I Loathe Comcast/Time-Warner
The problem has now been fixed, but I want you all to see what I went through thanks to these fuckbags at Time-Warner. And it's the people in charge who did it -- not giving a shit who they put out; who, like me, just stayed up from midnight to 1:22 am in hopes of fixing my cable when I actually needed to be in bed at midnight because I have to wake up at 4 am to write.
Forgive me if this little tale/plea for help below is a bit repetitive and semi-incoherent. I'm tired, and pissed out of my skull, and I don't mean drunk, but drunk with rage. Here's what I wrote before the cable got fixed, thanks to Brian, a TW Tier 3 tech support guy:
I'm on double deadlines, and then some, for the holidays, and I'm supposed to be up at 4 am. I should be in bed now, but I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my cable. Time-Warner's secret tech support number isn't answering (at 12:51 PST) -- or there are a lot of other people with fucked up cable waiting to get helped. Maybe they're closed, maybe they're not, the asswipes.You'd think they'd leave a message on there telling you they're closed, but their unprofessionalism is legendary with me. I live about a mile from the beach, and about once a year they let the lines degrade until my cable goes out, and then they come fix it. Maintain the lines? Why would they do such a thing? Just wait till we complain! Much cheaper, easier, much less manpower.
Worse yet, while I'm waiting (for Godot, I think -- it's now been 19 minutes and 28 seconds) they have these ads I have to listen to...plus these recorded apologies that make me want to throw my desk out the window -- at the exact moment the president/CEO of Comcast or Time-Warner or whatever it's called is walking by.
"We're very sorry you're still on hold. We appreciate your patience and ...some more insincere crap...be of service to you." Yeah? Fuck you. If you were sorry I was on hold, you'd have answered my call. Better yet, you'd have maintained my cable.
Oh, I love a monopoly. But for theirs, I'd be with anybody, anybody else. Satanic Cable, Inc? I'm there.
"Thank you for holding. One of our representatives will be with you momentarily."
I'm guessing I'll have to go to bed, and one of my blog commenters, not one of your representatives, will come up with some idea of what's wrong.
To that end, here's the modem.
Only the light on the far right is lit, and I keep shutting down my computer and pulling the modem plug and reinserting it, to no avail. Sorry the type isn't clearer, but the text under the light says "Internet." The others, from left to right, are Messages, Cable Activity, Cable Link, PC Link, then Internet, the lit one. I'm on an iMac G5.
Wait -- now the light just to the left of the light on the far right, PC Link, is lit, too. Perhaps this will clear itself up by morning.
Oh, "We're very sorry you're still on hold. We appreciate your patience and look forward to being of service to you." Yeah? Eat me.
Again, no need for volunteer trouble-shooting, problem has been solved, and here's a bit about what caused it:
Brian, Time-Warner Cable Tier 3 Support (who was great, really knew his stuff) said: "Servers are down. Servers will be up no later than 6 am."
Why would they do such a thing? Brian said: "Don't know why the servers are down. They just decided 'We're taking down our servers and making changes to them.'"
Charming.
Brian said they had 20,000 customers calling them, and six people to take their calls.
These scumbags in charge at Comcast/Time-Warner could've called, e-mailed, put out a press release. Instead, surprise, surprise, they just took down their servers, no warning, no explanation.
To the president of Comcast/Time-Warner: Have a really shitty day. And the day after that, another really shitty day. And so on, and so on. And if I had the energy, and I could find your home number, at 1:30 am PST/4:30 am EST, there's nothing that would give me greater joy than to wake your ass up and scream obscenities into your ear.
Is that crass and vulgar of me? Sorry, I was hoping for extra-crass and extra-vulgar, but I'm a little low on steam.
Umm, "what you went through" is to be off-line when you didn't want to be. This is hardly an attack on your person.
Although it's possible that server maintenance was scheduled by IT and never publicized - IT doesn't get to communicate with the public at most companies, such news goes through a PR flack - it is also possible that they had to deal with an attack on their system, or a failure. It's been known to happen. Some of these attacks aren't publicized because it's bad news, and others aren't so as to deny details to whoever made the attack.
Yes, the company should be prepared for this sort of thing. So should you. It's the sort of thing you advocate, no?
