COMCAST SUCKS but they lowered my bill enough that I can deal with it.

Sometimes it pays to bitch about things. It probably helps that I’m good at bitching about things. If Comcast pisses me off one more time I’ll be offline for quite some time, at least until I can’t stand hearing my wife bitch about not having internet. I’ve been conditioning her for more than a year now to get used to the idea of not having cable TV but she is going to insist on having da interwebs for a while longer.

 

Comcast has recently been pissing me off and the trick to dealing with them is to only speak with their customer retention specialists. My bill for basic cable with no special or premium channels plus internet was $169/month. Long story short, I called them up and started bitching about it. One of their flunkies said he’d upgrade my account and lower my bill. This required a new modem but that’s was fine by me because my old one was eight years old. Of course this “upgrade” was promotional only and the price would automatically upgrade itself in twelve months but my bill then would still be about $8 cheaper thereafter than what I was paying. I figure what the hell, if I closed my account tomorrow I would not miss it.

 

The new modem they sent was a POS so I had to visit their store twice which gave me a whole litany of shit to bitch about. I called back and told them to cancel my account which automatically gets you transferred to customer retention. That guy falls all over himself giving me all kinds of discounts and adding new channels like HBO etc. I ask if these are permanent upgrades and discounts because if they are not he can proceed with closing my account. He assures me they are permanent and will not expire. My bill is now down to $104.

My latest bill arrives in the mail and is eight pages long with a ton of shit that makes no sense so I call back and ask for customer retention which is what I was told to do. I start asking questions about the bill and the guy immediately knocks another, permanent $15 off my bill. I didn’t get my questions answered but my bill is now only $89 with all kinds of movie channels (that I’ll never use and never wanted) plus all kinds of free On Demand crap (that I’ll never use and never wanted). Today I returned their Gateway because I bought my own modem and router for less than a hundred bucks so now my bill drops to $79/month all taxes and fees included. Oh, my internet speed is supposed to double next month, no charge. Internet pages already load faster than I can blink and movies/music streams flawlessly so I have no idea what good more speed will do.

Methinks Comcast is struggling to keep their customers. The funny part is that if their sales team and store employees weren’t working double quick time to piss people off, they wouldn’t have to cut my bill so much. The amount of aggravation they dole out, coupled with the monthly bill just isn’t worth it. The other funny thing is that I never even asked for any kind of discount. So, if you are a Comcast customer or any cable company customer, pick up the phone and start bitching. The worst that could happen is you end up with no discount but chances are they’ll be falling all over themselves to make you happy. Just make sure you are talking to customer retention and not their sales flunkies. So now I have another $90/month feed up to spend on hard assets. I might just call them up in six months and tell them to close my account just to see what happens.

9
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
TE
TE

Good for you IS.

When I call and bitch to my cable/internet provider, they, “tsk, tsk, we understand” to my face/ear, but then laugh and laugh and laugh while I’m on hold, I know they do.

Because when they come back online, they always say the same thing, “well, I’m sorry but this is the way it is, you can change providers if you want to, you are not under contract.”

Which is fabulous until you realize that our cable/internet is a monopoly, and no other providers are allowed within our city limits.

Of course I could switch to AT&T, but would have no internet as I am about 200 yards too far from the central office, so no DSL.

The city is given “free” websites/bandwidth and some equipment in exchange for the cable company getting a monopoly. A few years back the state legislature was voting to end these monopolies, but the millions spent by the cable companies and the city governments was enough to convince the sheeple that government choice is always better than real choice.

Bastards. I’m seriously considering getting netzero for my internet. Sadly, my hub won’t live without cable, so I’ll still be forced to pay the thieving bastards.

Hagar
Hagar

TE perhaps you should opt for satellite. I’ve been with Dish for 10+ years and my only grip is no NFL ticket.

JIMSKI
JIMSKI

Digital broadcast tv ( free) and netflix ($8.00) a month

I can afford meat 5 times a month that way…………..

dilligaf

I do not understand why anyone would pay for TV when it is all available on the internet. Plus the over the air, free network channels, all have about 3 subchannels since the signal went digital. I get 13 free channels over the air. 2 nbc, 3 pbs, 2 cbs, 2 abc, 2 fox, CWTV, and my favorite – MeTV.

N8
N8

Cable/internet is always a monopoly it’s BS. Netflix rocks for sure cheap, no commercials, and usually a few good things on at least

Leobeer
Leobeer

As someone with a good internet connection who lives in the middle of nowhere with no access to American TV I download everything I care to watch for free.

First download utorrent. http://www.utorrent.com/

Then go to : http://eztv.it/

It’s all easy to do.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

The only internet/phone carrier I hate more than Comcast is ATT.

Thankfully, I have choices, though none is perfect. For one thing, I was never a TeeVee watcher and 30 years ago decided that cable was a massive waste of money, so that is off the menu. That leaves phone and internet, and, after passing through ATT, then RCN, then T-Mobile, finally settled on Cricket’s no-contract plan for wireless phone and internet. I have no land line since I decided that a household of one woman ought to be able to get by with one phone line. I carry a basic cheap flip phone I’ve had for 4 years, and use a wireless card for the internet. I have never had a problem downloading whatever I want, though I notice that since I moved about a mile west of my old home, that my signal has degraded somewhat, and Cricket’s coverage does not extend too far outstate.

The television is to view films, which I borrow from the library, rent, or, if it is a film I want to collect, buy used from Amazon for $5-$10. I buy very rarely- have a list of films that I consider to be classic and am collecting, but borrow most of them from friends or the public library. Your local library is a wonderful public amenity that you paid your taxes for, that is used by only 3% of the population- get the good of it.

anon
anon

Comcast is extremely overpriced. The whole point of pay TV at its inception was to pay a fee so that you could enjoy commercial-free television (as opposed to the networks). But cable is nothing but non-stop ads that I’m forced to pay for while Comcast grows so rich that it can afford to buy NBC! You get features like OnDemand, but the shows are gone almost overnight and the free movies are thirty-forty years old. For anything else you are forced to pay more and more and more. This is why people are dropping cable left and right and going to Netflix or Roku. Comcast needs to wake up and lower its prices.

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading