Comcast [Stinks]

Who knew that my comment about companies hearing about what they do wrong in a nanosecond would come home to roost so soon? If I had been paying attention to what everyone was telling me, I should have.

I was coy in my earlier post about the identity of our cable provider, since I felt no need to provoke the plodding giant with possibly unjustified criticism. I no longer feel such need to protect the good name of Comcast, since there is so little good that requires protecting.

From start to abrupt finish, our experience was a disaster. The website offered packages that did not reveal the channel lineups because the section of the website listed channel lineups did not use the same package names. The people on the phone couldn't help because I was ordering products and services through their Internet group. The Internet sign-up process culminated in a chat, which would have been a completely pointless and time wasting exercise except for the fact that it gave me the opportunity to order a box for a second television, which was impossible to do through the regular site.

The installation of Internet service (which essentially consists of screwing in a coaxial cable into the back of a modem) could be mine for the low, low price of $100, or $150 for two computers. As an alternative, I could order a do-it-yourself kit for $10, which of course I selected. Or I tried to, until I got to the gatekeeper questionnaire that would determine whether I was qualified to order the do-it-yourself kit. The first qualification is that I had to be an existing Comcast customer. I was not, of course. Cheryl's genius suggestion, as she peered deep into the heart of the byzantine beast, was to order cable TV first, then order the Internet service. Ah, requiring customers to do something in two steps that could have been done in one. Could it really be? As soon as I closed the chat window on my cable-TV order (thereby establishing me as an existing Comcast customer), I reopened the browser and ordered Internet service. Brilliant.

We had to wait a week for actual installation, of course. The installation technician did not appear during the 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. window, of course. When I called Comcast at 11, the person on the phone told me that our appointment had been rescheduled, of course. In fact, the appointment had been rescheduled at 7:50 a.m. that morning. Did we receive a telephone call alerting us to this important fact? Of course not.

When the technician finally arrived at 1 p.m., he spent the entire time he was in the house warning us that we probably would not get very good reception, and that our Internet connection would also probably be spotty at best. This, from the representative of the company that was delivering those very services. He said we should upgrade the cables in the house -- for a fee, naturally. However, he did not bother to stay to do the work he recommended (he said he was running late for his next appointment -- ha!) and that we might have been willing to pay for. Before leaving, he told us that it would probably take a couple of hours for all of the channels to come online. Uh, what? The last I checked, the cable box was not powered by vacuum tubes.

By the time I got home in the evening, perhaps a dozen channels were viewable on the family room television, and none came through in the bedroom television. The rest said they would be coming "soon." By hooking the cable directly into the television and bypassing the box -- on the technician's recommendation -- we could finally see several dozen of the basic cable channels. No high definition, though, and nothing with a channel number higher than 75. Outstanding.

At least we could reengage with the rest of the world through the Internet. My wireless router worked immediately and well. Upon hooking up our modem, however, I discovered that we were not receiving any signal. When I called Comcast yet again, I was flabbergasted to learn that they had no record of me ordering Internet service at all. When I asked what it would take to start that service, I was told that I could not do it over the phone because I had ordered the cable TV/Internet service bundle over the Internet. Just to be sure that we were on the same page, I verified with the person on the phone that they expected me to go online to correct the problem with my nonexistent online service. I don't think he grasped the irony of the situation as profoundly as I did.

With Cheryl urgently making throat slashing gestures in the next room (to her credit, she had foreseen nothing but disaster), I advised my friendly Comcast representative that our next step would be to cancel the television and (nonexistent) Internet service immediately.

"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."

"Why not, HAL?"

"Because that group closed for the day half an hour ago."

The level of failure at that point was comprehensively breathtaking. Our television service, which required guesswork at the time of ordering, was providing about a dozen stations through one television and none through the other (with a horribly clunky on-screen interface to boot). Our Internet service, for which I had endured a lengthy and ultimately pointless Internet chat session, simply did not exist. I could not rectify the situation on the phone because I had ordered through the Internet, and I could not rectify the situation through the Internet because, apparently, I had not ordered Internet service, my confirmation number for the order notwithstanding. I could not even cancel service because those elite, specially trained people had gone home for the day.

Suffice it to say, twelve hours later, we have now unsubscribed from Comcast's "services." At my insistence, I have been told by the person on the phone (no doubt one of the highly trained cancellation shock troops I'd just missed the night before) that my service would be backdated so that I would not be charged. It should go without saying that I no longer have any expectation of this actually being the case.

AT&T, you own me now. Landline, DSL, Dish Network (maybe even an iPhone)... it's all yours.