School me on: Comcast intenet/cable/phone

[Tacoma]

I searched and didn't get anything current on this topic. Also, pardon my accidental misspelling of "internet" in the title.


Currently we are paying about $100/mo for Qwest and Vonage to have phone and internet service, 1.5mbps and no upgrade from Qwest available. It's sufficient most of the time, but when Tara's working online and using the phone, that means no videos or picture-heavy downloads/uploads for me.

Tonight the Comcast shill came around, offering $90/mo for 25-30mbps from the cable they just finished running, about a million channels, and phone service, and we get to keep the 801 number we have for Tara's work.

The price jumps to $109/mo after a year, which I'd call and argue about, but if they make me pay it I figure it's like paying $10-20 for cable and still getting all the other stuff we're currently paying for already.

Anyone have anything I need to know about Comcast, esp. in Tooele/Tooele County?? If they suck and have service interruptions all the time I'm not into it, but higher speed and cable sounds nice to me.

Please advise.

 

[TJDukit]

You don't have to sign a contract with comcast so if you decide you don't like it or when the price jumps you just bail if you want to. Unless of course things have changed since I bailed.

 

[mbryson]

It's worked well for me for years.

 

[Caleb]

Comcast worked fine for me for years until I automated my movie and tv show downloads...then their monthly bandwidth caps started to get me. Their customer service blows but so does qwest's. (I mean century link). I recently switched from Comcast back to directv and qwest an even with the highest tv package with all the movie channels, I'll still be paying about $50 less a month than I was with Comcast and a much lower tv package and same Internet speed.

The other thing that drove me away from Comcast is their regular unplanned outages on their Internet services. Tv and phone wouldn't go out but I would constantly loose Internet service about weekly during the night. The times wouldn't affect most people but the fact that I was working every night late doing deploys really made it an issue for me.

 

[Paul R]

You don't have to sign a contract with comcast so if you decide you don't like it or when the price jumps you just bail if you want to. Unless of course things have changed since I bailed.

That used to be true, but they are now starting to do contract based pricing. The one that Tacoma is talking about sounds like it is the contract deal they are pushing right now. You can still do non contract service, but it is more $$.

I personally have had awesome luck from Comcast from a technical standpoint. Great high speed internet, minimal downtime, etc. However Comcast as a company totally brings the suck. I absolutely hate dealing with their pricing and customer service. I am currently looking for other options, but I really like the speeds I am getting.

:-\

 

[Caleb]

Oh, and Comcast does have a contract if you want their deal, same as every other provider (if you want the best deal then you'll have to agree to a commitment).

 

[Tacoma]

I'm alright w/a contract, it's not like I'm not going to need service for the next.. forever hahah..

I really, REALLY hate Qwest and I haven't been happy with them from the very start. We had over a mile of extra line when we got our service set up, which we found out after Qwest lost our account for about 10days, and tried to tell me it would be a month to get it back on. Luckily, the tech was pretty good. And it was his last day w/Qwest.

At this point, it looks like a full improvement over our current service and pricing. Doing my due diligence still but unless something horrible comes up I think I'll probably be pulling the trigger on this one.

 

[TkMeHomePlease]

I worked for comcast, they have the fastest internet. They have alot of plans available. You can have contact or not. Always remember if they have an outage call and you will get credit for time lost.
And if your price goes up call and talk to them. If that don't work talk with a supervisor, or talk to the retention department.

 

[gijohn40]

I had comcast 25-30 mb service and never saw anything above 13 mb... they told me that my brand new cisco router was the cause of the slowness... I told them I hooked my computer straight to their modem and it never got above 13... they sent a tech out and he turned around and told me it it was my router... yet my router wasnt even in the loop... then they charged me 45 for his visit to insult my intelligence... I dropped them the next day and got digis and their new 15 mb service and have been happy once again with digis...

