29 ms·

It’s Comcastic, Or: I Accidentally Bought a House Without Cable

221 points by Deinos 12y ago

eropple 12y ago
Calling this an "accident" is entirely too kind to Comcast. They're happy to claim they'll serve almost anything within particular geographic areas, whether or not they can or will. (He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)
- mikeash 12y ago
  Once I was getting fed up with Comcast, so I called Verizon to see if they could give me DSL, how fast it would be, etc. Their response was basically that they had no idea, but they could put in an order and see what happened. They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all.
  - 300bps 12y ago
    They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all. As silly and frustrating as that is, "I don't know" is a much better answer than, "Yes, absolutely" that turns out to be false. "I don't know" would've saved OP tens of thousands of dollars that he will soon be paying to sell a house he just purchased.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Oh yes, you're totally right. Just illustrating another small way these companies can be ridiculous.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    To be fair, how is the tech really supposed to know? Serviceability is a complicated question. There's engineering issues (how far from existing plant is the address?); there's legal issues (is servicing the address required under a franchise agreement?); there's logistical issues (is this a subdivision where the HOA won't let us dig up; is it a multi-dwelling unit where the property manager won't let us run wire)? It's not like houses are built in a structured, systematic manner. In most of the country, property developers just put up subdivisions at random. You're right though, "we don't know" is the right answer.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I'm not sure I understand your point. How are they supposed to know, outside of taking the appropriate actions that would allow them to know? Well, take those actions. Sure, it could be a hard question to answer. It's also a question whose answer is part of their core business. If they can't obtain the answer somehow, why do they even exist? I'd have been fine with "Because of X, Y, or Z, I have to pass this off to department Q and they'll get back to you in a day or two." But that's not what they said. Edit: I should clarify that the local wiring was all in place. Verizon phone service was available (and I had had it at one point, although not at the time of the call). Nothing needed digging or drilling or any sort of wire running at all.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        My point is that the data isn't sitting in a database the phone tech can look up. Putting in a service order is how it gets to the people that can answer the question.
        mikeash 12y ago
        And my point is that if they can't simply answer the question as given (even if it takes work) then the company as a whole is completely and utterly incompetent. If you're saying that they must put in a service order to get an answer to the question, you're merely describing specifics of the incompetence.
        res0nat0r 12y ago
        Huh? All of the specifics he mentioned above aren't just magically sitting somewhere in a simple database query. Your question needs to be handed off to someone so they can specifically research your situation and get back to you with the results. It sounds like specifically in your case, their system allows the techs who take new cable signups to enter your data in the system, and then it will return weather your house is serviceable, not serviceable, and with what type of service options are available if you can in fact sign up. Doesn't sound like a very strenuous process from the customer side.
  - jolan 12y ago
    At least they were honest instead of guessing. AT&T has a database of the line rate/quality that the last person who had service was able to achieve. That doesn't mean it's accurate though. Quality can have gone down due to rotted shielding, new sources of interference, etc.
dublinben 12y ago
Wouldn't the easiest way to verify cable internet service for a residence be to simply ask the current owner? They will know better than anyone else (including the ISP) whether their exact location can be serviced. I'm a little shocked that the author would go through all this back and forth with a company with a reputation like Comcast, and never once ask the previous owner of the house.
- duskwuff 12y ago
  He did ask the realtor, as well as Comcast themselves, and all were under the impression that it already had service. (First question in the FAQ.)
  - maratd 12y ago
    That is not what the parent said. He said ask the owner. Realtor couldn't care less, no wait, they have an incentive to lie. Comcast couldn't care less. The owner does care, because they become liable if they misrepresent the property. Never spend a ton of money without doing the leg work yourself. Don't trust other people, especially people who have zero incentive to be accurate or truthful.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  If the previous owner chose not to order cable service, they would have no idea. I have coax to and in my house. I've never ordered cable service so I have no idea if it works or is connected to anything. I have DSL service I'm happy with, and rabbit ears on my TV.
regehr 12y ago
I bought a house about 1 mile from downtown Salt Lake City in 2008 and it took until last year to get a decent internet connection (from Comcast). First world problems!
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  What did you have before?
  - regehr 12y ago
    512 kbps DSL -- just barely, frustratingly capable of watching Netflix at the worst quality level
- PirateDave 12y ago
  I don't think that it's just coincidence that this happened around the same time that SLC was announced for Google Fiber as well.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
windexh8er 12y ago
As someone in the comments section noted to the author - there are plenty of short haul, unlicensed spectrum, wireless bridges available today that are very affordable. Even if he went with something more long haul oriented he could easily clear well over 30 miles LoS at over 500Mbit (https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/ https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/) in real-world expectations. I would put the money into building a tower on my property and find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge. Having done this working for a cable provider in the past, it's trivial and inexpensive (costing well under $10k for the expensive equipment, generally a 5 mile link can be done for under $2k). Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.
- rohansingh 12y ago
  Long-haul LoS can be pretty much impossible in parts of the Pacific Northwest due to the geography and ecology (read: hills and trees). The short point-to-point option with a cooperative neighbor could definitely work.
  - vkjv 12y ago
    This. Most people, unsurprisingly, are quite nice. I think a lot of people would be willing to do this if they get high-speed service for free.
  - jf22 12y ago
    Why didn't you just write "the hills and trees". This read: thing is getting out of hand.
  - dagw 12y ago
    It's been 15 years since I last had anything to do with long range LoS wireless bridges, but at least back then they also tended to flake out during snowstorms and heavy rain.
    - mikeash 12y ago
jason_slack 12y ago
This happened to me in December 2014. I bought a house in way upstate NY. I called Time Warner to verify they could get internet to the location before I bought the house!! They said yes. I packed up, moved across country to then find out that Time Warner "made a mistake" and no internet is available. Not even DSL. So, I am now the proud owner of a CradlePoint LTE modem, upped my data through AT&T since they were having a promotion to 30gb a month. It's a change in my browsing habits but 30gb is more than enough for work stuff and at the end of the month if I have 10gb to spare I go after those videos I wanted to watch.
rayiner 12y ago
> I think this was the most productive call I’ve had so far, because I finally got the clear picture of what’s going on. Somewhere in Comcast’s system, there’s a check box that says that I already have cable service to the house. Every time I call to ask about new service, someone looks at this checkbox and concludes that I don’t need construction. Whenever a ticket is opened in regards to construction, it’s closed automatically because the system believes it’s not necessary. So I am literally in a Catch-22 This is what Kafkaesque actually means.
- tzs 12y ago
  What I think I would try I that situation is to change the address. Pick a nonexistent address on the same street, and order service at that address. Change the numbers on the house to match and make sure they are prominent so any people dispatch there will find it.
  - TehCorwiz 12y ago
    I love that idea. In some situations there's actually a USPS process for changing the number address of a plot of land. I remember the first house my parents bought had two valid addresses until they got everyone using the same one.
  - slayed0 12y ago
    This actually fits in nicely with the Comcast "rinse and repeat" method. Keep calling back asking the same question until you get the answer you want. Maybe he should have just submitted phantom requests from every address on his street under different pseudonyms. Eventually someone might have made the mistake of initiating the construction... or a regional manager may have unlocked the project due to perceived demand!
- slayed0 12y ago
  Situations like this are all I can think of when considering offloading more and more work to machines. I am all for automation, and maybe it is the lesser of two evils, but there is a certain human problem solving/reasoning element that desperately needs to be figured out.
ZitchDog 12y ago
This reminds me quite a bit of my situation when we built our new house. Our local cable company is Mediacom, which serves smaller markets. They were extremely flaky about running cable just 2 blocks from an existing drop. Fortunately after extensive research, I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) requires them to run cable to new houses in a timely matter. After months of delays, once I threatened to file a formal complaint with the telecommunications commission, they ran a cable to our house within two weeks. The problem is, it's fairly expensive to dig cable to a single house, and it's just not worth it for the cable company to dig. If we decide that broadband is a necessity, some sort of municipal broadband or government oversight is absolutely required to guarantee that each person has access, because the market sure won't.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) Do you have a copy of the ordinance, by chance? Exclusive cable franchises are illegal under federal law. If you're litigious, you might be able to get the ordinance overturned.
  - extra88 12y ago
    Do you have a copy of the federal law, by chance?
    - rayiner 12y ago
