Comcast was decent for about a week after we moved in June 2005. From there, the connection seemed to fizzle down, along with our digital cable boxes going in and out at all times of the day. We’ve had Comcast come visit a few times, replacing cables and making other tweaks but it was never very good. Over the past week, both our television and Internet have been down almost as much as they’ve been working. Three tech visits later, and it turns out the problem is due to a ridiculously weak signal and a shot underground cable. Estimate for repair: 2-3 weeks. Apparently the utility company has to get involved. The technician said it was amazing we had service at all over the past few days. Now, it’s completely dead.
Enough. I called Verizon, thankful that we canceled Vonage last month. While FiOS is in our zip code, it’s still not in my neighborhood and no way to predict when it will be here. Can’t wait. We’re switching over to Verizon DSL and DirectTV. There’s a package deal that will give us the same phone plan we currently have, the higher speed DSL service they offer (3Mbps/768Kbps) and DirectTV for around $130 month for the first 3 months, around $160/month after that. Including HBO (Showtime and Cinemax are free in that first 3 months), 2 DVRs and a regular receiver. We’re currently paying $60 for the phone (unlimited local/long distance in U.S.) and $160 for Comcast (cable modem, digital TV and HBO). Absolutely no reason I can see not to switch. I’ll take reliability over theoretical speed. There are dishes all over our neighborhood, so I know we won’t have the same connection issues with the dish that we had in Stamford with Dish Network a few years ago.
The DSL modem will be here via UPS early next week. DirectTV will be installing on Friday. When FiOS comes, we’ll be able to upgrade the Internet part for free, and if it’s in less than a year the cancellation fee to get out of our 1 year DirectTV contract won’t be that bad.
Until then, a branch of C3: Colorectal Cancer Coalition just opened at Panera Bread, which is nice enough to offer free wifi.
Judi Sohn 
2 responses to “Adios Comcast”
It’s too bad you had a bad experience with Comcast. Sounds like they took logical steps to find an issue. First send out the house level techs. If you are the only one calling in with an issue then they wouldn’t have a maintenance tech roll out to check anything. Being also it was an intermittent issue if it’s not happening when a tech is there it’s very hard for a house tech to find a problem. It’s like saying sometimes I hear a squeak from my car somewhere an it’s not squeaking when a tech looks for it. They just can’t “hear” the problem to isolate where it’s coming from. This could happen with not only Comcast but also Bell, att, an auto mechanic, a computer tech and the list goes on.
Being they need to get the utility company involved it’s out of their hands for the time frame. Not really something to point fingers at Comcast about. If you ned to get up and going, do what’s best for you. If Verizon can get you going, that’s great.
Brack, you’re absolutely right. While I’m not happy with how it has turned out with Comcast, the only thing I blame them for is for visiting 3 times in the last week and not figuring out what was wrong. You would think a cable that was in as bad as shape as today’s tech described would have been noticeable, but maybe not.
I am simply complaining that I can’t be offline for 2-3 weeks, and since this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to fix our connection issues (utility company was involved last time, too) I have no guarantee that even after waiting 2-3 weeks it would be any better. It was always my plan to jump to Verizon, but I thought I’d wait for FiOS. Now I just have to do it a little earlier than I planned, and we’ll be spending less per month to boot.