 

[airmanwilliams]

Im in the middle of fighting them right now. When I had it hooked up a few weeks ago it was intermittent and slow so I called them and they had me reset everything but still the problem persisted so they sent a tech guy out and all he did was recet the modem and left. Well, now im fighting with them that they never told me that sending a guy to do a button push of on and off would charge $40 and never even fix the problem. My internet still SUCKS and I cant stream ANY videos at all and all my hardware is new too. Im definately ready to go find someone else here in the coming weeks. I really dont think that a little customer service I had asked for should cost $40 or even up to $100 that they told me they could get to as I think that it should just be free of charge and a service they provide to customers for free.

 

[JL Rockies]

I find the best internet service is whatever I can steal from the neighbors.

 

[ret32]

Keep a close eye on your bill with Comcast. They are constantly jerking me around. Whatever the sales person says, WILL NOT be what your bills say. You will have to call and get it adjusted. Even then, problem not solved. Expect to call every time the bill comes for awhile. After a few months, you'll eventually get your credit and it all comes out fair in the end, but you have to fight for it.

That's been my experience with Comcast on 3 different occasions.

 

[Herzog]

Tips for using comcast -

Use a different DNS. I like using google's DNS.

Never let a tech into your home.
Last time one of those doofuses came into my house he tried changing up my patch panel and router which had nothing to do with the defunct modem. Most of them are pretty much retarded when it comes to networking. (Sorry to offend any comcast techs on the board. You guys haven't made a good name for yourselves. I know you have to deal with people who know nothing about systems most of the time, but if you come across somebody who knows a bit more about networking than you do, don't be a douche and continue to fubar my shit).

/rant

-edit: also, their network outages have gone down a ton in the past couple years. In fact, I don't remember the last outage in a couple years.

 

[Caleb]

Keep a close eye on your bill with Comcast. They are constantly jerking me around. Whatever the sales person says, WILL NOT be what your bills say. You will have to call and get it adjusted. Even then, problem not solved. Expect to call every time the bill comes. After a few months, you'll eventually get your credit and it all comes out fair in the end, but you have to fight for it.

That's been my experience with Comcast on 3 different occasions.

Same, Comcast is quick to offer money off to keep you as a customer. Even when I was blowing away their bandwidth quotas, they kept trying to offer money off my bill to keep me as a customer.

Tips for using comcast -

Use a different DNS. I like using google's DNS.

Never let a tech into your home.
Last time one of those doofuses came into my house he tried changing up my patch panel and router which had nothing to do with the defunct modem. Most of them are pretty much retarded when it comes to networking. (Sorry to offend any comcast techs on the board. You guys haven't made a good name for yourselves. I know you have to deal with people who know nothing about systems most of the time, but if you come across somebody who knows a bit more about networking than you do, don't be a douche and continue to fubar my shit).

/rant

-edit: also, their network outages have gone down a ton in the past couple years. In fact, I don't remember the last outage in a couple years.

Tell me about it. Only once did I have a tech come in and after seeing my gear downstairs, turn to me, hand me the modem and said, you probably know more about this than I do, I'll let you hook it up

They actually still have a fair number of outages (at least for most of the guys on my team which is in areas from UTCO to Layton) but they are always real late at night. Like I mentioned above, 99% of people won't notice a 5 minute outage at 2-3am. When you are deploying code and get booted off and loose your ssh session and realize you forgot to start a screen session, you notice

 

[Herzog]

Tell me about it. Only once did I have a tech come in and after seeing my gear downstairs, turn to me, hand me the modem and said, you probably know more about this than I do, I'll let you hook it up

Wish I would have had your guy. He sounds a lot smarter than the one I had.
The last support call I made the said that they'll send a tech out to which I replied "no you won't".

I usually have ssh tunnels going on but mostly during the day so you're right, I wouldn't notice the late night outages as much.

 

[Gravy]

pda net off my cell phone works ok for me. but if I did anything more than email, surf RME and Pirate it would bring the suck