      47 U.S.C. 541(a)(1). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541. Part of the 1992 Cable Act: http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html. "A franchising authority may award, in accordance with the provisions of this subchapter, 1 or more franchises within its jurisdiction; except that a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise. Any applicant whose application for a second franchise has been denied by a final decision of the franchising authority may appeal such final decision pursuant to the provisions of section 555 of this title for failure to comply with this subsection." Theoretically, a pre-1992 contract negotiated before the law was passed might still be in effect. In practice, these contracts had 5-10 year terms and expired long ago.
j_s 12y ago
Up until last November, one solution would be to buy an old Verizon contract with unlimited data on e-Bay (no longer transferable?). http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data-plans-no-longer-transferrable-effective-november-13/ http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data-plans...
zdw 12y ago
Contact the local municipality that Comcast gets it's cable license from and complain. The also hit the corporation commission, and other licensing agencies. Then sue them. Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. That's utterly stupid.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. They don't: http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/Kitsap1432.html http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/.... See: 14.32.010 Terms of franchise. "(2) Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter shall be nonexclusive and shall not preclude the county from granting other or further franchises or permits or preclude the county from using any roads, rights-of-way, streets or other public properties or affect its jurisdiction over them or any part of them, or limit the full power of the county to make such changes, as the county shall deem necessary, including the dedication, establishment, maintenance and improvement of all new rights-of-way and thoroughfares and other public properties." If he's 2,500 feet from the nearest equipment, he's probably living in a low-density area that's not worth anyone's while to serve.
cletus 12y ago
This is a pretty awful situation. I feel bad for the author. I've had two similar incidents in the past, although not quite as bad. Years ago I lived in an apartment block with 9 apartments in the front building and 9 in the rear. This was the dialup era and I wanted (and assumed I could get) a 2nd line so I didn't tie up my primary line all the time. Turns out the telco had only run 10 lines to the rear building for whatever reason and I guess someone was using the "spare" already. Interestingly, this was in the deregulation era. The guy I spoke to felt bad and explained to me how now they couldn't by law provide more lines for free. In the spirit of "competition" they had to price it "fairly". Oh well. It was a rental and I moved a year later anyway. The second time was in the DSL era (which is still the case in Australia). The ACCC (sorta like an FTC/FCC hybrid) had decided that ISPs were allowed to install their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges. Well that worked well in some exchanges and not well in others. Some ran out of space for racks very quickly. There was no spare capacity for me there. However I did get put on a waiting list that resolved very quickly. Now this was in the very early days of ADSL where it was still pretty unusual. I've heard some horror stories about how it is now in some parts of the country. Anyway... There must be other people in their street/area who also aren't serviced by Comcast. Can't Comcast justify wiring up the street by adding a bunch of new customers? Also, the author mentions reading the franchise agreement but doesn't say anything more about it. I assume that means Comcast isn't required to service his area or at least isn't required to provide 100% coverage? And Comcast wants to merge with TWC? They can't manage their current network. Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?
- malka 12y ago
  > Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better? Yeah. If I crap on a pile on crap, I wont get gold. I'll just get more crap.
yummybear 12y ago
Even I hate Comcast. And I'm european.
- teh_klev 12y ago
  And I thought BT were a shower of shits.
jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
I wonder if the writer is being too quick to dismiss satellite - it certainly has its limitations but it could be a useful addition to the mix of limited connectivity that DOES serve the house. The Verizon hotspots may have a 30gb/month cap - so buy two. John Woo rules apply - use the first 'till it runs out, then switch to the second. Try combining multiple sources of connectivity with a load-balancing router, or similar. These can be set to send certain types of traffic via more optimal routes, so you reserve scarce/expensive bandwidth for applications/destinations which need it, and send other traffic across cheaper, slower or uncapped routes, etc etc. Combine satellite, mobile (cellular) Internet, wireline DSL, community wifi, even dialup into the mix. Look at wilder wifi options too - if there's no connectivity at the house, do you have line-of-sight to somewhere which is better connected? Point to point antennas, high gain receivers, etc. More and more options to throw into the pot. Obviously, it's all a lot of trouble, and is bound to be expensive - but given that the author was already considering paying some or all of the substantial Comcast buildout fees, even the most complex of these alternatives is still likely to be cheaper - and if it means not having to sell the house you love, then that has to be worth a thought.
- beauzero 12y ago
  30GB month on Verizon is $120. That gets expensive fast.
ak217 12y ago
They are going to sell the house on account of this?! I wish there were more places like this, with their property values dinged by lack of cable. I would jump on such a discount.
- fixermark 12y ago
  I hear there's a guy in Washington you could make an offer to. ;)
clarky07 12y ago
I'm currently gearing up for a similar headache. I'm planning on building on a piece of land that is ~20 minutes from the city. Comcast's website is happy to sign up in my zip code and even my neighbors address, but they don't actually get there. Now I have to figure out exactly how far away it is, and how much trouble it's going to be (if even remotely possible) to get them to come down our street. There are obviously other options. My neighbor uses a Verizon hotspot. Satellite is technically an option. But the data caps are really sad since we like having Netflix and other streaming services as our primary entertainment. 25-30 gb is really not something I'm looking forward to. Might settle for bad DSL I guess. I hope at least that is in the area.
poulsbohemian 12y ago
I used to live in Kitsap county and this story is very familiar. We had a house not far from the bridge where there was no (and probably will never be) cell phone coverage by any provider, dsl also wasn't an option, and comcast was the only game in town. You were lucky to get an FM/AM radio signal. Some of the problem is that houses are built sporadically outside Poulsbo and Bremerton proper - there really aren't neighborhoods so much as somebody bought an acre in the woods and put a house on it. But, this is certainly not isolated to Kitsap county or Comcast. Now I live in the other side of the state, in Walla Walla, and I assure you that Charter is just as bad, even when you pay for a business-class connection. It seems once you get outside Portland/Seattle, the population density isn't such that the cable providers (or other potential internet providers) are much interested in the infrastructure investment. For the big guys like Comcast, Charter, etc - HQ is far far away and has no idea of the local situation. The only option I've found is to become buddies with the local field guys (and there are only like 2 for the 4 county area over here...). Frankly, while the isolation and quiet of the peninsula is nice, you are better off selling your house anyway unless you are willing to hold it for 20+ years and hope that King/Pierce/Snohomish are finally so full that people have no choice but to move to Kitsap county. House sales are horribly slow and values barely move.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  I'm on Whidbey, and thankfully, the situation is totally different (at least on the south end). We've got a good local telecom company that provides pretty decent dsl and phone service. Best of all, they've got local tech support and their techs will go the extra mile to make sure everything is working.
leklund 12y ago
Maude: Lord, you can imagine where it goes from here. The Dude: He fixes the cable? Maude: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.
nathantotten 12y ago
File a complaint with the FCC. I have done this twice now with comcast and both times somebody from their "executive support" contacted me the next day. It seems that their "executive support" might be the only people in the company that actually can solve problems and the FCC complaint is the only way I know of to get in touch with them. Clearly a very effeciient system Comcast has over there. https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us
- chatmasta 12y ago
  I was also able to get ahold of "executive support," and received A+ customer service. All my issues were resolved and bill was discounted ongoing. I spent a few hours putting together a single .pdf with all the evidence of comcast wrongdoing compiled together. It was 10+ pages of screenshots and explanations proving comcast fucked up and was charging me for it. I emailed Comcast explaining I was ready to forward to techcrunch if they didn't resolve the situation A.S.A.P. Within two hours I had an email from a real person.
  - therealdrag0 12y ago
    In what ways had they "fucked up"?
- jolan 12y ago
  Yup, I had a similar situation where I bought a house, tech came out, no cable run to the house. Their executive support got everyone to actually do what they said they were going to do. They can be reached directly at we_can_help@cable.comcast.com. Long version: There was cable to the utility pole but it wasn't actually active or connected to anything. Tech said he would escalate to his supervisor and his supervisor would escalate to the construction department and contact us. We ordered AT&T while waiting to hear back. AT&T install went fine but the router was complete crap for an advanced/technical person, high latency, IPTV steals bandwidth when recording more than 1 HD channel, etc. I got sick of waiting so I sent a polite email to we_can_help@cable.comcast.com and included a google maps link of where the pedestal was and the utility pole. I received a response the next day that they would fix it for me. A couple days later we heard from the construction supervisor that they would be working on it with no charge to us. A week later, a crew was out running a new line from the pedestal to the utility pole. A few days later someone came and buried cable from the utility pole to the house. We waited a few days to see if someone would contact us and they did and said we could proceed with installation. A tech came and setup everything but the actual line never activated. So the tech filed a service outage ticket and left. The next morning we had a signal and everything was working. So ~2 weeks of no Internet, ~4 weeks of subpar AT&T U-Verse later, had a decent connection with no complaints.
