<p>Have had Comcast for many years and have no problems with them whatsoever. Good service and products IMHO. Can always get a live service person in a minute or less. Usually they can fix things from their desk. Just don’t get the hate. Anytime there was an issue with a bill they fixed it immediately (not often).
As the bank ad says–I love my Comcast.</p>
<p>Let’s see, with barrons’ thumbs up that makes fourteen nay and one yeah! Sounds about right. Wish we had Cox here … oh wait a minute, in 98% of the towns in OUR state there is only one cable provider. Funny, Cox makes money in their territories, and COMCAST makes money in theirs … but neither attempts inroads on the other. What do that call that???</p>
<p>Lol, barrons, it sounds like you have not been to their center in Everett! Their “take a number” system and wait times (and lack of surfaces on which the waiting public can sit) beat the DMV! I have to give them credit for taking the 2 weeks worth of charges off of our bill when the cable was out following the mega wind storm, but it still required a call from us.</p>
<p>Comcast is also extremely biased with the news they push through their front page. Kinda scary, giving an organization with an agenda (any agenda) access to so much personal information.</p>
<p>I hate Comcast even more than curiouser does, I think. When a storm blew down a cable line from the pole outside the house, I couldn’t get them to send a truck to fix it unless someone was home. They didn’t need to get inside my house, they only needed to reattach the cable to the pole. But they insisted that someone from the house that made the complaint be there when the repairman came, and they’d only send him during my working hours. I had to escalate that issue way up the chain before they finally agreed that they were being unreasonable. I dumped them about 18 months ago and went with U-Verse. I was a little scared to make the switch because I had heard a few bad things about U0verse, but so far I’ve been very satisfied. I have Internet, phone and TV service through them and have yet to have a serious problem. On the couple of occasions where I’ve called tech support, they’ve been pretty good (although tier one support is outsourced to India or the Philippines or someplace, with the usual language difficulties that entails, and the support folks read from scripts).</p>
<p>I’m surprised to hear all the bad reviews of FIOS here – I thought they were considered the best. They’re not available where I live but I’ve read good things. Guess there’s no really good provider… :(</p>
<p>I had to make one trip once–to Redmond to pick-up a new HD box. It took maybe half an hour on a Saturday. If I had gone on a weekday probably 15 minutes or less. We live in one of the most windy spots in the region–Sno Ridge and rarely lost service. Maybe once when the power was out over a week but we moved to a hotel after 1 day in the dark. I was actually very happy when they took over the service in Virginia as the former one run by the family that went to jail was nowhere near as good. We use On Demand all the time to catch-up on missed shows and for movies. Love it. The have always been cordial and fast to fix things. Maybe the east side service office is better but we usually just use the 800 number. Sometimes I think folks just like to complain. We have had many more issues with electric power outages and newspaper delivery.</p>
<p>Add one more to those with no complaints about Comcast. Last fall when H was digging in a flower bed he cut the cable leading into the house. They were here within 6 hours to lay a new cable, in the dark. Also, when we got back from vacation last month and our main cable box was obviously broken, they had someone here the next day to replace it. </p>
<p>It probably helps that the repair guy lives nearby. He even gave us his home phone number to call in case we ran into more trouble.</p>
<p>To the OP. Ah yes, the annual ‘fell out of the bundle’ rate. What a great way to treat long time paying customers. Hey they love you so much they just want to charge you more. Having said that, I have successfully lobbied for a reduced rate each and every year.</p>
<p>If you can, go down to the local brick and mortar Comcast office. I’ve found the face to face communication makes it easier to plead your case. Or, when you call the regular Customer (no)service line choose the ‘cancel or change plan’ option. That gets you into what is known as the ‘retention’ department. Let them know you’re just not feeling the love since they raised your rates. Mention you’re considering competitors who may treat long term customers with greater appreciation. Then ask them for the best bundle rate based on your current services. It helps to make this phone call the day after your bundle rate expires. </p>
<p>Finally, if you you are not with Comcast for your land line phone service you can ‘transfer’ your account and receive a new, lower, bundle price. Basically, it’s as if you moved and the new people took over your current equipment and services - except you transfer the account to the other spouse. A Comcast rep actually made me aware of this back door option. It doesn’t work if you use them as your phone carrier since by law your phone # can not be transferred to an another name.</p>
<p>This year I was able to talk them into a bundled rate slightly lower than last years. In addition, they are reversing the charges for our 2 DVDR’s for 6 months. The bottom line, I’m paying about $20/month less than last years bundled rate. </p>
<p>Yup, cable/phone/internet purchases are now as difficult and intricate as health insurance!</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>Ah, grasshopper, you look, but you do not see. Assuming that you have other cable providers in your area, here’s how to beat Comcast at their own game:</p>
<p>Step 1: Survey the other cable providers and get their best deals for new subscribers. Hint: If you have a Costco in your area, they periodically offer a deal for new subscribers in partnership with Direct TV – it usually requires a two year contract, but you won’t find a better price for HD cable service anywhere and you usually get a rebate of some kind in the form of a Costco cash card.</p>
