waive the fees for you I have to wait on hold." Fifteen minutes later, he replaced my modem.

"What about the 'Customer Appreciation' fee waiver the billing department told me to ask you about?" I asked him.

"Oh, you'd have to talk to billing about that," he said. Shortly thereafter, Jeremy left.

The next night and the following morning, I had the same problem. The internet connection was incredibly slow, and ping times to Google, Inc. in neighboring Mountain View averaged over 1,000 milliseconds.

When I went to (very slowly) check my Comcast bill on-line, I could hardly believe my eyes. I had been charged $19.99 for a "Service Call Charge," and despite the fact that I had previously owned my modem, I had also been charged $3.00 for a "CHSI Internet Mdm Lse."

For all of these reasons, it's interesting to me that Comcast has a really fancy, high-tech lobby at its new skyscraper in Philadelphia. It's also interesting to me that Brian L. Roberts, Comcast's 49-year-old CEO, "earned" $10.41 million in salary last year excluding stock options.

My advice? Unless you want to be stuck with a Comcastic internet connection like mine, you should try DSL. AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson's 2008 compensation package only included $1.4 million in cash, so perhaps his company has some more money to spend on running a communications network that actually works.

Aaron Greenspan is President & CEO of Think Computer Corporation and the author of Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era.

Comments

[suejester]

another reason to hate them... They screwed up my account double billed me. It's going to take 4-6 weeks to get a credit in my checking account..but it only took them 3 days to withdraw from the same checking account. Jack-a-holes...

[macchugsid]

I also had quite a few problems with Comcast. It was the only high speed internet in my neighborhood for a few years and I reluctantly used them. I did not want there TV package as I was happy with my DirectTV and had invested a fair amount of money in it. For the sin of not wanting Comcast cable TV I was charged $20.00 more for the privilege of having their high speed than regular cable customers. When problems occurred (and that was a number of times) I would be told it was my equipment and that Comcast was not responsible. More than once after multiple complaints and being blown off repeatedly I would see a Comcast truck working its way up my street until it would stop at one of the boxes for a while. Then just all of a sudden my internet would be back to normal.
Over that time I was anxiously watching as ATT was laying fiber down to my neighborhood. When they finished I came home to a door hanger on my front door saying DSL was available. And to make it even sweeter it was less than half of my cable internet and even cheaper than what Comcast was charging their bundled customers. Needless to say I won't be using Comcast again unless I have absolutely no choice.

[Viper]

I'm running on Comcast at 100 mbps right now... not bad.. as I said I had problems early on.... By the way half of those problems were internal on my property going back to cable installation doen 15 years earlier w/o proper grounding.


Also i did get unreliable service with the wireless modem/conn­ections... I ran direct lines to both my computers and no problems since...

Regards

[Viper]

A whole article on one persons experience? Annedotal?

I have been using comcast for 3 years. I connect back to my companies servers in Texas ( I'm in florida). Had a few slow months when they were upgrading the network they had acquired from Time Warner.. 5 years ago I could not do this at all with this type of performance!

My performance is lightening fast to fixed ISP. My up time is in the order of months now. In fact for our medical centers we are doing away with our T1 lines because Comcast has been so good as long as you have the a fixed ISP business connection (14.95 extra)... that will be a savings of 4K per month.

Regards

[tailgateshirts]

If dsl wasnt abysmally slow in my area, then maybe. but comcast has been pretty good to me and usually swapping the modem does work, along with some outside line tweaks.

[denlong]

Cable TV company's traditionally offer extremely poor TV service. What would lead you to believe that they can deliver the internet?

[smokesignals]

The time has come. Informatio­n.....shou­ld be accessible to all. And it should be FREE!
But in the mean time try this as an experiment.....

For about a year now I have had no phone line service at home, no internet service at home, no cable service at home.....and guess what? I LIKE it! It was a huge surprise to me, thinking that I could not do without it all, but I am now a convert to simplicity, keeping work at work, reading books and newspapers again and in general, slowing my life down and eliminating stress. I found I can get by just fine using a cell phone only and waiting to be online till I'm at my office. I can't tell you how enjoyable it is. I heartily recommend it.

[NoPCZone]

I don't do business with AT&T, among the telcos that handed over private info to the NSA without a FISA court order. BTW- I have Comcast internet, digital phone and TV and it works fine. In fact, it works much more reliably than when Time-Warner owned the system.

[Aaron Greenspan - Huffpost Blogger]

For anyone interested, 1.5 hours late, a Comcast technician just showed up at my door with...another modem. It's almost too good to be true.

[DuganS1]

Why are posting about your personal cable problems on a political website? No company operates without a hitch. You could complain just the same about ATT, Verizon, Sprint, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Microsoft, General Motors, Ebay, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other single company you can think of....