kiscica 12y ago
In a situation like this, the key is to get a contingency in the house purchase contract -- and have the work done before the closing. We bought a house that didn't have cable or DSL in a somewhat rural area -- the sellers were using 3G, satellite Internet, and dialup (!). They assured us that the only reason they hadn't had cable installed was the high cost they'd been quoted for running cable on the property (understandable as the house is almost 1/4 mile back from the street), and the cable company concurred that they'd be able to do the work, "no problem," and quoted a fee that didn't seem all that bad in the end (we took it into account when negotiating the price of the house). Nevertheless, we made the sellers agree to a contingency - cable co. would successfully complete the work (on our dime, of course) and hook us up before the closing, and the total amount wouldn't exceed what we had been quoted. If the contingency wasn't met, the sale would fall through and we'd get our deposit back. That contingency clause relieved me of a lot of stress over the next few months. Everything turned out OK in the end, but it was touch-and-go for a while. Cable co. accepted the order with no problem, did a survey I guess, called us and said they wouldn't be able to do it. They were persuaded (not sure how -- agent took care of it) to reconsider, but then came back with a quote that was at least five times higher than before. Cue lots of emails and phone calls. It was helpful having an agent who lived in the community. In the end a local contractor dug the trench for us at a very reasonable price, cable co. came down on their estimate, and the work actually was completed at just under the original quote. The dirt was literally being shoveled back over the trench on the day of the closing. As I recall it was actually a few days later that the cable guy came to do the inside wiring and "flip the switch," so strictly speaking the contingency (cable installed and working) wasn't satisfied by the closing, but we assumed we'd be OK at that point, and there were in fact no further hitches. We moved in and have enjoyed a (mostly) reliable, fast connection ever since. But we would absolutely have walked away, even though it was our "dream house," had we not been able to get the cable pulled. The contingency clause gave us the assurance that we could do that with no penalty. And, had it turned out that the work could be done but only at 5x the price, we could potentially have used the clause to negotiate a concession from the seller to cover the costs.
- fixermark 12y ago
  In general, yes. In this instance, the buyer was 100% convinced that the property had the service of interest and was told it did by the local monopoly in charge of providing such service. There was no work to be done before the closing because Comcast won't hook up Internet to a property for someone who isn't the property owner or resident. What you're describing would be a bit like taking out a contingency on the house actually having running water after you physically walked through the house and checked the taps and toilets, just on the off chance that the water is actually not coming from the local muni water source, but instead from an on-property aquifer that a previous owner had tapped and painstakingly routed into the house's internal plumbing, and immediately after closing the sale that aquifer runs dry. Real people don't go to that level of contract detail.
drcube 12y ago
Couldn't you sue? Your home purchase was predicated on Comcast's word that they could service your new home. You require it for work. Now you've bought a home, have to sell it for a loss, all due to Comcast. I don't see why you can't stick them with the bill. Call a lawyer, have them talk to Comcast, and maybe they'll change their tune about extending their line to your home.
- Filligree 12y ago
  Only if they had that as a contingency clause in the contract for the house. Which they probably didn't.
  - drcube 12y ago
    Fair enough. I'm not a lawyer. Just throwing out ideas.
    - natch 12y ago
      Your idea is worth investigation. A contingency would not help with a suit. It would have helped in avoiding the purchase altogether, but that's another matter.
  - maratd 12y ago
    > Only if they had that as a contingency clause in the contract for the house. Might be a good idea for the next house.
  - natch 12y ago
    No... a contingency is between the buyer and the seller. It just gives the buyer an out if certain things don't happen. It doesn't give Comcast any obligations in the matter. Comcast could be held accountable for other reasons, but not by a contingency.
    - Filligree 12y ago
      That was my point. There's no way to force Comcast to serve them, but they could have gotten out of the purchase.
jellicle 12y ago
It's nice that cable companies claim they need rate increases, monopolies, subsidies and so on because of all the work they do putting up infrastructure to serve everyone, and then also charge the residents for putting up that same infrastructure.
shanecleveland 12y ago
Also live in Kitsap county. I am sure you have looked, but is Wave Cable an option in your location at all? The business I am at in Silverdale utilizes Wave. I know others in the county that have Wave, as well. I am not sure how coverage is dictated between the providers.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
When I grew up the telephone company was still a state-run monopoly. To get telephone service connected you had to pay a nominal fee, independent of whether there was trenching and laying of cable involved, or if they just had to connect at the patch panel. Today's unregulated quasi-monopolies are some progress. Can we get the government monopoly back? The thing is - it worked extremely well!
- ghaff 12y ago
  It was very reliable and simple in any case (talking about AT&T). Long distance phone calls were also about 50 cents/minute interstate (and even longer distance intrastate) in the early 1980s and for a long time you couldn't even attach your own gear to the phone lines in your house. You had to rent AT&T phones. Some of this is a function of the general technological advance between then and now of course but Ma Bell was certainly not a fast moving organization. From a 1976 SNL skit: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Government monopoly wasn't nirvana by a long shot.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ohitsdom 12y ago
And people are worried net neutrality will mess up the internet with governmental regulation.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  however net neutrality isn't going to correct an issue he faces. his home is almost a half mile away from active service which puts the onus on the home owner. new subdivisions usually contract out cable laying; cable, electrical, gas and, etc. This cost gets embedded in every new home sale. Now I am curious why this owner hasn't decided to contract out the cable himself from house to an an appropriate connection point? I am not sure if his house is 2500 feet back from the road or merely 2500 ft from the nearest drop. I have seen many a farm where the main residence is quite a run from the street so this could be similar.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Net neutrality regulations don't help with this issue – and could make it worse, because new ISPs will face extra compliance costs. Also, if a potential new ISP has novel business model ideas (involving cross-subsidies from other service providers), their ideas may be made illegal by the FCC's rules. So the dynamic we have (and expressed to some extent in your comment) is: (1) Comcast is a crappy company that people hate/distrust; (2) Because of that hate/distrust, people support policies like federally-mandated net neutrality; but… (3) Such federal regulation, even when it provides some consumer protection, also makes the crappy monopolist even more entrenched and sluggish, as was the case with 'Ma Bell', the 60s/70s airline industry, 20th-century rail/truck shipping, etc.
kyleblarson 12y ago
Does anyone here work remotely on a satellite connection? How has your experience been? I live in an extremely isolated town of 200 people in the North Cascades (Washington state as well) and currently use CenturyLink DSL. Because the line to my little community is saturated, they can only offer us 1.5 down. It's slow, but I make it work and thankfully the bandwidth is very consistent and my work isn't super bandwidth intensive. I have often wondered if it would make sense to put satellite into the mix as well. We already have Dish for TV.
- paulornothing 12y ago
  My father in law works really remotely in PA. He gets about the equivalent of 3g phone speeds. I have found when I'm visiting it's not super reliable, that issue may be the router though.
- bobdvb 12y ago
  I used to work in the business of supplying satellite links like this in Europe and the Middle East, so not the same as the USA. It is a good alternative if you have no practical alternative such as a landline but I would only call it a basic alternative to ADSL. The biggest problem is latency and there are two factors that impact latency: 1) Distance (the satellite is really far away) 2) Contention (it is often a TDMA system so your packets have to wait for the next available time slot, in a busy network this can cause problems) Bandwidth isn't the primary concern, it is usually quality and latency. They are tightly related but latency is something that always limits you because it makes VoIP, VNC and gaming difficult.
jgrowl 12y ago
I still really believe that the big cable companies would be so much better if their internal systems weren't so broken. The problem is that They bought up so many small companies and have never completely integrated their processes and data into their main system. I had very similar experiences with Time Warner depending on who I talked I would get different results. It seemed like the main corporate office was not able to see notes that the local office entered and vice versa.
- ericras 12y ago
  Absolutely never do online chat with Time Warner Cable and never call their national phone number. Only call your local office. I've had appointments scheduled through online chat that never showed up that the local office didn't know about. Also have had the local office successfully debug problems remotely on the phone that the main corporate number claimed they couldn't fix.
encoderer 12y ago
When I was 18 I worked in a call center for AT&T@Home broadband cable. This was 2000, when the business was in its infancy and there were often technical issues. I worked the "supervisor" desk (i was not a supervisor, just a somewhat more knowledgable rep) so would take almost exclusively irate calls. I tried to help everybody of course, but a few people stood out from time to time as having exceptionally bad service. Bury requests that were cancelled for months -- so you have to mow your lawn around a cable and it trips your kids and gets chewed by rodents. Techs that hang a "we missed you" card on your door and then run back to the truck without ever knocking. Installers napping. Installers looking at porn. Installers going through peoples things. For those people, I gave them free service "for life". Deep inside the GUI app that I believe was called ACSR was the service provisioning and in every market there were all the paid services and a fairly similar list of free services that were used when the equipment was just being installed and users were brought online to test it. So they had "1.0 MB Broadband" and "1.0 MB Broadband Pilot". By moving users from one to the other, their bills would just drop to $0. I have no idea how long this benefit endured. You'd think at some point there would be an audit or migration that cleaned it up. But I hope not. Steve Roach in Memphis and the 1/2 dozen others: I hope your cable is still free.
- fixermark 12y ago
  My university was apparently grandfathered into that category (for their off-property students) when the local ISP company was bought by Comcast; the original provider had put the uni into their "Other" billing category as it was a special off-rate annually-negotiated contract, and when they unified the IT systems they got moved into that "billed 0" category in Comcast's backend. Yep, sure enough, an automatic cleaning script came along and killed all those cost-0 connections, cutting many student residents off from the network for a few days. My understanding is that the meeting between the Comcast rep and the head of campus IT was an instance of legendary restraint on the part of our IT head (in that everyone left the room with all their limbs still attached). (I'm sure it helped the uni's bargaining position a lot that we were in a metropolitan area; Verizon was champing at the bit to get those accounts).
jccooper 12y ago
I moved my office to a complex that was supposed to have both cable and DSL internet available. Neither was installed yet so we bought a Clearwire device to fill the gap. The DSL was a slightly better deal, so we had them in to install it, and it wouldn't push more than a few bits. After several service calls, they eventually gave up. We were too far away, even though their modelling showed our distance as fine. So we call up the cable company (Comcast, of course) and our unit is too far from the service point. They set up an appointment with engineering to install a new pole and such. Six months later, we have cable service finally run. Not speedy, but at least they didn't give me the runaround. It's too bad Clear didn't work out; saved my bacon. These days I'd have to get wireless internet service through one of the mobile phone companies, which is not nearly as good a deal. But it would still work. Anyway, it's a mess. And a good lesson to assume you can't get service until you actually have it, both in residential and commercial settings. But then there was the time with my home service where the DSL office got slowly further away until they couldn't give me service any more...
pivo 12y ago
I know a woman who works selling advert time for Comcast. She showed me what she described as a very special "just fix my problem and don't bullshit me about it" card that she had. She told me she gets two of these cards a year to hand out when she's trying to sell someone advertising time but that client isn't buying because they're upset about some problem they have with their personal Comcast service. She gives them a card, Comcast then forces themselves to fix the problem, and she can make a sale. So I asked her why Comcast doesn't treat all their customer's problems this way. She laughed.
- towelrod 12y ago
  When you hand over the card, make sure to say "Valar Morghulis".
  - true_religion 12y ago
    Valar dohaeris, meaning 'all men must serve' would be more appropriate, I think.
- web007 12y ago
  Every Comcast employee gets these cards - I got them when I was working for one of their west coast development offices. You're supposed to give them to friends, family, co-workers, strangers, etc. if you hear about them having a problem with service. I was always curious if they use them as a quality control step for their regular tech service, or just as a feel-good empowerment thing for the hoi polloi.
- oasisbob 12y ago
  I had something similar happen to me when working in institutional purchasing, and Comcast responded to an RFI we put out. For several months, I had been working unsuccessfully to get Comcast to fix my home connection which would drop several times a day. (Modem losing sync, down for 5-10 min usually.) A friend lived in the neighborhood, and we figured out something interesting was up when we saw each other drop from IRC at the same time. So, Comcast comes in to discuss their RFI response, and I raised the question of plant monitoring and proactive maintenance. "If there was a problem which affected multiple customers, do you take measures to detect this?" When they answered in the affirmative, I raised my issue and asked them to elaborate. The problem was fixed the next day, turns out it was a failed weather seal on something nearby.
Mithaldu 12y ago
I must honestly say: I'm angry at Comcast about this shit. However i'm even more angry at the author about it. He did not even try once to even get a supervisor, when he should have been throwing the book at Comcast by week 2 latest. How is a company supposed to learn and improve if people like this guy let them get away with literally lying to customers without punishment? Don't blog about it on the internet. Record phone calls, pressure agents to give you their full legal names, push to get supervisors. And get a damn lawyer.
- fixermark 12y ago
  The first rule of being in business over the Internet is this: Every bug report you get, you had better be damn thankful for. Each one represents an uncounted number of customers who just gave up on your product. Comcast is lucky this guy decided to document the precise way in which the system failed him; he gave them a roadmap for improving it.
  - Mithaldu 12y ago
    That's the point. For big companies bug reports are meaningless unless they result in loss of sufficient quantities of hard cash. In fact, i'm pretty sure comcast is happy about the outcome of this so far, since the conclusion of the author is: Do Comcast's job yourself first.
fixermark 12y ago
There aren't a ton of major differences between Verizon and Comcast as companies, but this one is sometimes (as indicated here) key: Verizon still employs its own unionized workforce of service technicians for cable connections; Comcast outsources that to multiple competing front-line service contractors. This isn't a system that can't ever work, but Comcast has not yet solved the problem of keeping communications channels clear and coordinated among different competing contractors who have no incentive to cross-communicate with each other (not only are they not rewarded for it, but the incentive system of free markets is actively structured so that if one contractor looks bad, others indirectly benefit). It leads to all sorts of little micro-aggressions; when I had Comcast hooked up at a previous residence, the contractor had to climb the ladder to the pole twice because the junction plugs that should easily wire my house to the main trunk were not only detached, but removed (likely by a previous contractor, because hey, free plugs). He had to go down and get new plugs and splice them in. In contrast, everyone is on the "same team" at Verizon, structurally and legally. You leave the junction plugs there because the next guy who comes along and needs to connect the service again is your coworker. It's a shame that none of that matters to this individual because of the way the service local monopolies are structured in the U.S. Living near a major metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors around here.
- true_religion 12y ago
  Living in the D.C. area, I can only speak for experience but Verizon seems to operate two groups of techs. One as you said are in-house and unionized, these guys seem to mostly handle the apartment complexes and large installments. The other group handles regular houses, or off-one jobs when the market is exploding. I've spoken to techs on both sides, and they both confirmed with mild disdain the existence of the other group. Just an anecdote.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    Tragically, the anecdote I've heard from our local techs is that Verizon corporate would love to switch to Comcast's model, and are applying attrition pressure to make it happen; their mobile business arm isn't unionized, and they're looking forward to switching out their retained employees with contract staff for all of the hookup work. ... which is a shame, because it's actually something I consider to be a distinguishing factor in their service options.
deeviant 12y ago
I've had wonderful experiences with the BBB when wronged by various companies. Although comcast might certainly be an exception to that, everybody already knows they have crap customer service.
thumbtackthief 12y ago
How about contacting local news stations? Seems like an interesting piece for them. I feel your pain--Comcast is the devil.
Paul_Dessert 12y ago
I only had time to read about half of the article, but wanted to let you know this EXACT same thing just happened to me. We verified service (twice) before buying the house. Called to schedule an install and found out service wasn't available to our house. Long story short, I was lucky enough to get a great technician and he schedule a drop bury VERY quickly. I got a call from Comcast's corporate office within minutes of his request. It took about 3 weeks for them to run a new RG11 line from the street to the house, but it's all up and running now. I also work from home, so I was forced to use my 4G connection briefly as I waited. I feel your pain. Good luck!!
ulfw 12y ago
Honestly that is exactly the kind of service experience I have been getting from Comcast, at&t and Verizon in all the years I lived in the States. Not sure where the reputation for great customer service comes from. At least in the telco/cable space I have not witnessed it. Most was customer service reps who didn't care, were powerless, badly trained, outsourced or (often) all of the above.
droque 12y ago
Seems to me that there could be a big market for an AirHelp-like service that focused on telecoms. A private, for-profit consumer protection company.
deleted 12y ago
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Roboprog 12y ago
It's funny. We moved, about 10 miles from old house to new house, about 2 years ago. At the old house, Comcast was utterly incompetent (took forever to finally get a wire run from the street over a pole in the yard and stapled to the house, but they never did follow up to install wire and a modem in the house), and AT&T was the bomb. At the new house, AT&T was utterly incompetent (could not even get voice to work, let alone internet), and Comcast rocks. Every neighborhood has its weird historical setup, I guess.
cpkpad 12y ago
Sue for misrepresentation. Will you win? I don't know. But it will likely be cheaper to give you service than to defend against the law suit.
deleted 12y ago
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221 points by Deinos 12y ago

