Adventures In Life

I can’t get away from Comcast

2008-10-16T12:23:00.001-05:00

I am past due for an update but actually this post was caused by another service problem.I was not able to watch the debate last night. A friend, who normally works overnight was off and invited me over to watch the early morning replay.I did not get there until 1245 am. We were looking around the channels when her cable went off. We waited a few minutes and she tried to call but gave up after

Is Comcast Stupid?

2008-09-28T13:26:00.000-05:00

Today, Sunday, I received a call on an emergency cell phone about my account.They know I do not have a regular phone and I only use the emergency cell for their numerous service calls. Today I spent over $3.00 talking about service that someone in their company disconnected but failed to tell anyone else.This nice lady said she could not ‘see’ my account, only a balance due. Talk about the left

Fellow Comcast Ex-Customer

2008-09-24T11:03:00.003-05:00

I stumbled across this surfing local blogs. I wonder how many of us there are.See P. Blevins Dear Comcast post at http://palmerblevins.net/blog/2008/09/23/dear-comcast/Notice he also switched to Xanadoo.Thanks Mr. Belvins for permission to post the link.

No Comcast One week update – Sept 23, 2008

2008-09-23T11:34:00.000-05:00

One week ago today Comcast said goodbye to me – not my choice but I am not complaining.I was afraid that the loss of the 50+ cable channels would greatly affect my life. As it turns out, I have not missed them at all.DirecTV stopped by today but I was not impressed with the guy so I decided against installation plus I have made a few interesting discoveries.We don’t get CBS locally but it does

Do Yourself A Favor

2008-09-17T11:40:00.000-05:00

After sending my Comcastic DVR back to their fairy tale land, I was worried about not being able to replay, freeze frame or time shift live TV - would I ever be able to survive without it?I watched, 'GASP' Live TV - and I lived to tell about it. But I still hate commercials.As it turns out I have an old TiVo sitting in the entertainment center. Its input is hooked to a digital receiver which is

Open email to Comcast September 16, 2008

2008-09-16T12:27:00.003-05:00

On this date I talked to a CSR at around 4:50 AM and asked that my bill dated Aug 03 showing many service changes AND charges be reviewed by herself and a supervisor and to please call me with the results of the review - it is self explanatory that someone did not know what they were doing.I have already wasted many cell phone minutes to fix a problem "created" by your CSRs - most times on hold

Comcast Solved ALL My Problems

2008-09-16T12:24:00.001-05:00

Comcast fixed all my problems. Today I found a Disconnection Notice with Total Due by Oct 6, 2008. Looks like instead of arguing with me or giving me equipment that worked they just shut me off.Instead of letting the tech replace my DVR I just had him take it back to the office.So my problems are all solved. Should have done this in February when all my problems started.I just wrote an open

Get To Go Home

2008-09-16T07:14:00.003-05:00

They let me go home this morning - I got the good news yesterday early morning so I called Comcastic to re-schedule my service call to replace my DVR. Reports were that it was not working right.I also complained about my Aug 03 bill for July service - I guess the tech got tired of listening to me explain and we were disconnected. I had already wasted too many of my cell phone minutes trying to

My DVR is sort of working.

2008-09-14T10:11:00.002-05:00

A friend visited my home - I had a medical problem and had to stay elsewhere for a couple of days. He saw my DVR seemed to be working. He said it was acting funny but he told it to record the truck race and the Illini football game.Nice of him I thought until he went to check them. Truck race was blank and the Illini game was not - I'm not sure what it was but Illini it was not.It missed the

Sorry for the crazy postings

2008-09-14T09:54:00.000-05:00

I have been putting posts online but have not published them. I am not sure what I was missing - I very seldom look at the blog. Today I hit the wrong button and I noticed I had many posts missing. They were there, just not published. Oh, well. At least it is fixed now.I just figured it out - on one page I tell it to publish immediately. But it is only those posts I email to the blog that

Sept 11 Update – Sep 3 bill

2008-09-11T15:40:00.004-05:00

A few days ago my third DVR delivered since Mar or Apr quit working. I had to spend almost an hour on the phone with tech support who insisted we check all the wiring.I moved the unit because I thought four DVRs in 4 months meant something was wrong – like possibly it was overheating.After an hour of the bull crap that it had to be something I did wrong and trying to sell me the $1.99 monthly

Update For Fri Aug 22, 2008

2008-08-22T06:13:00.001-05:00

Why can I not get online at Comcast.com? All I want to do is get a copy of my Aug bill since either Comcast or the mail service is failing to deliver it. I doubt it is the mail service since I get all my other mail without problems.When I call Comcast, it tells me I owe a ridiculous amount of money – I am hoping they have just missed posting a payment but the addition does not work out. So I

Where’s My Websites?

