Customer Service Horror Stories

Comcast's Parting Holiday Gift

Near the end of November we were watching TV when our On Demand services quit; we simply received an error that the service would be available soon. We waited and tried again a few hours later ... still no On Demand services ... we waited until the next day ... still no On Demand services ... I brought down the entire system and rebooted everything ... still no On Demand services.


I called Comcast. During the call the Comcast representative said she would set up a repair call AND she would schedule us for a service swap-out to upgrade to Comcast's X1 services. I know ... why on earth would we switch to X1? Well, here is the sneaky answer ... the equipment Comcast gave us originally (see The Story) was pretty muck junk. The current equipment seems to be working okay, however, it still causes problems ... so, we figured why not switch to X1 so we can get good equipment and so we can use all of the features for which we are paying.


Several days later the Comcast repair technician showed up. After extensive testing he found out that: 1) our lines in our house were fine--no problems; 2) one of our neighbors had an issue that was putting noise on the main cable; and 3) that the problem appeared to be a software issue--Comcast upgraded some system somewhere and during the upgrade an erroneous billing code was inserted into our account. Apparently we were not the only one to experience this problem. The resolution was to wait a few days and our On Demand service would be restored. Oh, and the technician said he would turn in a ticket regarding our neighbor's noise problem. The service technician said he would call back the next day to give us an update.


Several days later


I called Comcast. I asked the Comcast representative (Jeremiah) when we were scheduled for the X1 service change. Jeremiah said there was no record of an appointment. I walked through all of my issues with Jeremiah and he: 1) created a ticket to have a technician come to the house on Sunday 12.22.2014 and heck and see if the noise from the neighbor's cable was gone and to put the cover back on the cable box--I put the cover on and secured it temporarily with a wire; 2) Credited us for the 7-day On Demand outage; and 3) set up the X1 service call for Monday, 12.23.2014 between 5 PM and 7 PM. Things were looking up.


Sunday 12.22.2014; Comcast did not show up. Monday, 12.23.2014, around 5:30 PM the Comcast technician showed u to p