Calling this an "accident" is entirely too kind to Comcast. They're happy to claim they'll serve almost anything within particular geographic areas, whether or not they can or will. (He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)

mikeash 12y ago
Once I was getting fed up with Comcast, so I called Verizon to see if they could give me DSL, how fast it would be, etc. Their response was basically that they had no idea, but they could put in an order and see what happened. They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all.
- 300bps 12y ago
  They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all. As silly and frustrating as that is, "I don't know" is a much better answer than, "Yes, absolutely" that turns out to be false. "I don't know" would've saved OP tens of thousands of dollars that he will soon be paying to sell a house he just purchased.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Oh yes, you're totally right. Just illustrating another small way these companies can be ridiculous.
- rayiner 12y ago
  To be fair, how is the tech really supposed to know? Serviceability is a complicated question. There's engineering issues (how far from existing plant is the address?); there's legal issues (is servicing the address required under a franchise agreement?); there's logistical issues (is this a subdivision where the HOA won't let us dig up; is it a multi-dwelling unit where the property manager won't let us run wire)? It's not like houses are built in a structured, systematic manner. In most of the country, property developers just put up subdivisions at random. You're right though, "we don't know" is the right answer.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your point. How are they supposed to know, outside of taking the appropriate actions that would allow them to know? Well, take those actions. Sure, it could be a hard question to answer. It's also a question whose answer is part of their core business. If they can't obtain the answer somehow, why do they even exist? I'd have been fine with "Because of X, Y, or Z, I have to pass this off to department Q and they'll get back to you in a day or two." But that's not what they said. Edit: I should clarify that the local wiring was all in place. Verizon phone service was available (and I had had it at one point, although not at the time of the call). Nothing needed digging or drilling or any sort of wire running at all.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      My point is that the data isn't sitting in a database the phone tech can look up. Putting in a service order is how it gets to the people that can answer the question.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        And my point is that if they can't simply answer the question as given (even if it takes work) then the company as a whole is completely and utterly incompetent. If you're saying that they must put in a service order to get an answer to the question, you're merely describing specifics of the incompetence.
        res0nat0r 12y ago
        Huh? All of the specifics he mentioned above aren't just magically sitting somewhere in a simple database query. Your question needs to be handed off to someone so they can specifically research your situation and get back to you with the results. It sounds like specifically in your case, their system allows the techs who take new cable signups to enter your data in the system, and then it will return weather your house is serviceable, not serviceable, and with what type of service options are available if you can in fact sign up. Doesn't sound like a very strenuous process from the customer side.
- jolan 12y ago
  At least they were honest instead of guessing. AT&T has a database of the line rate/quality that the last person who had service was able to achieve. That doesn't mean it's accurate though. Quality can have gone down due to rotted shielding, new sources of interference, etc.

dublinben 12y ago

Wouldn't the easiest way to verify cable internet service for a residence be to simply ask the current owner? They will know better than anyone else (including the ISP) whether their exact location can be serviced. I'm a little shocked that the author would go through all this back and forth with a company with a reputation like Comcast, and never once ask the previous owner of the house.

duskwuff 12y ago
He did ask the realtor, as well as Comcast themselves, and all were under the impression that it already had service. (First question in the FAQ.)
- maratd 12y ago
  That is not what the parent said. He said ask the owner. Realtor couldn't care less, no wait, they have an incentive to lie. Comcast couldn't care less. The owner does care, because they become liable if they misrepresent the property. Never spend a ton of money without doing the leg work yourself. Don't trust other people, especially people who have zero incentive to be accurate or truthful.
snowwrestler 12y ago
If the previous owner chose not to order cable service, they would have no idea. I have coax to and in my house. I've never ordered cable service so I have no idea if it works or is connected to anything. I have DSL service I'm happy with, and rabbit ears on my TV.

regehr 12y ago

I bought a house about 1 mile from downtown Salt Lake City in 2008 and it took until last year to get a decent internet connection (from Comcast). First world problems!

pavel_lishin 12y ago
What did you have before?
- regehr 12y ago
  512 kbps DSL -- just barely, frustratingly capable of watching Netflix at the worst quality level
PirateDave 12y ago
I don't think that it's just coincidence that this happened around the same time that SLC was announced for Google Fiber as well.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

windexh8er 12y ago

As someone in the comments section noted to the author - there are plenty of short haul, unlicensed spectrum, wireless bridges available today that are very affordable. Even if he went with something more long haul oriented he could easily clear well over 30 miles LoS at over 500Mbit (https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/ https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/) in real-world expectations. I would put the money into building a tower on my property and find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge. Having done this working for a cable provider in the past, it's trivial and inexpensive (costing well under $10k for the expensive equipment, generally a 5 mile link can be done for under $2k). Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.

rohansingh 12y ago
Long-haul LoS can be pretty much impossible in parts of the Pacific Northwest due to the geography and ecology (read: hills and trees). The short point-to-point option with a cooperative neighbor could definitely work.
- vkjv 12y ago
  This. Most people, unsurprisingly, are quite nice. I think a lot of people would be willing to do this if they get high-speed service for free.
- jf22 12y ago
  Why didn't you just write "the hills and trees". This read: thing is getting out of hand.
- dagw 12y ago
  It's been 15 years since I last had anything to do with long range LoS wireless bridges, but at least back then they also tended to flake out during snowstorms and heavy rain.
  - mikeash 12y ago

jason_slack 12y ago

This happened to me in December 2014. I bought a house in way upstate NY. I called Time Warner to verify they could get internet to the location before I bought the house!! They said yes. I packed up, moved across country to then find out that Time Warner "made a mistake" and no internet is available. Not even DSL. So, I am now the proud owner of a CradlePoint LTE modem, upped my data through AT&T since they were having a promotion to 30gb a month. It's a change in my browsing habits but 30gb is more than enough for work stuff and at the end of the month if I have 10gb to spare I go after those videos I wanted to watch.

rayiner 12y ago

> I think this was the most productive call I’ve had so far, because I finally got the clear picture of what’s going on. Somewhere in Comcast’s system, there’s a check box that says that I already have cable service to the house. Every time I call to ask about new service, someone looks at this checkbox and concludes that I don’t need construction. Whenever a ticket is opened in regards to construction, it’s closed automatically because the system believes it’s not necessary. So I am literally in a Catch-22 This is what Kafkaesque actually means.

tzs 12y ago
What I think I would try I that situation is to change the address. Pick a nonexistent address on the same street, and order service at that address. Change the numbers on the house to match and make sure they are prominent so any people dispatch there will find it.
- TehCorwiz 12y ago
  I love that idea. In some situations there's actually a USPS process for changing the number address of a plot of land. I remember the first house my parents bought had two valid addresses until they got everyone using the same one.
- slayed0 12y ago
  This actually fits in nicely with the Comcast "rinse and repeat" method. Keep calling back asking the same question until you get the answer you want. Maybe he should have just submitted phantom requests from every address on his street under different pseudonyms. Eventually someone might have made the mistake of initiating the construction... or a regional manager may have unlocked the project due to perceived demand!
slayed0 12y ago
Situations like this are all I can think of when considering offloading more and more work to machines. I am all for automation, and maybe it is the lesser of two evils, but there is a certain human problem solving/reasoning element that desperately needs to be figured out.

