Sunday, November 28, 2010

Worst comcast experience ever

Ok so I sent this message to a comcast customer service agent because I had easily one of my worst experiences with them ever. I am putting it here in hopes that someone will see it and wont have to go through the same problem.

"So I just wanted to let you know that the internet is on now and I am satisfied with the speed, but I have to tell you that this whole experience has been a nightmare. When I tried to connect for the first time last night I was not able to activate my modem and I cannot explain the horror and frustration that whipped through my head. If it had only been one thing it would not have been a problem but it was everything added up every step being slowed down by problem after problem.

It started on the 16th or 17th when I tried to sign up for internet that it all began. I started by doing everything online but when I realized that my only option online was to have a technician come out I decided to stop that and call in. To be honest I expected a 15 minute call maybe a bit more, THE CALL LASTED 30MINS, I am not exaggerating it literally took 30mins. Every time the person asked me a question he would go umm... ummm... let me put you on hold. I understand it was probably his first day and thats fine and truth be told, this didn't bother me that much at the time, but as this whole thing has happened the way it has I can only add this in as part of the problem. So he explained that I could skip the technician if I go to the store and picked up the modem and I asked him specifically if I could go to any Comcast thing to pick it up. I was heading to Olympia that night anyways and stopped by the Kiosk in the mall and they said that they couldn't give me the modem. So I get it, its not one of the stores, but why wouldn't I be able to pick it up there. Its still Comcast and they have modems there, but fine no big deal I would just do it on my lunch the next day. Of course there was a long line, but truthfully it went by pretty quickly. The problem came when i talked to the cashier or whatever they said that the guy on the phone that signed me up had signed me up for the economy package instead of the promotional 15down 3up package that I had asked for, and that he had confirmed at first. So this took an extra 5 minutes, but no big deal. I do remember that before I left, I asked him if everything had been setup on Comcast's end so that i could literally plug in and go. He of course assured me that it was ok.

I knew I would be gone all weekend and wouldnt get a chance to set it up until Sunday night. Sunday night rolls around, I am already a little frustrated because the move took longer then it should have and its actually a little late, but I am excited to hook everything up and play some video games or instant stream something on netflix. I plug it in, and realize quickly something is wrong because the modem isn't going all the way through the cycle. I spend the next 2 hours doing everything I can on my end, trying to get the internet to work. I powercycle 3-4 times, the modem and the pc that is plugged into it. I completely unplug everything and start over, I spend 45+ minutes scouring the internet for any answers possible looking up any solution on the modem side or the computer side that I could fix. I am posting on forums anything. Finally i need to get to bed so I decide to just leave it plugged in and hope it is fixed in the morning. Morning rolls around and still the same problem. its stopping at the DS led I do one more power cycle then unplug it. At this point I am almost positive this is something on your end but I am willing to except I may have messed up somewhere. So when I get to work that day (Monday Nov. 22nd) I figure I will try to contact someone and have them verify that everything was working on your end. Let me stop my train of thought and say that the live chat is convenient but those pre-manufactured phrases added to the frustration every time. When I ask a simple question and I get texted 3 manufactured statements that do not involve my question it drives me nuts and seems really really fake. But I talked to the person and they did all they could do on their end, without more information from me (modem info, mac address, etc), and I just wanted to make sure that everything was ok on your end.

When I get home from work a little early because of the snow I am ready to tackle this again and I am excited that everything should be fixed. Low and behold it still didnt work. So I jumped on the live chat again on a neighbors open network so I could try to fix this problem. I end up talking to a person that asks for all my modem info so that they can "Provision" it. They provision it and try to reboot it but obviously they cant do that, but the technician assures me that everything will be ok. I power cycle it doesnt work. He tells me to wait an hour and it will be fine. I ask him to verify that it will be ok and he assures me it will work. I tell him that I have had this problem all day and I am getting frustrated he says wait an hour and it will work "I guarantee it". So I log off I wait an hour and try it, yet it doesnt work. So I try again to talk to the live chat person and they ask all the same questions. I explain they are the 3rd person I had talked to about this and what the last technician had told me and what information he had asked for. After about 10 minutes he directs me to call in because its a self install. I call in and I talk to the lady. She seems nice, she seems to be well informed. She asks for all the same information to verify. She tells me she is going to try to provision it and reboot, but she cant communicate with the modem. We try a power-cycle, and it doesn't work. This is when she tells me that I will have to have a technician come out and that i might be something on comcasts end. Truth is this is when I start to get mad. I ask why I have to wait a couple days to get the internet that I am currently paying for and pay for a technician when it is clearly something on your end. Of course shortly after this I send out the email to you, and I have to wait a couple more days to have a technician come out and fix the problem that is now clearly not my fault which is understandable to a certain extent because its a holiday weekend.

