Posts Tagged ‘Comcast Sucks’

Really Comcast/Xfinity… Really?

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

So today we all lingered around the house instead of running errands because of the 3 hour window we were given by Comcast for them to setup the new phone, and fix the cable box issue we’re having.  Sean wondered down to the Comcast office in an effort to exchange the digital adaptor for an actual digital box, he was informed that since there is a pending work order, they can not make any changes to the account.  He wasn’t trilled about it, but understood and made the 10 minute drive back to the house unscathed.  We continued to wait, I was on the porch for the bulk of the afternoon talking to Muir and my father and giving them the run down on how things have been playing out for a while.  Not one Comcast truck drove down the street, and the only cars I actually saw were 3 or so different cars, the bulk of which were neighbors – one was verified as a realtor because they were doing something with the house across the street. I recognized her because I had her walk me through the house that Sean and I fell in love with last October.

About 5:15 or so I went inside and said “Yea, so much for between 3 & 5”, Sean agreed and Karen jumped on the phone to call and find out what’s going on.  Supposedly someone (in this house) received a phone call from Comcast noting the appointment was Cancelled, or the issue was that no one was home when Comcast came by.  Either way there’s someone, somewhere, claiming they made the effort to actually follow through with a service call and I’m pretty confident that isn’t the case at all. Either Comcast is covering up, or the service rep is an asshole who is providing the office with false information.  So we were informed that nothing can be done for us until Saturday afternoon, which of course we consider a true crock of shit.  We have no phone in the house, and one of the cable boxes is malfunctioning.  We have to wait until Saturday AND they’re going to charge us $40 for the service call.  Are you fucking kidding me?  I can’t imagine ( by any means ) how Comcast could be a more fucked up company than it is.  I already think its bull shit that the only way to save money on the bill is to have them give you a telephone that you don’t even want.  What’s the point of even offering a “Double Play” if you’re just going to make a Triple-Play cheaper anyway?

So since we were stuck until Saturday, I did the same thing I did last weekend and posted a message on TWITTER for assistance.  Someone (a second Employee from Comcast to prove his has a brain) was able to setup the box within five seconds of sending him the direct message with the serial number on the box.  I don’t quite understand why I have to resort to Twitter in order to accomplish something with this company, but that’s just how it’s got to go I guess.

Either way I’m still going to be making it a point to get in touch with corporate about this bull shit $40 service call, there’s no fucking way in hell we should have to pay for someone to show up considering they’ve already proven that they were incapable of doing it in the first place!

Can’t concentrate for shit…

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

Even though I’ve already put in 5 hours (on ONE damn site) today, I still feel like I haven’t accomplished ANYTHING.  I still have an urge to put in another 3 hours but it’s after 2:30am and all I want to do is go to sleep.  I’m not sure why I’m having trouble concentrating, I just keep getting this feeling like I need to be doing something else.  Typically “pay the bills” is on the back of my mind.  Today, however, it’s been “I feel the urge to Google random shit, just ’cause”.  It’s not even anything good.  Hell, someone posted on Facebook about how they have a random itch (down there) and can’t figure out what it is.  I, for some reason, spent a half hour researching it while over a PM with her.   What the hell is wrong with me?  Her oonie should be none of my concern, but she posted it on FB and it was a distraction for me so I veered off course.

I know that up to this point I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do today.  I got another 10 or so pages completed on the eCommerce backend, the kitchen’s clean and the chicken was taken out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrows dinner.  I watched my Monday night shows, and spent some quality time with a very fidgety dog who’s terrified from the one crack of thunder we experienced with the random storm that passed through Delmarva this evening.  There’s really nothing left to do, my To-Do list is empty.  So why do I feel like I haven’t completed a damn thing?

On the home front things are OK. Karen’s having some post-surgery issues that we’re working on fixing.  It’s my hope that we can fix everything with over-the-counter based products before it turns into a trip to a specialist, but we’ll see where things stand on Wednesday morning and go from there.  I don’t want to venture over to Maryland but for the sake of her health we’ve got no choice. I don’t trust a single damn doctor in Delaware and if I need to cross state lines to get in with someone who actually knows what they’re doing… so be it.