ZitchDog 12y ago

This reminds me quite a bit of my situation when we built our new house. Our local cable company is Mediacom, which serves smaller markets. They were extremely flaky about running cable just 2 blocks from an existing drop. Fortunately after extensive research, I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) requires them to run cable to new houses in a timely matter. After months of delays, once I threatened to file a formal complaint with the telecommunications commission, they ran a cable to our house within two weeks. The problem is, it's fairly expensive to dig cable to a single house, and it's just not worth it for the cable company to dig. If we decide that broadband is a necessity, some sort of municipal broadband or government oversight is absolutely required to guarantee that each person has access, because the market sure won't.

rayiner 12y ago
> I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) Do you have a copy of the ordinance, by chance? Exclusive cable franchises are illegal under federal law. If you're litigious, you might be able to get the ordinance overturned.
- extra88 12y ago
  Do you have a copy of the federal law, by chance?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    47 U.S.C. 541(a)(1). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541. Part of the 1992 Cable Act: http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html. "A franchising authority may award, in accordance with the provisions of this subchapter, 1 or more franchises within its jurisdiction; except that a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise. Any applicant whose application for a second franchise has been denied by a final decision of the franchising authority may appeal such final decision pursuant to the provisions of section 555 of this title for failure to comply with this subsection." Theoretically, a pre-1992 contract negotiated before the law was passed might still be in effect. In practice, these contracts had 5-10 year terms and expired long ago.

j_s 12y ago

Up until last November, one solution would be to buy an old Verizon contract with unlimited data on e-Bay (no longer transferable?). http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data-plans-no-longer-transferrable-effective-november-13/ http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data-plans...

zdw 12y ago

Contact the local municipality that Comcast gets it's cable license from and complain. The also hit the corporation commission, and other licensing agencies. Then sue them. Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. That's utterly stupid.

rayiner 12y ago
> Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. They don't: http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/Kitsap1432.html http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/.... See: 14.32.010 Terms of franchise. "(2) Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter shall be nonexclusive and shall not preclude the county from granting other or further franchises or permits or preclude the county from using any roads, rights-of-way, streets or other public properties or affect its jurisdiction over them or any part of them, or limit the full power of the county to make such changes, as the county shall deem necessary, including the dedication, establishment, maintenance and improvement of all new rights-of-way and thoroughfares and other public properties." If he's 2,500 feet from the nearest equipment, he's probably living in a low-density area that's not worth anyone's while to serve.

cletus 12y ago

This is a pretty awful situation. I feel bad for the author. I've had two similar incidents in the past, although not quite as bad. Years ago I lived in an apartment block with 9 apartments in the front building and 9 in the rear. This was the dialup era and I wanted (and assumed I could get) a 2nd line so I didn't tie up my primary line all the time. Turns out the telco had only run 10 lines to the rear building for whatever reason and I guess someone was using the "spare" already. Interestingly, this was in the deregulation era. The guy I spoke to felt bad and explained to me how now they couldn't by law provide more lines for free. In the spirit of "competition" they had to price it "fairly". Oh well. It was a rental and I moved a year later anyway. The second time was in the DSL era (which is still the case in Australia). The ACCC (sorta like an FTC/FCC hybrid) had decided that ISPs were allowed to install their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges. Well that worked well in some exchanges and not well in others. Some ran out of space for racks very quickly. There was no spare capacity for me there. However I did get put on a waiting list that resolved very quickly. Now this was in the very early days of ADSL where it was still pretty unusual. I've heard some horror stories about how it is now in some parts of the country. Anyway... There must be other people in their street/area who also aren't serviced by Comcast. Can't Comcast justify wiring up the street by adding a bunch of new customers? Also, the author mentions reading the franchise agreement but doesn't say anything more about it. I assume that means Comcast isn't required to service his area or at least isn't required to provide 100% coverage? And Comcast wants to merge with TWC? They can't manage their current network. Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?

malka 12y ago
> Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better? Yeah. If I crap on a pile on crap, I wont get gold. I'll just get more crap.

yummybear 12y ago

Even I hate Comcast. And I'm european.

teh_klev 12y ago
And I thought BT were a shower of shits.

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago

I wonder if the writer is being too quick to dismiss satellite - it certainly has its limitations but it could be a useful addition to the mix of limited connectivity that DOES serve the house. The Verizon hotspots may have a 30gb/month cap - so buy two. John Woo rules apply - use the first 'till it runs out, then switch to the second. Try combining multiple sources of connectivity with a load-balancing router, or similar. These can be set to send certain types of traffic via more optimal routes, so you reserve scarce/expensive bandwidth for applications/destinations which need it, and send other traffic across cheaper, slower or uncapped routes, etc etc. Combine satellite, mobile (cellular) Internet, wireline DSL, community wifi, even dialup into the mix. Look at wilder wifi options too - if there's no connectivity at the house, do you have line-of-sight to somewhere which is better connected? Point to point antennas, high gain receivers, etc. More and more options to throw into the pot. Obviously, it's all a lot of trouble, and is bound to be expensive - but given that the author was already considering paying some or all of the substantial Comcast buildout fees, even the most complex of these alternatives is still likely to be cheaper - and if it means not having to sell the house you love, then that has to be worth a thought.

beauzero 12y ago
30GB month on Verizon is $120. That gets expensive fast.

ak217 12y ago

They are going to sell the house on account of this?! I wish there were more places like this, with their property values dinged by lack of cable. I would jump on such a discount.

fixermark 12y ago
I hear there's a guy in Washington you could make an offer to. ;)

clarky07 12y ago

I'm currently gearing up for a similar headache. I'm planning on building on a piece of land that is ~20 minutes from the city. Comcast's website is happy to sign up in my zip code and even my neighbors address, but they don't actually get there. Now I have to figure out exactly how far away it is, and how much trouble it's going to be (if even remotely possible) to get them to come down our street. There are obviously other options. My neighbor uses a Verizon hotspot. Satellite is technically an option. But the data caps are really sad since we like having Netflix and other streaming services as our primary entertainment. 25-30 gb is really not something I'm looking forward to. Might settle for bad DSL I guess. I hope at least that is in the area.

poulsbohemian 12y ago

I used to live in Kitsap county and this story is very familiar. We had a house not far from the bridge where there was no (and probably will never be) cell phone coverage by any provider, dsl also wasn't an option, and comcast was the only game in town. You were lucky to get an FM/AM radio signal. Some of the problem is that houses are built sporadically outside Poulsbo and Bremerton proper - there really aren't neighborhoods so much as somebody bought an acre in the woods and put a house on it. But, this is certainly not isolated to Kitsap county or Comcast. Now I live in the other side of the state, in Walla Walla, and I assure you that Charter is just as bad, even when you pay for a business-class connection. It seems once you get outside Portland/Seattle, the population density isn't such that the cable providers (or other potential internet providers) are much interested in the infrastructure investment. For the big guys like Comcast, Charter, etc - HQ is far far away and has no idea of the local situation. The only option I've found is to become buddies with the local field guys (and there are only like 2 for the 4 county area over here...). Frankly, while the isolation and quiet of the peninsula is nice, you are better off selling your house anyway unless you are willing to hold it for 20+ years and hope that King/Pierce/Snohomish are finally so full that people have no choice but to move to Kitsap county. House sales are horribly slow and values barely move.

wiredfool 12y ago
I'm on Whidbey, and thankfully, the situation is totally different (at least on the south end). We've got a good local telecom company that provides pretty decent dsl and phone service. Best of all, they've got local tech support and their techs will go the extra mile to make sure everything is working.

leklund 12y ago

Maude: Lord, you can imagine where it goes from here. The Dude: He fixes the cable? Maude: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.

nathantotten 12y ago

File a complaint with the FCC. I have done this twice now with comcast and both times somebody from their "executive support" contacted me the next day. It seems that their "executive support" might be the only people in the company that actually can solve problems and the FCC complaint is the only way I know of to get in touch with them. Clearly a very effeciient system Comcast has over there. https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

chatmasta 12y ago
I was also able to get ahold of "executive support," and received A+ customer service. All my issues were resolved and bill was discounted ongoing. I spent a few hours putting together a single .pdf with all the evidence of comcast wrongdoing compiled together. It was 10+ pages of screenshots and explanations proving comcast fucked up and was charging me for it. I emailed Comcast explaining I was ready to forward to techcrunch if they didn't resolve the situation A.S.A.P. Within two hours I had an email from a real person.
- therealdrag0 12y ago
  In what ways had they "fucked up"?
jolan 12y ago
Yup, I had a similar situation where I bought a house, tech came out, no cable run to the house. Their executive support got everyone to actually do what they said they were going to do. They can be reached directly at we_can_help@cable.comcast.com. Long version: There was cable to the utility pole but it wasn't actually active or connected to anything. Tech said he would escalate to his supervisor and his supervisor would escalate to the construction department and contact us. We ordered AT&T while waiting to hear back. AT&T install went fine but the router was complete crap for an advanced/technical person, high latency, IPTV steals bandwidth when recording more than 1 HD channel, etc. I got sick of waiting so I sent a polite email to we_can_help@cable.comcast.com and included a google maps link of where the pedestal was and the utility pole. I received a response the next day that they would fix it for me. A couple days later we heard from the construction supervisor that they would be working on it with no charge to us. A week later, a crew was out running a new line from the pedestal to the utility pole. A few days later someone came and buried cable from the utility pole to the house. We waited a few days to see if someone would contact us and they did and said we could proceed with installation. A tech came and setup everything but the actual line never activated. So the tech filed a service outage ticket and left. The next morning we had a signal and everything was working. So ~2 weeks of no Internet, ~4 weeks of subpar AT&T U-Verse later, had a decent connection with no complaints.

