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Hasta la Vista...Comcast!!! Login/Join 
Ethics, antics,
and ballistics
Picture of Dtech
posted
After being a Comcast customer for over 6 years, I'm done with having to deal with their contradicting, downright lying customer service and their service chipping and price hiking year after year! They won't even honor promises, price adjustments, and information provided in writing and confirmed a second time in writing via chats! It has boiled down to "let's string them along for as long as possible and eventually they will stop contacting us. No matter how politely you deal with them and confirm things and get them in chat transcripts, THEY JUST DON'T CARE!

But you know what? Things happen for a reason and I started shopping my options right away. The irony is that our home owners association has a contract with Comcast to provide basic cable as part of our dues and Comcast allegedly gives us a "discounted rate" for the added / bundled services such as Internet and Digital phone as well as better channel packages. We were fortunate enough to have AT&T lay fiber through our neighborhood a little over a year ago so we now have direct access to their all fiber to the home network and service options. After some research on their website, I was able to create my own bundle of 470 channel U Verse HD TV service with even some 4K content availability (vs their around 260), Gigagbit Internet 1000 service (10x faster than what we currently get), and digital phone service, for only $10 more than Xfinity's promotional "association discounted rate" pricing Triple Play package that they won't even offer me any more. Even when I called to cancel my service with Comcast they made no attempt to even negotiate with me to stay with them so I mentioned to them as we finished scheduling my disconnection date that it was now clear I had made the right decision to switch to AT&T because they didn't care about retaining loyal customers. It seems that Comcast wants to now gamble that a majority of people are just bluffing about leaving because they don't actually want to change or go through the hassle, and they don't want to give pricing breaks. Well Comcast, you were wrong and you lost. You no longer have a monopoly hold on our neighborhood and I'm looking forward to our newer, better, faster, cheaper services, not to mention what so far seems to be nicer, more knowledgeable people through AT&T!

I'm actually going to bring it up in our next homeowners meeting to see if maybe we can contract with AT&T instead to get even cheaper pricing next time our association contract is up for renewal.


-Dtech
__________________________

"I've got a life to live, people to love, and a God to serve!" - sigmonkey

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" ― Rudyard Kipling
 
Posts: 4413 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: April 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
No, not like
Bill Clinton
Picture of BigSwede
posted Hide Post
Comcast would have to pay me to use them. I loathe Comcast.

We just bought a new house. I was told that ATT put in the fiber here as well, will look into it.



 
Posts: 5299 | Location: GA | Registered: September 23, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Nullus Anxietas
Picture of ensigmatic
posted Hide Post
I've had a decent relationship with Comcast. The thing that calls itself "at&t" these days? Absolute worst vendor experience I've ever had in dealing with telecom companies privately and professionally for some four decades.

Despite the fact they have a U-verse pedestal a half mile from our street they haven't even bothered to make their DSL-on-steroids U-verse product available to my neighbours and I, much less lay FTTP.

I moved our landline service to a VoIP/SIP provider months ago. About 1/2 the price for two-to-three times the service and features. As with your experience with Comcast: "at&t" didn't even ask why we were cancelling with them after my having been a customer, often with as many as three lines of service, for 40 years.

I wish you luck with "at&t," but I avoid them to the extent possible.

Btw: Just so y'all know: This spring when I was up north with a buddy, we went to an "at&t" store to get him a hotspot. ("at&t" is the only thing that has coverage there.) There was picketing going on. Since service was slow, while my buddy waited inside I went back outside to ask why. Turned out they were closing "at&t" stores like that one to rely on third-party stores and out-sourcing their CS to Asia/India/what-have-you.