I decided, this past weekend, that Comcast/Xfinity is the absolute worst company in the world (and I’m an Optimum/Cablevision hater too).  With the move to my new “office”, Sean went out and picked up a cable box from Comcast that was supposed to have been activated within an hour of getting off the phone with tech support.  Of course after four phone calls and constantly being told “wait another hour” (over the course of three days), I decided to take out my frustration on Twitter with a #comcastsucks hashtag, PLUS tagging with @comcast to prove my point.  I get a message from a Comcast employee offering to assist me and within 10 minutes of providing him with my account # and the serial number on the box in question – everything was fixed.  I still don’t understand how it was possible for him to fix something in a matter of minutes via Twitter when FOUR phone calls did absolutely nothing!  There was only ONE phone call that showed any level of being “productive” and that’s when they somehow conned Sean into signing up for a triple-play when we have absolutely no need or use for a home phone. We’re not getting any kind of an upgrade with channels, we’re only getting Encore for six months free.  Who the hell watches Encore? At least offer Showtime so I can watch Shameless in January for crying out loud!  It did wind up costing us like $25 less than we were set to pay, but the point is we didn’t call to alter the plan – we called for the damn box to work so I’m not sitting here in silence when I’m not in the mood for music.

I have found that my concentration level goes up with a TV in the background, mainly because I find TV to be so boring that I’d rather be in Dreamweaver.  That’s not even working for me though.  I’m extremely sound sensitive and wanting to just fly far far away and get away from it all.  I’m halfway tempted to head down to the beach since the storm is now off shore and I’m sure the surf on the Atlantic’s gone up quite a bit.

In any event… gonna try to knock out another hour and go to bed.  My major goals for tomorrow are to get some clothes folded, put in at least 6 hours and hopefully remember to watch “Extreme Cheapskates” on TLC because the show just looks that interesting.  Not to mention the fact that after NCIS (the original, fuck LA) there’s really nothing on TV accept the news.j

Well that was uneventful…

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

Sean and I decided it was time to venture out on our own for a little while in an effort to clear our heads and just get out of the house in general. We made our way down to Cape Henlopen State Park with the anticipation of comfortably relaxing and catching some fish. Typically just going down to the water helps us to clear our head anyway… it wasn’t the case tonight.  We caught absolutely NOTHING and were freezing our asses off the entire time.  Typically on a Saturday night the place is packed and you can’t get anywhere near the end of the pier where the waters a little deeper considering we’re in the bay and not on the ocean.  Tonight was a completely different story, it looked more like an abandoned beach than a year round fisherman’s paradise.  There was one car in the parking lot and I’m almost positive it belonged to the gentleman who runs the bait shop in the parking lot anyway.  So we chocked that up as a complete and total bust.

After we attempted to warm ourselves up by curling into balls on our chairs, and saw that there wasn’t even a nibble on our lines – let alone a catch – we said “eff-this” and left.  Knowing that we were only out on the pier for about an hour we mutually decided that it wasn’t time to go home just yet and ventured over to Applebee’s to fuel ourselves up for the night ahead being as we both have tight deadlines to meet. We filled ourselves up on the appetizers so we barely touched the meal, damn the 2 for $20 menu!

Now we’re home, the dogs being annoying and I’m still cold.  I don’t get cold very often and sat outside long enough to get the typical “ehh, just a chill” straight down to the bone. My fingers are still blue, my stomach is killing me from crappy food and I just want to curl under a blanket and watch TV.  BUT – There’s an entire eCommerce backend to create (fuck you Zend Framework), a WordPress site to completely transfer to a new server AND recode, and lets not mention the crackhead client who’s been dragging me along for the past few months because she can’t make up her fucking mind.

I thought the saving grace to today would be that Sean ran out earlier this morning and picked up an adaptor for the TV in my office so I could actually have some kind of background noise.  The TV was on for almost 8 hours for the “45 Minute” window Comcast needed to activate the box.  It’s still not working, and calling them 3 times was pretty much pointless cause they did absolutely nothing for us.  On Tuesday we can expect a tech out for an upgrade, hopefully he’ll crawl under the house and explain why there’s no feed coming into this room and things will be back to normal.

For now I’ll stick with Project Free TV, or Netflix and have it running in the lower corner while I work.  I would prefer to not eat up the bandwidth so that Sean and I can actually get something done but at this point there’s nothing that can get me to concentrate.  I need to have something going on in the background for when I need to take a break from coding and music just isn’t doing it anymore.  I wish the TV worked, but I guess I’ll just have to hold off for a few more days.

Either way…as stated… it’s been uneventful.