It’s Comcastic

On Sunday night the internet connection that I had been borrowing for the last few weeks mysteriously disappeared. It reappeared, encrypted, several minutes later. I didn’t care much for this turn of events, to be honest.

Now, when I lived in Tuscaloosa, I had very few problems with Comcast. When I moved to Indiana things were almost as good (for the most part). Then I moved to Illinois where I had, literally, months of trouble and they only seemed to care about it after I had moved out. Now, because they did end up putting some effort in, they’re the fastest option, and, on the whole, Comcast has been decent I decided to give them a shot not to suck here in Atlanta¹.

Hoping to avoid a service call and the attendant waiting, small-talking, and general annoyance, I went to Best Buy and picked up a self-install kit and a modem. I figured I should be up and running in no time. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

After things not “just working”, I called the 1-800 number and spent 25 minutes on hold, waiting to talk to a human being. Sweet. When I finally did get a person on the phone, I explained what I wanted to do, the very nice woman on the other end of the phone said, quite cheerily, that she could help me with that. She just needed to pass me over to tech support to get the modem turned on. Awesome.

When talking with the friendly woman in tech support I discovered that my call had been routed to the Illinois office, and they couldn’t do anything for me from there. “No problem,” I said, and took the number in Atlanta that I needed to call, still confident that I would have my internets up shortly.

I really should know better, shouldn’t I?

This was the first of many transfers and calls, with each one came a nice 10-20 minute wait to talk to a human-being. Many times, this wait was only to find out that I had reached the wrong office. My favorite was when I called the local atlanta number the first time and spoke with a guy who sounded like he should be selling used cars.

After hearing what I wanted, he insisted that I needed to talk to tech support since I “already had an account”. He did not listen when I told him that was not the case and immediately transferred me.

To Illinois².

Which I only found out after sitting in queue for 15 minutes.

Eventually I called the ATL number back again. I explained, again, what was going on. Used-car guy got a little snippy with me and told me that he couldn’t help me set up a new account and — despite my protestations about being transferred — transferred me.

To Texas.

The gentleman in Texas was nice, took my info and said he’d find me some numbers that would be helpful. He gave me a number he claimed was for my region (after taking my zip code). I called it.

It was Illinois.

The woman recognized my voice when I told her what I wanted to do. “Oh no!” she said. This time, desperate to get things worked out, she said she wouldn’t transfer me until she had another human being to transfer me to who was actually in Atlanta. Thank goodness.

I did finally speak with a man in Atlanta in the “incoming sales center” (or something like that). I’m not 100% sure, but I’m fairly confident that I have never been on the receiving end of the level of condescension that this guy exuded. It was at this point that I learned that the “self-install” kits only work if you already have cable service. You would think such a critical piece of information would be listed on the box, but it wasn’t. I asked why this wasn’t the case and he told me it was too obvious to put on the box.

You don’t just buy a lamp, he told me, and expect the electricity to come with it.

When I balked at the installation fee because I just had a Comcast account a few weeks ago and they couldn’t transfer it because of their own technical limitations, he told me there was no way that they could waive it because they had to “roll a truck”. Apparently “rolling a truck” costs $33. He also told me that I should have known to tell the people that closed the account to “flag it”. Whatever that means. I asked to speak with a supervisor. He demurred. I insisted. He hung up on me.

Classy.

I finally, in one last-ditch effort to purchase internet service, I called the same number that had led me to the used car salesman before and got on the phone with a guy who was watching Monday Night Football and, I can’t imagine why this might be, took forever to enter my basic information. We’re talking two minutes to type my apartment number. After which time he had to ask for it again. C’mon, dude. At least turn down MNF and blame it on the computer. After approximately two-and-one-third eternities, he told me that he needed to transfer me to someone who could “provision my box”, which is not as dirty as it sounds.

I was put on the phone with Willie, who told me basically everything that the asshole told me, except he did it without treating me like an idiot and explained that having to send a truck out wasn’t a policy but a technical limitation — if he couldn’t connect to the modem, he couldn’t get it registered in the system. Makes sense, no? Willie didn’t say anything about an installation fee, but I was also quoted the regular rate for service as opposed to the promotional rate.

I figured I should quit while I was ahead.

Two-and-a-half hours and no fewer than 8 customer service reps later, I had an appointment to for Wednesday. So it appears that it will take one more day in the stone age before some guy with more tools than IQ points arrives at my apartment to exchange working internet for 90 minutes of small talk.

By and large, the people I spoke with were polite and attempted to be helpful. Everywhere but Atlanta, that is.

This does not bode well. I think I need to get Willie’s direct line.

1. For you non-literary types, this is really, really weak foreshadowing

2. The folks in Illinois were very, very nice. I need to emphasize that. They did what they could, every time I talked to them, to get me pointed in the right direction.

Tags: Comcast Sucks