"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher
 
Posts: 26009 | Location: S.E. Michigan | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ethics, antics,
and ballistics
Picture of Dtech
posted Hide Post
Just a heads up for those considering AT&T if you pick your own package (Build your own) and do it online by entering your address in the website, it seems to give you the best pricing. AT&T also gives you a DVR main receiver and up to three additional TV receivers INCLUDED in your charges as is the Internet gateway they provide and they waive their activation fee and installation is free as well as a $50 Visa card for signing up. Sometimes you will see a good package deal pop up on the website on your phone that you may not see on the PC and vice versa so it appears they have some type of dynamic pricing algorithm working in the background. If you chat with a rep don't give them your service address just ask them questions if you have any after reviewing the website and options. It may affect the pricing algorithm.

I will say this for Comcast, the actual X1 TV/Internet/Phone service has been good and pretty reliable, but I have had a number of equipment issues over the time I've had them as well as the very occasional programming / reception hiccups. It was not cool though when they quietly made adjustments to Internet speeds without telling customers, but their overall Internet performance and reliability has been good too. So if you are stuck using them, you could potentially do worse but of course carriers and service quality varies greatly across the country. Comcast is notorious for trying to nickel and dime you for activations, installations, service visits, and equipment "upgrades" though, at least in our area.

From the maps I've seen in my research, as far as digital TV and other wired services, AT&T seems to service more of the southern half of the country while Comcast seems to be more prominent in the northern half, with exceptions of course. AT&T definitely seems to have a leg up on fiber to the home rollouts though.


-Dtech
__________________________

"I've got a life to live, people to love, and a God to serve!" - sigmonkey

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" ― Rudyard Kipling
 
Posts: 4413 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: April 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Stop Talking, Start Doing
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i look forward to this day ... when I can say the same.


_______________
Mind. Over. Matter.
 
Posts: 5070 | Location: The (R)ight side of Washington State | Registered: August 31, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ethics, antics,
and ballistics
Picture of Dtech
posted Hide Post
One other perk AT&T is offering with the current promotion...pricing is fixed for the duration of the two year contract. No spikes after the first year!


-Dtech
__________________________

"I've got a life to live, people to love, and a God to serve!" - sigmonkey

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" ― Rudyard Kipling
 
Posts: 4413 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: April 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I got ready to cut the cable and when i cancelled and sent my box in they came back with the base package plus HBO for $3 over what I pay them for internet. As a result I still have Comcast. If they continue that deal I'll keep it but otherwise I dont actually do anything besides online streaming unless I get the wild hair for live football. Thankfully the NFL is breaking me of that habit.
 
Posts: 3041 | Location: Pnw | Registered: March 21, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ethics, antics,
and ballistics
Picture of Dtech
posted Hide Post
Evidently AT&T must be getting quite a number of people switching / new customers in our area. I had to book our install appointment over two weeks out to get it on a day that would work for me and even the earliest possible appointment was only a couple days sooner than I chose.

At this point, Comcast could offer to reinstate our discounted Triple Play rate and I would still go with the AT&T service for the reasons already mentioned. Comcast has earned at the very least a significant "time out" in our household, and I'm going to oblige them. They can try and earn our business again in a couple years, but that all depends on how happy we end up being with AT&T, their customer service, and their pricing considerations.


-Dtech
__________________________

"I've got a life to live, people to love, and a God to serve!" - sigmonkey

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" ― Rudyard Kipling
 
Posts: 4413 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: April 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I'll look into AT&T to see what is offered but I can honestly say I've never had a bad experience with Comcast(knock on wood) Whenever I've called cs they've been very helpful and polite, sure on occasion there has been an equipment issue but they always take care of it right away. I'll check out prices as that is my only complaint.


It's kids like you, who make this bus late.
 