[KillTheMessenger]

It's called his right to freedom of speech, Dugan. Would you like me to send you a copy of the US Constitution?

[Alterion]

Man, I empathise with the author. One problem though - I just switched to Comcast from DSL. My DSL company ( will remain nameless, though its a huge national company ), I had similar customer service problems. 5 calls to tech support. I tried twice in the menus, "Push 1 for so and so", and it led me through a maze that actually hung up on me.

Finally I hit 0 to try to get real people. They all made a half hearted, disinterested effort to fix my problem, then transferred me to a higher level of tech support 3 times - all three times waited on hold until I was disconnected.

Last time I asked for a manager, hoping someone with more experience could help with my problem. Put on hold until I was disconnected.

I've experienced bad customer service before, but I've always struggled through it - this was the first time I actually cancelled a service because I was genuinely insulted. Funny though, one person was very nice and interested in helping. When I called to cancel, the person responded,

"Aww, what happened, why do you want to cancel."

Can't get the service to work, can't get help.

"Aww I'm so sorry can I send a tech guy out to your house right away."

Too late, sorry.

[rkrenke]

Thank you for this excellent post. There are too few people paying attention to these issues. We, too, are going to cancel our Comcast service when our contract expires.

Unfortunately, until there's more industry competition, many feel that they're at the mercy of these irresponsible corporations. It's far past time that Congress and the FCC seriously addressed the lack of competition and how it results in huge profits for these companies and skyrocketing costs, poor service, and useless products for us.

The telecomm industry is a perfect example of how "privatization" utterly failed this country.

[Alterion]

I know this may seem unrealted and people will screech 'socialist', but every time a large company has chronic problems with their product or customer service, I always look at the CEO's compensation, and wonder if that $20 million bonus couldn't have been better spent on technology or customer service upgrades.

This doesn't apply to Comcast, who I have no bad experiences with as of yet, but plenty of other companies apply.

[rkrenke]

Thanks for your comment - I've found that those who screech socialist the most tend to understand it the least.

[Antifascist-08]

Comcast is just too big to fail, or provide proper service. I will never do business with Comcast again.

I have ATT U-verse and it works great. It is about the same price, but that is what happens when you let these companies create mini-monopolies.

I am looking forward to the day when I can get a direct satellite connection that has this kind of speed and bandwidth so i can li ve in the woods and get away from these fools.

[DuganS1]

The doesn't appear to be familiar with Comcast's business. Here's how much money the company made in 2008 form their annual report: ..."revenue increased 11% in 2008 to $34.3 billion, while Operating Cash Flow increased 11% to $13.1 billion and Operating Income increased 21% to $6.7 billion.

As far as this comment "Utility companies usually don't have very much to spend", this is simply not accurate. Utility companies, which is Comcast is not even one by the way, spend large amounts on capital investment.

As far as Comcast's service, the evidence provided is all anecdotal. I can give even more anecdotal information about the company - I have the triple play with Comcast digital cable, high speed cable internet, and land telephone line, and they've all worked perfectly for the past several years that I've had it.

[DreaminBig]

I finally cancelled Comcast in December and couldn't be happier. I have no problems at all with my DSL. It is very fast and hasn't gone down or slowed down once. The customer service is MUCH better and I am saving boat loads of cash.

[ComcastMark]

It appears that we have a lot of issues that we need to address based on your post. Please be assured that our local leaders are looking into the bottom of this.

We apologize for the unacceptable experience.

Sincerely,

Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_Can_Hel­[e-mail]­mcast.com

[Aaron Greenspan - Huffpost Blogger]

Mr. Casem,

As I read your apology, here's what I'm seeing in another window:

C:Documents and SettingsAd­ministrato­r>ping www.google.com -t

Pinging www.l.google.com [74.125.19.104] with 32 bytes of data

Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=680ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=777ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=761ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=771ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=815ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=764ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=761ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=745ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=740ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=637ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=638ms TTL=245
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=706ms TTL=245
Request timed out.
Reply from 74.125.19.104: bytes=32 time=760ms TTL=245

Ping statistics for 74.125.19.104:
Packets: Sent = 15, Received = 13, Lost = 2 (13% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 637ms, Maximum = 815ms, Average = 735ms

As you may be able to tell, I'm not looking for apologies. I'm looking for internet service that works, and customer service that isn't some sort of sick joke.

Fix your service, train your technicians, and replace your call centers with employees who can actually think. Then perhaps an apology would be in order.

Aaron

[ComcastMark]

I agree. My apology is not resolving the problem, but I would like to let you know that it is sincere. I also agree that we need to resolve the problem so that you can enjoy a service that works properly. This is the reason why I have reached out to our local leaders in your area for speedy resolution.


Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
We_Can_Hel­[e-mail]­mcast.com