Posted on 03/26/2015 11:45:10 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
Only months after moving into his new home in Washington state, Consumerist reader Seth is already looking to sell his house. He didnt lose his job or discover that the property is haunted. No, Seth cant stay much longer because no one can provide broadband service to his address; even though Comcast and CenturyLink both misled him into thinking hed be connected to their networks and in spite of the fact that his county runs a high-speed fiberoptic network that goes very near to his property.
Like an increasing number of Americans, Seth works from home, meaning that its vital that he have a reliable high-speed Internet connection at all times. Thats why before he even put an offer on the house in Kitsap County, WA, he contacted Comcast to confirm that he could get service to his potential new address.
According to Seth, who has kept a detailed timeline of events, one Comcast sales rep even said that a previous resident at this address had been a Comcast customer. Seth says he tried to get it in writing that the house was serviceable, but Comcast said they simply do not do that.
Then, on Jan. 31, a Comcast tech came out to perform what should have been a quick installation, only to find that there was no cable infrastructure leading to Seths property. Thus began a months-long saga of pointless appointments before Seth ultimately hit a dead end last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at consumerist.com ...
The geniuses in the town government where I live gave Charter Communications an exclusive but Charter simply chose not to bother with the four residence on my mille long, dead end street.
Ed Rendell made millions from them.
I absolutely laugh at all these folks dropping their cable. They think they have won the war.......huh...not even close. The date limits that are coming are going to crush any so called savings they get from dumping cable. I am stunned by some of the arrogance. I did dump my land line and didn’t save a penny but I knew that going in so I was cool with it. Dumping cable is going to bite people hard and they won’t know what hit them. This guy has a business and when they put a 250 cap on data then what will he do?????????
I have no experience with them, just know the name from research for my bug-out retreat.
So I finally sent them a video of me standing in the alley right next to my building and a friend who worked for The Phone Company standing in the alley next to the Phone Company building and I threw him a softball. I sent that video to him from my house which was farther away from that building and I had their DSL Internet there.
They still said it wasn't close enough because on the screen he was reading it was 30 miles or more away. I said well then maybe I should sign up with the Yankees or QB for the Browns because I just through a softball over thirty miles! I then asked for a supervisor and he looked at the video and said sir someone will be out tomorrow to install your service.
Bottom line if it is on the screen of the screen reader then it is canon and cannot be denied even though reality is telling them different.
True, but the proposed solution is invariably, MORE GOVERNMENT.
I don’t get why the guy didn’t double and triple check if he was moving to a remote area without many people-it does not make sense.
Unfortunately, there is no profit for a big company in bringing services like cable, broadband, etc to remote rural areas-I live in one-we have heard promises of broadband from AT&T and one other company for the last 10 years, but it never got closer than 20 miles from here-the only “town” in the county-it has less than 900 people-there just aren’t enough people to make such a thing worthwhile in an area that is just farms, ranches and little enclaves here and there.
I have HughesNet, but there are other sat companies-they all seem to be about the same in price and service.
There is no cable TV here either for the same reason-I’ve had DirecTV since I lived in the burbs anyway.
That’s crap ...
He should have talked to the neighbors...
Sat internet may be crappy at times, but it is the only game around in remote, sparsely populated areas. I don’t know anyone who lives out here who would live in a crowded city or burb just to get broadband, either-it is all about what is most important to you...
Welcome to my world.
Agree with your post, and you know the regime is heading in this direction.
This is an outrage. What we need is a huge government agency to take over the internet and guarantee fairness and neutrality when it comes to internet service. Everyone should have the same speed regardless. It’s only fair. Soon we will have blinding fast speeds of 9600bps with a whopping 10 megabytes of data. If only we had a government run by liberals this utopia would be possible....
Do i really need to say sarcasm?
Once, I had unlimited data. Then I wanted a new Moto X phone, so that was the end of my Verizon unlimited data plan.
I had my doubts about Comcast when they sucked up to the Obama campaign in 2008 and again, in 2012. Even though they would have been severely impacted by Obamacare, with all the employees they employ, the did not say a peep against it.
Lately, with the increased competition and Obamacare, Comcast is tightening their staff and turning more and more of the business over to contractors. It is not surprising that they are doing less for customers. They think they can charge top dollar for their product. This causes a loss of customers. To make up for the loss of customers they maintain profits by cutting their operating costs largely by sacrificing customer service and cutting employees.
It is time Comcast take the Walmart approach: make their product affordable to the average person.
Several years ago, they came through and laid a fiber cable about 3” diameter in front of my house. Yet my only choice is wireless...
Life in the sticks. And I would NOT move to town.
yet, weren’t they the ones who merged with TimeWarner?
They are an atrocious company that IMHO keeps its monopoly by bribing public officials and agencies.
Several years ago I bought a house in Comcast territory and wanted internet there so I signed up and told them I had my own cable modem. The first couple months they charged me $10/month for renting my own cable modem. I complained and after days getting it resolved, they corrected the error. Then I forgot all about it. I don’t scrutinize bills, but last month I found they had started billing me for it again. I looked at old bills and found that they had been doing it for over 4 years! I went to local office (because their phone service sux!)and they rudely told me that I was lying and that it was their modem. I asked them what serial number they had registered for me. They gave it to me. I went home and got modem and their serial number was my MAC address. I took it to them and they said that they didn’t track serial numbers, only MAC addresses. Knowing any network guy can pull a MAC address off of the network in under a minute, I asked them what that proved?? They said that is the way they do their tracking. That they only record MAC addresses. Finally one helpful employee said they could put in a service ticket to the warehouse where they initially record the MAC addresses and state definitively whether it was their modem. They did this and I got a phone call stating that according to their records, it was theirs. So... they f’ing lied. A lot of other people on the internet have seen the same thing.
Am gonna put in a PSC complaint, a BBB complaint and tell them that thay have already stolen over $500 from me and they can disconnect my service and shove MY modem up their....
Having signal's nice, but it's even nicer if one can afford to use it ;)
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