So Saturday roles around, I am of waiting for him to show up, and I have a couple of errands to run and its my families Thanksgiving and it is getting close to noon. I finally have to run out real quick leaving my girlfriend to deal with everything. I get home and he is there about 15 minutes after noon, but that's not a huge deal, just another miss step in this experience. After he sets everything up and it looks like it is going to work he asks if I can test it out real quick, but unfortunately an unforeseen event rendered my laptop useless and we had to get on the road. So it couldn't be tested but it looked like it would work being that all the lights were lighting up now. So when I get home late that night you can imagine how excited i am to finally jump on my own internet, play my video games, watch my online movies, etc. I get home and of course it doesnt work. It seems like it would work but for whatever reason it wont activate the modem. I power cycle a couple times, I plug and unplug a couple of things and finally I jump on with one technician. The first thing they ask me is how I am doing? I explain that i am extremely frustrated and I need to get this working, and her instant replay is "I am glad you are doing fine". So at this point I am panicking that another day off is going to go by without me being able to do anything online and it is taking literally all of my will power to not just shatter the modem. I know it sounds insane to be so frustrated by the lack of internet for a week, but you must understand, I do everything online, I play video games, I pay bills online, I watch videos online, I shop online, and this is the only place I go to get information, banking, news etc. I finally talk to a technician who reboots my modem and fixes the internet. I can tell you that I felt a huge sigh of relief when it happened, and its a very solid connection. I am extremely happy with the internet itself, but everything that led up to it was just a nightmare.

I will tell you the truth, the worst part about this experience is how confident everyone was that their fix was going to solve the problem, I was assured multiple times that everyone was fixing my internet, with no success. I knew from the beginning that it was something on your end and yet no one could figure out the problem. The technician that came over took like 5mins at tops to fix the problem and explained that the problem was that after a person cancels their cable/internet/phone it stays on for 30 days and after 30 days without a call it all gets cut off. This should have been fixed the day that I signed up for the internet!! The day I signed up and the day that I asked the store person if everything was fine on your end. Someone should have looked at a map and said, "Oh wait his internet is cut off, and the filter is not right, etc" yet it took a week to figure out the problem and to get someone in here to fix it. It was a five minute job that someone should have been able to come over at anytime do the thing real quick which would allow me to sign onto the internet. This should have not needed to be scheduled this should have not cost anyone anything and this should have been fixed day 1.

I have been a comcast customer on and off for 10+ years, while living in 2 states at about 6 apartments, under either my name or a mix of roommates names. I have always been happy with my service. I have never had any real problems that were not fixed almost instantly. I have done self installs multiple times and I have had technicians come out free of charge to do the install. And every time I have been satisfied. Not once have I really ever considered going with a different service or different company because it just seemed easier to go with a company that I trusted. But I have to be honest, I will stick with Comcast for the next 6 months maybe longer, maybe even until i end up moving out of this apartment but after that, I dont know if I can truly consider going with you guys again. This experience has been such a negative one that I dont know if I can ever go through it again, or risk going through it again. I know this is a long message and i do apologize for that, but I felt it needed to be said. I know everyone always says this but I dont usually write these kinds of messages I just cannot go without explaining the pure frustration and anger I felt towards this whole experience. I hope this message goes to the right people and they can see how annoying this was and you guys can fix whatever it is that you need to fix to make sure nothing like this never happens again. It was a nightmare and possibly the worst customer service experience of my life. Please take time to read this and make sure no other customer has to jump through so many loops to get something simple like the internet.

Said customer"

Thanks everyone.