kiscica 12y ago

In a situation like this, the key is to get a contingency in the house purchase contract -- and have the work done before the closing. We bought a house that didn't have cable or DSL in a somewhat rural area -- the sellers were using 3G, satellite Internet, and dialup (!). They assured us that the only reason they hadn't had cable installed was the high cost they'd been quoted for running cable on the property (understandable as the house is almost 1/4 mile back from the street), and the cable company concurred that they'd be able to do the work, "no problem," and quoted a fee that didn't seem all that bad in the end (we took it into account when negotiating the price of the house). Nevertheless, we made the sellers agree to a contingency - cable co. would successfully complete the work (on our dime, of course) and hook us up before the closing, and the total amount wouldn't exceed what we had been quoted. If the contingency wasn't met, the sale would fall through and we'd get our deposit back. That contingency clause relieved me of a lot of stress over the next few months. Everything turned out OK in the end, but it was touch-and-go for a while. Cable co. accepted the order with no problem, did a survey I guess, called us and said they wouldn't be able to do it. They were persuaded (not sure how -- agent took care of it) to reconsider, but then came back with a quote that was at least five times higher than before. Cue lots of emails and phone calls. It was helpful having an agent who lived in the community. In the end a local contractor dug the trench for us at a very reasonable price, cable co. came down on their estimate, and the work actually was completed at just under the original quote. The dirt was literally being shoveled back over the trench on the day of the closing. As I recall it was actually a few days later that the cable guy came to do the inside wiring and "flip the switch," so strictly speaking the contingency (cable installed and working) wasn't satisfied by the closing, but we assumed we'd be OK at that point, and there were in fact no further hitches. We moved in and have enjoyed a (mostly) reliable, fast connection ever since. But we would absolutely have walked away, even though it was our "dream house," had we not been able to get the cable pulled. The contingency clause gave us the assurance that we could do that with no penalty. And, had it turned out that the work could be done but only at 5x the price, we could potentially have used the clause to negotiate a concession from the seller to cover the costs.

fixermark 12y ago
In general, yes. In this instance, the buyer was 100% convinced that the property had the service of interest and was told it did by the local monopoly in charge of providing such service. There was no work to be done before the closing because Comcast won't hook up Internet to a property for someone who isn't the property owner or resident. What you're describing would be a bit like taking out a contingency on the house actually having running water after you physically walked through the house and checked the taps and toilets, just on the off chance that the water is actually not coming from the local muni water source, but instead from an on-property aquifer that a previous owner had tapped and painstakingly routed into the house's internal plumbing, and immediately after closing the sale that aquifer runs dry. Real people don't go to that level of contract detail.

drcube 12y ago

Couldn't you sue? Your home purchase was predicated on Comcast's word that they could service your new home. You require it for work. Now you've bought a home, have to sell it for a loss, all due to Comcast. I don't see why you can't stick them with the bill. Call a lawyer, have them talk to Comcast, and maybe they'll change their tune about extending their line to your home.

Filligree 12y ago
Only if they had that as a contingency clause in the contract for the house. Which they probably didn't.
- drcube 12y ago
  Fair enough. I'm not a lawyer. Just throwing out ideas.
  - natch 12y ago
    Your idea is worth investigation. A contingency would not help with a suit. It would have helped in avoiding the purchase altogether, but that's another matter.
- maratd 12y ago
  > Only if they had that as a contingency clause in the contract for the house. Might be a good idea for the next house.
- natch 12y ago
  No... a contingency is between the buyer and the seller. It just gives the buyer an out if certain things don't happen. It doesn't give Comcast any obligations in the matter. Comcast could be held accountable for other reasons, but not by a contingency.
  - Filligree 12y ago
    That was my point. There's no way to force Comcast to serve them, but they could have gotten out of the purchase.

jellicle 12y ago

It's nice that cable companies claim they need rate increases, monopolies, subsidies and so on because of all the work they do putting up infrastructure to serve everyone, and then also charge the residents for putting up that same infrastructure.

shanecleveland 12y ago

Also live in Kitsap county. I am sure you have looked, but is Wave Cable an option in your location at all? The business I am at in Silverdale utilizes Wave. I know others in the county that have Wave, as well. I am not sure how coverage is dictated between the providers.

HarryHirsch 12y ago

When I grew up the telephone company was still a state-run monopoly. To get telephone service connected you had to pay a nominal fee, independent of whether there was trenching and laying of cable involved, or if they just had to connect at the patch panel. Today's unregulated quasi-monopolies are some progress. Can we get the government monopoly back? The thing is - it worked extremely well!

ghaff 12y ago
It was very reliable and simple in any case (talking about AT&T). Long distance phone calls were also about 50 cents/minute interstate (and even longer distance intrastate) in the early 1980s and for a long time you couldn't even attach your own gear to the phone lines in your house. You had to rent AT&T phones. Some of this is a function of the general technological advance between then and now of course but Ma Bell was certainly not a fast moving organization. From a 1976 SNL skit: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Government monopoly wasn't nirvana by a long shot.
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ohitsdom 12y ago

And people are worried net neutrality will mess up the internet with governmental regulation.

Shivetya 12y ago
however net neutrality isn't going to correct an issue he faces. his home is almost a half mile away from active service which puts the onus on the home owner. new subdivisions usually contract out cable laying; cable, electrical, gas and, etc. This cost gets embedded in every new home sale. Now I am curious why this owner hasn't decided to contract out the cable himself from house to an an appropriate connection point? I am not sure if his house is 2500 feet back from the road or merely 2500 ft from the nearest drop. I have seen many a farm where the main residence is quite a run from the street so this could be similar.
gojomo 12y ago
Net neutrality regulations don't help with this issue – and could make it worse, because new ISPs will face extra compliance costs. Also, if a potential new ISP has novel business model ideas (involving cross-subsidies from other service providers), their ideas may be made illegal by the FCC's rules. So the dynamic we have (and expressed to some extent in your comment) is: (1) Comcast is a crappy company that people hate/distrust; (2) Because of that hate/distrust, people support policies like federally-mandated net neutrality; but… (3) Such federal regulation, even when it provides some consumer protection, also makes the crappy monopolist even more entrenched and sluggish, as was the case with 'Ma Bell', the 60s/70s airline industry, 20th-century rail/truck shipping, etc.

kyleblarson 12y ago

Does anyone here work remotely on a satellite connection? How has your experience been? I live in an extremely isolated town of 200 people in the North Cascades (Washington state as well) and currently use CenturyLink DSL. Because the line to my little community is saturated, they can only offer us 1.5 down. It's slow, but I make it work and thankfully the bandwidth is very consistent and my work isn't super bandwidth intensive. I have often wondered if it would make sense to put satellite into the mix as well. We already have Dish for TV.

paulornothing 12y ago
My father in law works really remotely in PA. He gets about the equivalent of 3g phone speeds. I have found when I'm visiting it's not super reliable, that issue may be the router though.
bobdvb 12y ago
I used to work in the business of supplying satellite links like this in Europe and the Middle East, so not the same as the USA. It is a good alternative if you have no practical alternative such as a landline but I would only call it a basic alternative to ADSL. The biggest problem is latency and there are two factors that impact latency: 1) Distance (the satellite is really far away) 2) Contention (it is often a TDMA system so your packets have to wait for the next available time slot, in a busy network this can cause problems) Bandwidth isn't the primary concern, it is usually quality and latency. They are tightly related but latency is something that always limits you because it makes VoIP, VNC and gaming difficult.

jgrowl 12y ago

I still really believe that the big cable companies would be so much better if their internal systems weren't so broken. The problem is that They bought up so many small companies and have never completely integrated their processes and data into their main system. I had very similar experiences with Time Warner depending on who I talked I would get different results. It seemed like the main corporate office was not able to see notes that the local office entered and vice versa.

ericras 12y ago
Absolutely never do online chat with Time Warner Cable and never call their national phone number. Only call your local office. I've had appointments scheduled through online chat that never showed up that the local office didn't know about. Also have had the local office successfully debug problems remotely on the phone that the main corporate number claimed they couldn't fix.