2008-08-17T17:45:00.000-05:00

Back in February, early March when my Internet started acting up, shortly after Comcast took over, I was chatting with a customer service rep who told me that some of my emails might have to change because Comcast users already had the accounts.I thought it sucked at the time – I thought the people who had the account the longest should get to keep them but no, Insight customers got screwed.I

Update For Fri Aug 15, 2008

2008-08-15T18:46:00.000-05:00

The last month had been eventful for me – not so much with Comcast.My shingles has returned and I am blind for the most part in my left eye and it was my good one. The cataracts in the right eye just lets me see dark and light – some days I can see a little color. For the most part it hurts like hell – glare is so bad.I am blind – someone has to go grocery shopping for me and watching TV is a

Update for Sat July 12, 2008

2008-07-12T11:05:00.000-05:00

On July 7, 2008 I called my personal Customer Service Rep, left another message, and still no response. So I called the 800 number. I did not track how long it took, didn’t want to throw my phone, but I do know I watched at least two sitcoms using my TiVo.Got an appointment setup in less then 3 minutes. No questions, no comments except a tech will be there between 8 and 10 on July 8.Amazing –

Update For Thu July 3, 2008

2008-07-04T10:14:00.002-05:00

Last evening (Jul 2) my DVR refused to record anything. About 8 pm the front panel went dark. I unplugged and left it unplugged – I did not feel like screwing with it.This morning I plugged it back in not very happy I had missed my early morning shows. At 5:30 pm the guide for the evening’s MAJOR networks had not re-loaded.I turned it off because sometimes it will load faster and tried to

Update for June 21, 2008

2008-06-21T10:12:00.001-05:00

So I did not get a bill for June and after several attempts to call Customer Service, twice I got hung up on.I could not access the Comcast.com site to check on my account – it keeps timing out or just locking up.I was getting very frustrated and finally gave up. Since they cannot seem to send me a bill, maintain their website and can’t answer the freaking phones properly, if they cut me off I

Update for Friday May 23, 2008

2008-05-23T04:51:00.000-05:00

I have called my personal customer service rep several times and left messages. No return calls so that promise lasted about two weeks if that long.Comcast decided for me what three of my old email addresses were going to be. They just added 1s or 3s or 7s to the end of the previous address.Why didn’t the person that had the email address the longest get to keep the address and the other

Update for Friday May 2, 2008

2008-05-03T04:33:00.001-05:00

It has been a week and after three calls to my personal customer service rep, no returned calls.So it looks like I am on my own again. I can’t use my Internet connection about half the time I would like. When it works it seems to be just fine. When it fails, it just sucks. Xanadoo almost always works. Occasionally the modem seems to lose signal and it has to search for home. Usually it had

Update For Friday April 25, 2008

2008-04-25T14:48:00.002-05:00

Things were going fairly well until Wed morning - none of the local sites (newspapers, radio stations, gas prices) would load. I could get to the east coast but that was it. I waited about a half hour then plugged in Xanadoo to finish my morning surf.About an hour later I started pinging a few places to see if things had improved BUT the ping times were so high and I noticed the routes had

We found it

2008-04-17T23:52:00.002-05:00

Remember the letter and check sent to the local Comcast office on March 17, 2008 by my father? It was returned today with a post it note that said it was found on her desk and because of the date of the check and the fact the account has a credit balance she felt it best to return everything to him as was. The check was dated March 17, 2008. The letter accompanying the check requested an

Update 2008-04-14

2008-04-14T18:33:00.003-05:00

I've spent the last 3 or4 days testing the Comcast High Speed Internet after I was re-connected last Tuesday April 8. The techs made two visits that day. The first came out because customer service said my modem was showing the wrong configuration. He got here and figured out it would be real hard to show anything because it was unplugged. He hooked it back up and it was working great.

2008-04-09T20:14:00.001-05:00

Check out the packets retransmitted and ACKS and SACKS numbers - and this was one of the better tests - sigh.WEB100 Enabled Statistics:Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Donechecking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Donerunning 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 950.0kb/srunning 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . .

2008-04-09T19:32:00.003-05:00

So far I am not sure - still having the same issues but not as often. I think the routing has improved. I was also told the C4s were wide open to see if the local system could handle the power boost - that's why I see 32000+ speeds once in a while. But I am still losing lots of packets.This router (listed below) can not be in hartford CT because if it is I am going to Chicago, then SouthBend IN

2008-04-08T23:28:00.005-05:00

Things are still not stable - check out this line quality test:http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2372847And I've lost access to my comcast.net mail accounts again - login failed.Still lots of hesitation to google and blogspot - I did not see that on Xanadoo but Xanadoo gets there in less then 8 hops (if memory serves) with no packet loss and Comcast takes 12 hops with 2 or 3 of the hops