<p>Step 2: Call Comcast customer service. When you get a rep on the line, tell them that you want to cancel your service. Don’t tell them that you are thinking about cancelling or that you want to negotiate a better deal. Just tell them that you want to cancel your service.</p>
<p>Step 3: The Comcast rep will ask you why you want to cancel. Now you trot out the best introductory offer that you received from the competitor. </p>
<p>Step 4: The Comcast rep will tell you all the reasons that you shouldn’t go with the competitor. Listen politely, tell them that you’re not convinced, and that you would like to cancel your service.</p>
<p>Step 5: You will be transferred to an account retention specialist who will ask you why you want to cancel. Repeat Step 3.</p>
<p>Step 6: The Comcast account retention specialist will offer you a concession of some kind – usually with a string attached (i.e., you have sign a new contract), but they will never offer you a price for equivalent service that is lower than the competitor’s introductory offer.</p>
<p>Step 7: Point out to the Comcast account retention specialist that their offer doesn’t give you anything that you’re not getting from the competitor. Then you also point out that the competitor can give you something that Comcast can’t. Hint: If one of the local competitors is Direct TV, point out that Direct TV allows you to record a program in one room, pause it, and continue watching it in another room. Comcast hates this because, at least at present, that’s a feature that they can’t compete with. </p>
<p>Step 8: Tell the Comcast account retention specialist that you’ll consider the new offer if they match the competitor’s price for the same period of time (again, if the competitor is Direct TV, you’re looking at a two year price reduction) AND they throw in something else – e.g., free DVR service or a premium movie channel subscription. They’ll cave.</p>
<p>Step 9: If this doesn’t work, cancel your service with Comcast, go with the competitor’s offer, and when your contract period with the competitor is up, go back to Comcast – at which point you’ll qualify for one of their introductory offers.</p>
<p>I’ve been playing this system for years. It works well and I’ve never paid more than the promotional rate. Ah, I’ve done a good thing by sharing my knowledge. ;-)</p>
<p>^^
I like that, and it has the ring of experience. I’ll give it a try.</p>
<p>But first, I remembered that I have the number for Corporate Escalations. This is a department that Comcast doesn’t want you to know about. When my parents were having problems, I sunk 3 weeks into the effort, 24 phone calls, 3 visits from a technician, and one trip to the local brick-and-mortar shop before someone mentioned this hush-hush department. But they are the ones who can actually get something fixed, and they did. The rep will even give you their direct phone number – no queues. I’m convinced that one reason customer service is so lousy these days is that there is no accountability. Joe tells you such-and-such; when you call back, you can’t get Joe back on the phone, no one ever heard of Joe, it turns out everything Joe told you was wrong, and you have to start all over again with Mary who will give you an entirely different story. With Corporate Escalations, there’s accountability.</p>
<p>For all of you who’ve mentioned Retentions, it was that department which told me that we’d have to sign a 2-year contract and fork over our bank account/credit card info to get the lower rate. Not gonna happen.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>barrons, can you give us the number that you call? It can’t possibly be the main number, because when you call that one, it takes a good 2 minutes just to get into the queue. Once there, I might wait 5 minutes if I’m very lucky; I’ve waited longer than an hour on several occasions.</p>
<p>comcast has different call centers that service different areas of the country. I think if you call their main number it routes you to your local one based on where you are calling from (I could be wrong on how it routes you, but it’s something like that) and your wait time will be whatever the wait time at your local facility is. I have quite a few friends who have worked at comcast in customer service and in other departments. (A couple work at their maryland call center, a few work at one in PA, etc) Point being, the person that barrons get when she calls comcast is completely different then who I would get if I called comcast as I am on the other side of the country. That being said, comcast isn’t even available in my area - which is a good thing. I live in the one tiny area that they have yet to invade. My parents, who live 30 minutes from me, only have comcast available as their cable option. </p>
<p>Corporate escalations is usually the equivalent of asking for a manager. If you do that, they typically transfer you to their “escalations” department.</p>
<p>^^
I almost always ask for a supervisor right off the bat; I’ve learned from hard experience that if my problem isn’t very basic, I’m wasting my time with a rep. I do remember once or twice being passed up to Escalations; this is regional, I think. Corporate Escalations is not connected to the call centers or even to regional Escalations.</p>
<p>I was just reading about someone’s frustration with Comcast (re-branding itself as Xfinity, for obvious reasons) and I realized I’d never told you how this ended. The resolution was comically illustrative how this company operates.</p>
<p>I first tried the number I’d kept for Corporate Escalations, but it was no longer working. (My guess is that they change it frequently because it’s not a number they want their customers to have indefinitely). So I had to start with the dreaded 1-800-COMCAST.</p>
<p>After about 5 calls, a rep finally offered to credit us $20/month for a year, as partial payback for charging us for services we never wanted, never ordered, and never used. </p>
<p>We also wanted to step down to the starter package, but somehow I couldn’t get a list of all the hi-def channels in the package. This is important because DH loves his HD, and I didn’t want to ax his favorite channels. Reps kept referring me to the website, but there are no comprehensive lists there; bits and pieces of the plans are scattered all around. Even the reps couldn’t tell me how to read them, and I have learned that when it comes to Comcast, it’s important to get it in writing.</p>
