So where have I been? No posts for 5 days. If you followed my switch from SBC (now AT&T) DSL to Comcast, my performance results with Comcast were good, but the installer forgot some things, which didn’t leave me with a high sense of confidence.
About 3 weeks ago there was a Comcast outage in the area (confirmed by the auto-message I received when calling tech support). Since then I have had intermittent high packet loss across all hops (confirmed by PingPlotter) to Yahoo. Alternatively, I get high packet loss, including around 70% to one hop, to 3 Comcast servers in Hayward.
They sent out a “Premises” tech on 9/7 (or really, 2 techs). They said, yep, nothing wrong with my stuff, has to be something to call in a network tech for. They said others in my area have been seeing issues but that they had to escalate.
So, I called again on Thursday 9/14 and they had no record of anyone coming out on 9/7, and definitely no indication of a network tech being ordered. What happened?
Before we get to that …
I had to call in another Premises tech and then go through the process again. Mind you, it can take 10 biz days for a network tech to be scheduled after the initial visit.
Naturally this didn’t sit well with me. I spoke to a supervisor, and she kept giving me the “we have to follow procedure” idiocy. Finally she hung up. Incredibly unprofessional since I had not raised my voice or become impolite.
Anyway, I called back, spoke to a different supervisor who said it was unprofessional of the first supervisor, and said he would try to set up a network technician for today, 9/16.
Unfortunately I received a call from Comcast and it was another premise tech. I called Comcast to confirm a few things. Note that despite saying I was calling about HSI, I was connected with a rep who a) could not read me the notes from the prior day (for some reason), b) was not with HSI. When she connected me to HSI, she transferred me to the business support center, who were closed.
Sigh. Called back angrily. Anyway, the premises tech came out and here’s what he said: Comcast uses a lot of contractors. Those contractors like to come to a site, get paid, and say the customer cancelled to cover their tracks. That’s what happened to me!
This new tech found a chewed up cable, which he replaced, and he said they also had added an unnecessary filter. He removed it, and said things would be much better. Which they are. Thanks to Lee of Comcast, BTW.
So what have I learned? If you need Comcast to come out to repair your HSI, make sure you say, “no contractors!”
Tags: Broadband, Comcast, Tech Support
September 16, 2006 at 9:09 am
netscaping and blogging?