Sorry you got stuck. I hope you can get some rest.
Radwaste at December 11, 2007 2:23 AM
I am with Amy on this all it takes is a simple message (email, web press release, answering service message, person on the phone, etc).
But as Radewaste commented even saying something like "we are down" can be considered bad news. But the company can still tell the simple message we are down and not have to explain. Heck a company can lie or bend the truth. "Sorry for the lack of service but we are presently down as we are working to improve the system". (yes trying to improve it from being a smoking box on a floor to a somewhat working system.)
John Paulson at December 11, 2007 3:25 AM
There is a phenomenon where once a company (or gov't entity) gets you into their system, you're expected to put up with whatever they dish out. I recently flew United where the flight delay bumped me into a hotel, etc. I was shocked that the line to customer service in DIA was HUGE, with only two agents working the front. I waited almost two hours (and I was in fairly early), and then the agent took over 20 minutes to rebook me and comp a room. I thought it was absurd, especially when delays are so common today.
It struck me that there wasn't much incentive for United to flip resources to my plight: they had my money, I was in the airport, my plans were made, I didn't have many alternatives. Kind of like your cable company: they figure you're not going anywhere else with your business very soon. And the executives are insulated from our ire by voice mail, receptionists, etc.
On a grander scale, I think of the stories my uncles relayed to me, about the time my grandfather was in Russia when the Bolsheviks took over. He talked about how shitty life was for the general population, and the people around him got really excited about this new and better government that was going to come to power, and everything was going to be much better. But once in power, they got this DMV type rule, where most personnel did just barely enough to keep the customer from violently attacking.
doombuggy at December 11, 2007 5:47 AM
Comcast gets me my bills just fine, imagine that. And P.S. The tech guy sounded way pissed and way unready for the deluge.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 6:04 AM
Rad - Amy is paying for a service, and has every right to expect it to be operational. I don't know that she's paying extra for the business service, but that would have been down as well, given what Comcast did.
And here's what they did - and it's unforgivable: They assumed that at 0130PST that everyone "ought to be in bed anyhow".
That is piss-poor customer service. And it's what I expect from a cable company. Professionalism demands that they at least send an e-mail to their customers.
Amy - although the cost will be much higher, you could consider a T-1 for your internet connection. Yes, it's slower than cable (1.544 Mbps), but almost all T-1 providers have what's called an SLA - Service Level Agreement - in the contract. That means that your service is never down unexpectedly for more than X hours without them having to financially compensate you. It also means that they will call you if they need to do any line work.
I have DSL here. In the contract, it states explicitly that the DSL can go down for any reason at any time, for any length of time, and I have no bitching rights. For $30/mo, I'll deal.
brian at December 11, 2007 6:15 AM
Amy is paying for a service, and has every right to expect it to be operational.
Exactly, Brian. And they're expensive.
And you're right about the night owls. I just talked to a friend of my old Advice Lady partner Marlowe the other night who told me to feel free to call her at 3am. Marlon Brando used to call me at that time, and so did Marnye Oppenheim. (Unfortunately, all three of these people are dead now, so I sleep well, but I miss them.)
Anyway, but for my deadline days, I'm up until 2pm a lot of nights. So are tons of people. Crid regularly posts in the wee hours, and from So. Cal.
I was able to get online with my Verizon Mobile broadband. Of course, finding the software and activating it on my big computer took time. Hell, it was 1pm-plus, who has anything but time?!
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 6:29 AM
Oh, and when I did get online, had I found a message from Comcast/Time Warner saying there was a problem, and not just with my cable alone, I would've gone to bed slightly irritated, not tried to figure out whether it was just me or what.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 6:30 AM
As a tech support agent, I am used to princesses demanding that everything be fixed RIGHT NOW YOU FUCK HEAD. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it is prone to glitches no matter what you do - for reasons varying from human error to just plain bad luck. There are also mandatory system outages from time to time. If you don't like it, read a book instead of watching TV. Write by hand, use snail mail. Or get your work done earlier so that you aren't in a rush at the last minute. You can't put your absolute faith in technology.
Nancy at December 11, 2007 6:37 AM
Nancy - as a technical service provider I have but one thing to say to you:
Go fuck yourself with sixteen feet of curare-tipped wrought iron.
