Service Note II

Well, we finished the move. I had advised Comcast last week so everything was scheduled for today. Yesterday I had installed all of the equipment I had previously and it worked 24 hours without a problem.

This morning the technician arrived and changed the connectors on the cables - this is 20$ worth of work?!? Well before leaving he changed the cable modem, indicating that this was the latest and greatest. Everything works fine.

An hour and a half goes by and now all I get is the Comcast welcome page??? So I call customer service. They explain that they cannot do anything because the work order is still open to call back in 3 hours...

3 hours later the work order is still open, but playing around with the explorer options, clearing cache, and multiple resets, the thing works. An hour and a half later, again, all I get is the Comcast welcome page. Another call to Customer Service. Obviously I am re-explaining everything done to that point. She assures me, "I will help you get good internet service, please do what I ask."

So we go through the entire mumbo jumbo, the thing does not work and strangely the call falls. Again a call to Customer service, same mumbo jumbo... Finally the representatives asks me to hold and after several minutes, a nice gentleman, answers the call. I figure finally they have escalated the problem to someone who actually knows something about DSL service. I explain tediously the problem...

He then tells me that he is with the work order department and that my problem was surely Customer Care. I understand what the previous rep had done. She switched me over to the service department so I could get them to close the work order. So.... I ask. He is helpful and gets a manager to close the workorder. I go through all of the parameters, clean the cache, flush the DNS, and reopen the browser, to my amazement it works, for another hour...

At this point I think, before I call let's see if I can fix the problem. So I clear the cache, flush the DNS, and restart. Low and behold it works!

So I call customer service, explain the situation and ask them to make notes as I will surely have the problem again. The gentleman on the phone listened and writes and gives a reference number.

One final thing to do. I have a 6 mbit link, supposedly to connect as many computers as I wish, so I request a second IP, not a fixed IP, a simple assignment from the pool. I am informed that it will cost 4.95 a month. For those who do not know, when a company receives an assignment of IP addresses from the assigning authority, in Europe it is RIPE, they agree that just as they do not pay for the addresses they cannot charge for them. Well I guess since "Al Gore invented the Internet", Comcast has decided it can charge for something that is free...

The saga may continue, or I may just switch but surely for Comcast it is bad. The acquisition of a new customer is 5 times more expensive than maintaining an existing one. I wonder how many people are having the same type of problems I am.

All this to say, I may be a little slow publishing over the next few days.