{"id":1083,"date":"2008-04-24T11:08:46","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T16:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2008-06-09T17:54:56","modified_gmt":"2008-06-09T21:54:56","slug":"comcastic-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/04\/24\/comcastic-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Comcastic “Support?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble.<\/p>\n

My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong.<\/p>\n

I saw right away that it seemed as though my local (as in neighborhood) network had finally been switched over to Comcast’s network – the IP had changed to a totally different class A network, and as a further clue, the host name now said “comcast” instead of “patriotmedia.” OK – so why can’t I connect to anything?<\/p>\n

I was getting the new IP address via DHCP, so I knew I was at least connected to Comcast – but I could not ping the DHCP, DNS, or Gateway IP addresses I was given. Very strange! So the problem must’ve been on their end.<\/p>\n

Ugh. That means I have to call Comcast tech support and probably go through all my troubleshooting all over again.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. Even though I’d already done the whole “connect your computer directly to the cable modem” thing, they made me do it again. And again. I mean, I know why they make you do this, and I know that they’re probably told to ignore callers who say “I’m a tech person, I know what I’m doing” (which I did say, in not so few words), but still…<\/p>\n

Anyway, they eventually said they’d have to escalate it (duh!) and would it be OK for a tech to call me back on this number? I said sure, made sure they had the phone number right (they did), and hung up.<\/p>\n

Several hours later, with no Internet, I was going through withdrawal. Remember, I live<\/em> on the Internet!<\/p>\n

So I called back to get a status report – and they started making me go through the troubleshooting steps again! So I firmly asked for a status report, and they said, basically, “they’re working on it.”<\/p>\n

To keep myself amused, I was periodically checking my ‘net connection, resetting my router and cable modem to see if I had connectivity. Finally, after 6 hours, the Internet came back to life and I was able to get back online.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today, and I get a call out of the blue. It was Comcast… calling to see if my Internet was working now.<\/p>\n

For those who can’t count, that’s 3 days later they finally called to check in on me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I guess you could say that this is what “Comcastic” really means – leave your customers hanging for 3 days before following up on something that you fixed 3 days earlier. If they keep using that word in their advertising, well… to quote a great movie, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> I have a follow-up post regarding this issue – and it’s good news!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble. My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong. I saw right away that it seemed as though my… Continue reading Comcastic “Support?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[140,35],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-technology","tag-customer-service","tag-internet","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-ht","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1363,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/09\/26\/more-foolishness-from-comcast\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":0},"title":"More Foolishness from Comcast","author":"Keith Survell","date":"September 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"From Slashdot: \"US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications. The company said that under its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1168,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/06\/09\/follow-up-on-comcastic-support\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":1},"title":"Follow-Up on “Comcastic Support”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In a follow up to this post on my experience with Comcast Support, I have... good news! I wrote in to Comcast this morning via their website because I was having some Internet trouble - it was being a bit flakey. I wrote to them telling them about my previous\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/08\/29\/comcasts-bandwidth-usage-caps-a-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":2},"title":"Comcast’s Bandwidth Usage Caps – A Bad Idea","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"You might have heard this already, but Comcast is rolling out bandwith usage caps - specifically, 250 GB per month for all residential Internet customers. Their policy is also \"two strikes and you're out,\" meaning that after your first infraction, you get a call. After the second one, you lose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":739,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2006\/05\/09\/net-neutrality\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":3},"title":"Net Neutrality","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I think \"Net Neutrality\" is vitally important - and here's why.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":619,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/09\/08\/a-us-national-firewall\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":4},"title":"A U.S. National Firewall?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"September 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeah, because nationalism is better than a unified, global information network. People often say that the Internet erases boundaries - but apparently, the U.S. Government likes its boundaries very much, and wants to keep them.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1545,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/12\/10\/they-still-dont-make-em-like-they-used-to\/","url_meta":{"origin":1083,"position":5},"title":"They Still Don’t Make ’em Like They Used To","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Long-time readers will recall that slightly less than a year ago I finally replaced my venerable old Netgear RT314 router with a newer Netgear WGR614 v7 router. Ever since then, I've been battling with an intermittent problem - the worst kind to debug. At seemingly random intervals, the router would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/12\/internet-connection-tools.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}