AND NO LUBRICANT!
A proper service organization will post advance notice of planned maintenance periods. And for regularly scheduled outages, there will be reminders.
Companies that give a fuck about their customers do this. My bank does it. eBay does it. Fuck, the cable company out here did it - by mail, no less.
Comcast knows full well that they don't have any real competition in most of the markets they serve. And attitudes like yours are why I always ask for second-tier when I call tech support.
brian at December 11, 2007 6:48 AM
Amy I'm assuming your not running a video sharing server, if you are ignore this. You could switch to verizon broad band which is slower then cable but generally more reliable from my experience. I had the same problem with Comcast. My dad got into such a fight with the comcast guy that he will NEVER get cable.
I can't wait till they get more residential fiber optics up.
"fixed RIGHT NOW YOU FUCK HEAD" well no we want the shit not to fail in the first place. Look at Telecom systems. Ever wonder why the phone system fail rates are so low? The system has multiple redundancies. Server mother boards are hot swappable and so are the servers. One server dies the next one comes on line automatically without even dropping a call. Comcast is too freaking cheap to invest in these systems mainly because they have no reason to do it.
"You can't put your absolute faith in technology." Would you have the same attitude to your car brakes or the defib carried by the paramedic trying to revive you.
vlad at December 11, 2007 7:08 AM
"Go fuck yourself with sixteen feet of curare-tipped wrought iron.
AND NO LUBRICANT!"
You failed to specify the diameter of said "curare-tipped wrought iron" thus not making necessarily uncomfortable.
vlad at December 11, 2007 7:10 AM
I'm going to be off line for a while...
Just sayin'.
doombuggy at December 11, 2007 7:19 AM
I can understand Nancy's attitude. I have a friend that works in tech service. She keeps getting yelled at by irate customers for shit she can't fix. If the server shits it's brains the poor tech service person on the phone can't do anything about it. Now if you can get the home phone of the Comcast board of directors that's different.
If I'm in a shit mood to begin with and some service provider screws the pooch I do this. Call up and get some tech services person, normally some college kid trying to pay for his/her beer. I ask which manager has todays ass hole award. I then ask to be transfered to said manager. I then proceed to rip him a new one. Informing him (it's always a he for some reason) about his questionable parenting, mother illicit affair with farm animals and other less savory accusations. By the time he hangs up I feel better and at least once I was thanked by the service tech when I was transfered back instead of disconnected.
vlad at December 11, 2007 7:21 AM
As a tech support agent, I am used to princesses demanding that everything be fixed RIGHT NOW YOU FUCK HEAD.
Uh, I'd be happy if they didn't lie/obfuscate. I could've gone to sleep if I had information.
I have backup plans for the Internet going down. I have Verizon mobile broadband and AOL dialup. But, I didn't have my mobile broadband installed on my big computer. I planned on installing it and getting it up and running on my big computer, just in case -- just not in the wee hours on my deadline.
I'm not sure why it's princess-like to expect what I pay for to work, and if there's a problem or is going to be a problem to be informed about it. Again, they seem to know where to send the bills and rate increase just fine. If they weren't a monopoly, do you think they'd show a little more care in their "customer care"? Silly me, I sure do.
Brian was great, by the way. There's nothing I love (and compliment) like a customer service person who actually knows their stuff. Including Mac stuff.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 7:24 AM
Oh, and I have to say, I only got service last night when I did because I a secret customer service decoder ring -- the Comcast/Time-Warner tier three service number I got off Consumerist.com. One of my more Einsteinish moments was copying that number into my address book.
P.S. Nancy, do you think it's also princessy of me to expect them to maintain the lines out here? Again, my cable goes out about once a year thanks to the way they just wait for the salt air to eat away at them.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 7:28 AM
I'd have to agree with Vlad here. My work demands I have a reliable and reasonably speedy internet connection, but not blazing. Verizon has done right by me. When I lived in your part of L.A. I found the frequency and duration of Comcast's outages to be maddening.
justin case at December 11, 2007 7:34 AM
I need a speedy connection.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 7:38 AM
And once you get your speedier connection, Amy, can you please, please speedily expand on this?
"...Marlon Brando used to call me at that time..."
Too cool for words...!