encoderer 12y ago

When I was 18 I worked in a call center for AT&T@Home broadband cable. This was 2000, when the business was in its infancy and there were often technical issues. I worked the "supervisor" desk (i was not a supervisor, just a somewhat more knowledgable rep) so would take almost exclusively irate calls. I tried to help everybody of course, but a few people stood out from time to time as having exceptionally bad service. Bury requests that were cancelled for months -- so you have to mow your lawn around a cable and it trips your kids and gets chewed by rodents. Techs that hang a "we missed you" card on your door and then run back to the truck without ever knocking. Installers napping. Installers looking at porn. Installers going through peoples things. For those people, I gave them free service "for life". Deep inside the GUI app that I believe was called ACSR was the service provisioning and in every market there were all the paid services and a fairly similar list of free services that were used when the equipment was just being installed and users were brought online to test it. So they had "1.0 MB Broadband" and "1.0 MB Broadband Pilot". By moving users from one to the other, their bills would just drop to $0. I have no idea how long this benefit endured. You'd think at some point there would be an audit or migration that cleaned it up. But I hope not. Steve Roach in Memphis and the 1/2 dozen others: I hope your cable is still free.

fixermark 12y ago
My university was apparently grandfathered into that category (for their off-property students) when the local ISP company was bought by Comcast; the original provider had put the uni into their "Other" billing category as it was a special off-rate annually-negotiated contract, and when they unified the IT systems they got moved into that "billed 0" category in Comcast's backend. Yep, sure enough, an automatic cleaning script came along and killed all those cost-0 connections, cutting many student residents off from the network for a few days. My understanding is that the meeting between the Comcast rep and the head of campus IT was an instance of legendary restraint on the part of our IT head (in that everyone left the room with all their limbs still attached). (I'm sure it helped the uni's bargaining position a lot that we were in a metropolitan area; Verizon was champing at the bit to get those accounts).

jccooper 12y ago

I moved my office to a complex that was supposed to have both cable and DSL internet available. Neither was installed yet so we bought a Clearwire device to fill the gap. The DSL was a slightly better deal, so we had them in to install it, and it wouldn't push more than a few bits. After several service calls, they eventually gave up. We were too far away, even though their modelling showed our distance as fine. So we call up the cable company (Comcast, of course) and our unit is too far from the service point. They set up an appointment with engineering to install a new pole and such. Six months later, we have cable service finally run. Not speedy, but at least they didn't give me the runaround. It's too bad Clear didn't work out; saved my bacon. These days I'd have to get wireless internet service through one of the mobile phone companies, which is not nearly as good a deal. But it would still work. Anyway, it's a mess. And a good lesson to assume you can't get service until you actually have it, both in residential and commercial settings. But then there was the time with my home service where the DSL office got slowly further away until they couldn't give me service any more...

pivo 12y ago

I know a woman who works selling advert time for Comcast. She showed me what she described as a very special "just fix my problem and don't bullshit me about it" card that she had. She told me she gets two of these cards a year to hand out when she's trying to sell someone advertising time but that client isn't buying because they're upset about some problem they have with their personal Comcast service. She gives them a card, Comcast then forces themselves to fix the problem, and she can make a sale. So I asked her why Comcast doesn't treat all their customer's problems this way. She laughed.

towelrod 12y ago
When you hand over the card, make sure to say "Valar Morghulis".
- true_religion 12y ago
  Valar dohaeris, meaning 'all men must serve' would be more appropriate, I think.
web007 12y ago
Every Comcast employee gets these cards - I got them when I was working for one of their west coast development offices. You're supposed to give them to friends, family, co-workers, strangers, etc. if you hear about them having a problem with service. I was always curious if they use them as a quality control step for their regular tech service, or just as a feel-good empowerment thing for the hoi polloi.
oasisbob 12y ago
I had something similar happen to me when working in institutional purchasing, and Comcast responded to an RFI we put out. For several months, I had been working unsuccessfully to get Comcast to fix my home connection which would drop several times a day. (Modem losing sync, down for 5-10 min usually.) A friend lived in the neighborhood, and we figured out something interesting was up when we saw each other drop from IRC at the same time. So, Comcast comes in to discuss their RFI response, and I raised the question of plant monitoring and proactive maintenance. "If there was a problem which affected multiple customers, do you take measures to detect this?" When they answered in the affirmative, I raised my issue and asked them to elaborate. The problem was fixed the next day, turns out it was a failed weather seal on something nearby.

Mithaldu 12y ago

I must honestly say: I'm angry at Comcast about this shit. However i'm even more angry at the author about it. He did not even try once to even get a supervisor, when he should have been throwing the book at Comcast by week 2 latest. How is a company supposed to learn and improve if people like this guy let them get away with literally lying to customers without punishment? Don't blog about it on the internet. Record phone calls, pressure agents to give you their full legal names, push to get supervisors. And get a damn lawyer.

fixermark 12y ago
The first rule of being in business over the Internet is this: Every bug report you get, you had better be damn thankful for. Each one represents an uncounted number of customers who just gave up on your product. Comcast is lucky this guy decided to document the precise way in which the system failed him; he gave them a roadmap for improving it.
- Mithaldu 12y ago
  That's the point. For big companies bug reports are meaningless unless they result in loss of sufficient quantities of hard cash. In fact, i'm pretty sure comcast is happy about the outcome of this so far, since the conclusion of the author is: Do Comcast's job yourself first.

fixermark 12y ago

There aren't a ton of major differences between Verizon and Comcast as companies, but this one is sometimes (as indicated here) key: Verizon still employs its own unionized workforce of service technicians for cable connections; Comcast outsources that to multiple competing front-line service contractors. This isn't a system that can't ever work, but Comcast has not yet solved the problem of keeping communications channels clear and coordinated among different competing contractors who have no incentive to cross-communicate with each other (not only are they not rewarded for it, but the incentive system of free markets is actively structured so that if one contractor looks bad, others indirectly benefit). It leads to all sorts of little micro-aggressions; when I had Comcast hooked up at a previous residence, the contractor had to climb the ladder to the pole twice because the junction plugs that should easily wire my house to the main trunk were not only detached, but removed (likely by a previous contractor, because hey, free plugs). He had to go down and get new plugs and splice them in. In contrast, everyone is on the "same team" at Verizon, structurally and legally. You leave the junction plugs there because the next guy who comes along and needs to connect the service again is your coworker. It's a shame that none of that matters to this individual because of the way the service local monopolies are structured in the U.S. Living near a major metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors around here.

true_religion 12y ago
Living in the D.C. area, I can only speak for experience but Verizon seems to operate two groups of techs. One as you said are in-house and unionized, these guys seem to mostly handle the apartment complexes and large installments. The other group handles regular houses, or off-one jobs when the market is exploding. I've spoken to techs on both sides, and they both confirmed with mild disdain the existence of the other group. Just an anecdote.
- fixermark 12y ago
  Tragically, the anecdote I've heard from our local techs is that Verizon corporate would love to switch to Comcast's model, and are applying attrition pressure to make it happen; their mobile business arm isn't unionized, and they're looking forward to switching out their retained employees with contract staff for all of the hookup work. ... which is a shame, because it's actually something I consider to be a distinguishing factor in their service options.

deeviant 12y ago

I've had wonderful experiences with the BBB when wronged by various companies. Although comcast might certainly be an exception to that, everybody already knows they have crap customer service.

thumbtackthief 12y ago

How about contacting local news stations? Seems like an interesting piece for them. I feel your pain--Comcast is the devil.

Paul_Dessert 12y ago

I only had time to read about half of the article, but wanted to let you know this EXACT same thing just happened to me. We verified service (twice) before buying the house. Called to schedule an install and found out service wasn't available to our house. Long story short, I was lucky enough to get a great technician and he schedule a drop bury VERY quickly. I got a call from Comcast's corporate office within minutes of his request. It took about 3 weeks for them to run a new RG11 line from the street to the house, but it's all up and running now. I also work from home, so I was forced to use my 4G connection briefly as I waited. I feel your pain. Good luck!!

ulfw 12y ago

Honestly that is exactly the kind of service experience I have been getting from Comcast, at&t and Verizon in all the years I lived in the States. Not sure where the reputation for great customer service comes from. At least in the telco/cable space I have not witnessed it. Most was customer service reps who didn't care, were powerless, badly trained, outsourced or (often) all of the above.

droque 12y ago

Seems to me that there could be a big market for an AirHelp-like service that focused on telecoms. A private, for-profit consumer protection company.

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Roboprog 12y ago

It's funny. We moved, about 10 miles from old house to new house, about 2 years ago. At the old house, Comcast was utterly incompetent (took forever to finally get a wire run from the street over a pole in the yard and stapled to the house, but they never did follow up to install wire and a modem in the house), and AT&T was the bomb. At the new house, AT&T was utterly incompetent (could not even get voice to work, let alone internet), and Comcast rocks. Every neighborhood has its weird historical setup, I guess.

cpkpad 12y ago

Sue for misrepresentation. Will you win? I don't know. But it will likely be cheaper to give you service than to defend against the law suit.

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