Comcastic Wednesday

So, ever since I moved into my new apartment, I've had cable internet (begrudgingly -- the phone wiring's too crappy for DSL). For the first year I've had it, I've had no complaints. It was fast and reliable, and the support people knew their shit.

And then, Comcast took Adelphia over. Some stuff -- like the gods-awful support phone menu -- actually got better. Things were fine, until this past week -- 3 outages in the space of 7 days, all happening in the early morning when I'm winding down to random surfing.

Their tech support was useless. Couldn't tell me (at first) whether or not there was an outage in the area. Then, as he was about to send a tech over, said "oh yeah, there's an outage". Couldn't tell me what caused the outage. Couldn't give me an ETR. It usually gets repaired sometime in the wee hours of the morning.

Eventually, after the third outage, I decided I wanted credit for the time I lost. So I got the ticket numbers of the times I called about an outage, and called the Billing Dept., who apparently knew more about the outage than the tech I called initially. I gave her the ticket numbers, and asked for a refund or a credit. Nope. "Oh, those are Tech Support tickets, I can't see those." So how does one get a credit for the time I spend off the net? "You call the Billing Dept. when the outage starts, and again when the outage ends, and we'll refund you."

For what is now prolly the biggest ISP in the US, this is ridiculously awkward. Especially when outages are likely to go away when I'm [supposed to be] asleep. Thus, I miss my chance to get a refund. I tried pointing this out. No dice. So I resign myself to a long night and tell them to consider this notification of an outage, and hang up. I found other things to distract myself until the net came back on 90 minutes later. I didn't bother with calling back the Billing Dept. -- the stupidity I'd have to endure to get at most $.50 worth of credit is not worth it.

Another year with these ass clowns, and then I move to an apartment where I can get DSL. At least then I'll have a choice of what major telecom will ass-rape me.