<p>Finally one rep (probably accidentally) gave me the new number for Corporate Escalations. This is golden because when you’re dealing with CE, you’re dealing with an individual. You get their name, direct phone number, and email. It’s the only place in Comcast-land where there’s accountability to the customer.</p>
<p>The CE rep sent me an email with the entire list of channels in the starter package (there, that wasn’t so hard, was it?). She also, at my request, confirmed in writing the $20/month credit. DH blessed the list, and, in what I thought would be our final exchange, I emailed back accepting the credit and requesting that we be stepped down to the starter pack. This would have reduced our bill by $40/month for a year.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, she emailed back with the most AMAZING news: She had JUST found the “new retention codes.” Magical timing! She was pleased to tell me that we could keep our current package at – wait for it – a reduction of $40/month for a year! I literally laughed out loud.</p>
<p>So this go-round has confirmed what I’ve read elsewhere: They will try to keep you, but ONLY after they’re convinced you’re really going to leave. Just like a used car salesman, you have to be prepared to walk away in order to see their best deal. (with apologies to used car salesmen)</p>
<p>I like the story about the “new retention codes”–epitomized dealings with all the big communication companies over the years!</p>
<p>As I told Cablevision yesterday after intermittent losses of Internet and phone service (this has been going on for months with every service tech giving a different reason for the problem), Cablevision, and particularly Optimum Triple Play, makes Comcast look good. After skimming this thread I realize that may not be quite true, but the bottom line is that all the large companies have major flaws in service and/or customer service. </p>
<p>We were Comcast customers in our old house until Verizon FIOS became available, and switched because Comcast would not give us a competitive rate unless we became phone customers in addition to the existing Cable and Internet service. (We always had a Verizon land line, which I look back on fondly but which wasn’t actually as reliable as one would expect.) When we got FIOS I missed the “real” land line, which worked even without electricity. And now that we have another house and neither Verizon nor Comcast is available, I miss the not-very-good service we used to have from both those companies. The promotional Cablevision rate is not nearly enough to make me want to stay with this company if I had any real option. Next stop, if things don’t improve, is the local phone company, with slower Internet but a real phone line, and maybe DirectTV if we can get permission from our HOA, or overpriced Cablevision Gold Package if we can’t (because Cablevision cleverly makes it possible to get HBO only with the priciest package).</p>
<p>I have Time Warner and am so happy I didn’t switch when V Fios came a calling. What I did do was call TW and tell them if they didn’t lower my bill I was going to switch. In less than a blink of an eye I had a new package with whole house DVR (I had two sets that had dvr boxes before) and they lowered my bill $55/month. I don’t have phone with them, just cable & internet. </p>
<p>TW customer service is excellent, too. You call, they come.</p>
<p>
Score, LasMa! I love reading stories about how companies with crappy service are finally held accountable.</p>
<p>So … would it be fun to post the number here (and on every other board you read :D) so that CE might get all the calls they’ve successfully avoided until now? Of course, if they get too many calls they’ll probably just change the number. But if I had the number of the CEO of Excellus Blue Cross/Blue Shield I’d have posters printed and put them up on every telephone pole.</p>
<p>Here’s our Comcast horror story: our internet and cable inexplicably stopped working. Several troubleshooting calls later, Comcast agrees that a service person needs to come out to our house. Unfortunately, no one is available for four days, and that visit will be a four hour service window. I sit at home and wait for the service person who finally shows up at the very end of the service window. He takes one look at the outside and says, “I know what’s wrong…we put a block on your service.” It turns out that someone else on our block stopped paying their bill and Comcast sent a worker out to terminate service…but got the wrong house.
The service person thought it was hilarious, Comcast never apologized, and there was no credit on our bill for all of my wasted time and four days without service.</p>
<p>I have no Comcast horror story to tell.</p>
<p>In fact, I have no TV-related horror story to tell–we don’t have any TV in my house. </p>
<p>In fact, we haven’t for the past seven years now.</p>
<hr>
<p>Score!</p>
<p>I have a comcast vent & we don’t have cable. Last year I was working in my yard when the comcast guy came around and grilled me as to what sort of cable/phone/internet hookup we had.
Last night I was in bed reading but I got up to answer the door and it was another comcast guy who wanted to ask me the same questions.</p>
<p>Anomaly alert! This is in no way a plug for Comcast because our service was often cut off / erratic so I can’t recommend them. (We’ve since moved out of their service area.)</p>
<p>Anyway, we moved into a brand new rental house, and at that time (2008) Comcast seemed the “best” cable + internet service provider. We called to set up service and the nice-lady-on-the-other-end-of-the-line informed us that that house didn’t yet have the physical lines connected to the house and it would cost a couple of hundred dollars to get those installed.</p>
<p>I explained that we were “just renters” and there was no way the owner of the house would pay for the cable connection (which was true). Lo and behold, all connection fees were dropped. My jaw dropped, then I thanked her profusely. We were connected to the internet and cable TV for free.</p>
<p>TL, DR; Comcast: Loved the before-purchase service, hated the after-purchase service.</p>