I will tell you right off the bat that this is a rant.
I began to have connectivity issues with my Comcast High Speed Internet at night. The problem would start late at night. By the morning, the problem would be gone. I work from home so I just took it as a sign that I needed to work sell at night.
By this past weekend, the Comcast internet service started to die around five at night and stay down until early in the morning. This was starting to get pretty irritating. Sunday morning the internet was back on before I returned from church but it was really slow. The problem repeated on Sunday night so Monday morning I called Comcast Customer Service from my cell phone.
I have voice over Ip which needs my Comcast high speed internet in order for it to work. Since my Comcast internet was down, I did not have any Vonage service. I like Vonage. They get a bad rap but I think the service is great.
I called Comcast customer service and told them that I was having intermittent service. I told them that the internet normally works in the day but at night it dies and that it was coming on by ten in the morning.
The Comcast customer service technician instructed me to turn my computer on and off.
For those of you who are not so tech savy, like the Comcast high speed internet customer service personnel, my voip works independently of the computer. Therefore, even if there was a problem with the computer it would not affect the voip which is not getting enough signal for my phone to work.
I knew better than to argue with the folks behind the curtain so I went ahead and cycled the computer, the modem and the router. Guess what? It did not do anything.
The guy on the other end of the line (who was quite friendly by the way) could see that my modem was cycling on and offline. At one point, he could see my router and could not connect to it. I told him that this would happen until midday when I would return to normal but would die again early evening.
The tech guy at Comcast High Speed Internet customer service scheduled an appointment between 1 and 5 on Wednesday. That means that I would be out of business for three days. I was not happy but I understood that this guy did what he could do. I reminded him that the problem occurred in the morning and early evening so please send someone out one of those times.
Wednesday came and the service tech from Comcast high-speed internet showed up at one o’clock in the afternoon. Right in the middle of the time that I have the best service.
The Comcast guy replaced some of the splitters in the wall and told me I had a strong signal. I told the Comcast guy that there was no way that a splitter was causing an intermittent problem and asked him what I should do when the service stopped working in about four hours. Here is his exact response,
“If the service stops again tonight, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Brilliance!
The afternoon came and the internet went. I called Comcast high speed internet customer-nonservice and spoke to another guy. He said that he would need to schedule another appointment. He verified that the line my service was not working. He told me that he would have to close my open work order before he could schedule an appointment. I spent over a half hour on the phone but at the end I was told that I would be able to have a guy come out on Saturday. That was three days later. Six days after I called and said I had no service.
The next day I called back and asked to speak to a supervisor. Now I am a Christian and do not want to come off rude here.
I asked if there was a way that a person could come sooner and if we could ensure that the Comcast high speed internet non-repairman could come either at the beginning or the end of the day. The supervisor told me that she could find no appointment for a technician to come to my house and that she could not have the person come at a certain time. I spent a half hour on the phone with her pleading for her to contact the local repair people and asking them to send someone when the problem would be present.
She said there was no way to contact them. I told her that I did not believer her. I knew she had a phone because I was talking to her. And I was quite sure the folks down here have phones. Could she please user her phone to reach them on their phone? No. I would have a person come out, and if the problem was not present at that time, I would have to reschedule and hope that they would be here when the service is down.
I will spare you the details of that conversation but the non-supervisor scheduled me an appointment for today between 8 and 11 in the morning and asked that they come earlier than later.
I called non-service at Comcast high speed internet at ten o’clock this morning because they had not shown up. I was told that I have an appointment and they could come any time. I was then told that if they did not show up that I could have Comcast high speed internet customer non-service send an email to the local dispatch and ask that they call me.
The “supervisor” told me the day before that it was not possible to contact this office. Now I am told that I can have them call me. They do have a phone! I was then told that I did not even have an appointment for today but that I did have one for Saturday. Of course I don’t have an appointment. Those appointments are slippery and hard to get ahold of.
At eleven o’clock, I called the Comcast non-service number and told them that nobody showed up and could you please have the local office call me. The rep then told me that if they did not call me in a few hours I could call them on their toll-free number! Wow! I immediately called the number but I got a realtor. I should have expected that.
I decided to drive down to my local Comcast high speed internet office and talk to the good folks face to face. I eventually was able to speak to a nice guy named Deon. Deon was not able to fix anything and could not guarantee that anyone would come out. He did say that he would look into things.
WooHoo!
Wait, that did not help at all. So now here I am on Friday at three in the afternoon. About 45 minutes ago I looked out the window and saw a tech walking through my complex. I opened the window and yelled, “Are you a Comcast guy?”
He said, “Is your internet out too?”
It turns out that my entire complex does not have internet. This guy was from
He said that the signal is too strong by a factor of something like infinity and has no idea why (common thread here).
So now I sit. It is raining out so I cannot take my kids to the pool. The internet does not work so I cannot even post this treatise.
But rest assured. When the internet does come up I will post this. Then I will digg it. Then I will bookmark it in every social bookmarking site I can register for. Then I will blog about it. Then I will create a blog that talks about this post. I may give it its own MySpace account. And facebook.
If you have had a similarly bad experience lets band together. I am really tired of this.