Posts: 884 | Location: Weirton,WV | Registered: April 16, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Prefontaine
posted Hide Post
Just the opposite here. I was a happy Uverse internet customer for years. All of a sudden 2 years ago, ATT removed the promotional rates, and jacked up the price. One by one everyone on my street switched to Time Warner (Spectrum now). ATT’s solution in my hood is FTTN not FTTP so their speeds can’t compete with the coax/cable provider. Spectrum had a nasty 12-14 hour outage here Wednesday night through Thursday morning. If that happens again any time soon I may have to deal with the slower speeds at ATT. I work from home a few days a week so internet disruptions are not tolerated any longer. I’ve already thought about running basic speeds on 2 providers just to make the renduandcy somewhat affordable. Oh how I wish I could get my own OC3 with BLSR. I’ve known people who go house shopping with comms vendors being #1 on the priority list.

I’m still amazed that we pay high mrc compared to many other countries, our speeds are inferior as well.



What am I doing? I'm talking to an empty telephone
 
Posts: 12568 | Location: Down South | Registered: January 16, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Ethics, antics,
and ballistics
Picture of Dtech
posted Hide Post
Well, the AT&T install went well yesterday and they actually had three actual, very pleasant, knowledgeable, and accommodating AT&T techs on site (not contractors) working together to complete the install. They ran the fiber from the fiber pedestal close to the sidewalk to the side of the house, installed a new junction box on the exterior, ran the fiber up into the attic and down a very fortunate ideal wall/plate location in the family room that had existing coax and two coax connectors on it from way back when we had Dish Network, so it was easy for them to pull the fiber through. They did have to run it twice though because the first length of fiber got inadvertently stretched and the fiber became wavy inside the jacket (they could see it when they tested it and then cut the jacket away afterwards) so it was not transmitting a good, ideal light signal. The second one worked perfectly and yielded an excellent light transmission reading close to the highest end of the scale. The installation requires a small termination box mounted in the area where the fiber comes through the wall that is about 8" tall by 4" wide and sticks out about 2 1/4 inches from the wall so again, it couldn't have worked out better as far as location and the ability to use the existing cable run drop. That box feeds the primary Uverse router connectivity box/hub with an Ethernet cable (controls TV, Internet, Wi-Fi if you don't have your own, and home phone) which in turn feeds a small profile TV receiver and the rest of the home and receivers with the TV signal using the existing coax. The hub has a nice, user friendly interface for making any configuration changes you would like to make to Wi-Fi, LAN, etc. They did change out all the connectors on all the wall plates as well to assure the best connections and transmission. My personal Wi-Fi internet router connected right up without any grief or configuration changes to their router or mine. I did disable the Wi-Fi in their device to eliminate any impact it might have on my Wi-Fi router's signal and reception.

Granted we've only had it a day, but so far we are happy with all the AT&T equipment and services. TV picture quality is great as is the channel selection and navigation once you start getting familiar with the remote. The most impressive part is the Internet speed though. AT&T's advertised maximum download speed for its Gigabit fiber service is currently 970 Mbps and my speed test yielded 949 Mbps! The upload speed was equally impressive coming in at 1.03 Gbps! Webpage access and apps/games show incredible results for content and servers that obviously have a high speed backbone and connection to take advantage of. Most of my navigation is instantaneous. My lowest recorded ping times have been in the 3 to 4ms range. Yeah, I'm happy! Big Grin

As for Comcast, they predictably billed me for another full month as of yesterday on my credit card instead of the partial amount they quoted me when they scheduled my cancellation date, so I get the joy of contacting them one last time to get them to correct this immediately, or I'll report it to my CC company as an unauthorized charge, especially since I dropped all of their Comcrap equipment at a local Comcast store yesterday afternoon and have the return receipt to prove it. I'll be so glad to be rid of them once and for all!


-Dtech
__________________________

"I've got a life to live, people to love, and a God to serve!" - sigmonkey

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" ― Rudyard Kipling
 
Posts: 4413 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: April 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Don't be too surprised if you have to reverse their charges for several months. Because I've heard from multiple former Comcrap customers that after cancelling they keep on charging in hopes the customer won't notice it. So, keep an eye out for a charge from them every single month for the next few months at the least.


I've stopped counting.
 
Posts: 5621 | Location: Michigan | Registered: November 07, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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