Jody Tresidder at December 11, 2007 8:03 AM
My speedy connection is back. Met Marlon, who I called Bran after I got to know him, in an AOL chat room in the early 90s. Had no idea who it was, we corresponded for a long time, and then, when I was coming to California to produce a commercial with a talking duck in it for Mad Dogs & Englishmen, he said he wanted to meet me. It was then I found out who I was talking to. But, before I knew, he knew that I didn't give a shit about movie stars, and just liked him for him. Also, like Gregg, he let Lucy walk all over him. She was about half the size of his mastiff Tim's head. Tim ignored Lucy, although I think he once mistook her for a flea in a sweatsuit. (My dog wore clothes until it became a trend. Now she's a...naturist.)
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 8:11 AM
I totally agree that Comcast sucks. Ever since they took over, my cable TV service has gone out more often. My DVR "resets itself" during primetime shows on a regular basis, causing me to lose up to 20 minutes of a show. My premium channels aren't as clear as they were. And I am getting charged more. When I complained about it, I was basically told to screw off or change providers. Unfortunately, they are a monopoly here as well or I would have switched a long time ago. Watching TV is my favorite relaxation and I only get to watch for about 3 hours a week due to my work/volunteer schedule, but dammit, I want it to work for those 3 hours and the shows that I have recorded to be watchable. Especially since I am now paying more for it.
Amy at December 11, 2007 8:24 AM
I suggest you buy a Wireless Broad Band card to back up your cable. there are always going to be issues and you should accept it and plan for alternatives if you need to get to the internet.
Common Sense at December 11, 2007 8:32 AM
> Is that crass and vulgar of me?
Possibly, but more to the point, it's highly impractical. The practical approach would be 'Get some sleep -- Get up -- Have coffee -- Get on with the scribbling -- Leave the bloody cable box alone till the next time you really need it'
FWIW, my sbcglobal net connex plus the AT&T wireless modem has been absolutely flawless for ages. (The bloody computer is a different story).
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at December 11, 2007 8:38 AM
Comcast is what you get when we have unregulated public utilities. Before the cable companies were deregulated (early ‘80’s) service was great.
Roger at December 11, 2007 9:01 AM
Stu, I need speedy Internet for my work, or I wouldn't have cared. Beyond stuff I need to get up and times editors write me and can't find the column when they're going to press, my assistant and I are right now sending text back and forth on Skype like mad. (Is it funnier with this or that, can I get away with dropping this word, etc.?)
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2007 9:34 AM
In October, I told Cablevision to go screw and got the new AT&T U-verse fiberoptics service. I have a whole boatload of channels now that I would have had to pay extra for, and wireless internet service, and except for a couple of small glitches and one upgrade in the first 2 weeks of service, it's been working flawlessly. I am truly amazed. I've never had faster internet service. And all the channels I have now, if I had to get through Cablevision, would have cost me over $200/month, without internet service. I'm paying $115/month, all inclusive.
Flynne at December 11, 2007 10:06 AM
I hate comcast. I forcibly removed their wires from the walls of my home after 2 SOLID days of waiting for a repair man. I, fortunately, can get by with DSL and direct tv.
dena at December 11, 2007 11:06 AM
"But, before I knew, he knew that I didn't give a shit about movie stars, and just liked him for him."
Amy,
Can you recall what sort of image you had of him - obviously before you knew his identity?
(This is such a fab story!)
Jody Tresidder at December 11, 2007 11:11 AM
Listen, uhm, the bad news is that this is never going to get any better.
We have to remember that electronic communications are dirt cheap. The brightest, cleverest, most profit-oriented people in the world compete for every last penny from a huge pool of consumers.
So these very technical systems have to be made usable and understandable to the least-educated, least-adept person in your neighborhood. And if Verizon drops the ball, Comcast gets the money, etc.
Whoever mentioned the DMV was right on the money. These services are being as provided as cheaply as possible to people who want them badly. And these consumers are often people who can't understand why they don't get Four Seasons comfort at the Travelodge.
There's magic principle in life that goes "Cheap, fast and good: Pick any two." Electronic communication is so competitively priced that the problem is always going to be with the fast and good parts.
I didn't get a cell phone until like 1998, and haven't had cable since 1991 for precisely this reason. I don't like getting customer service from a guy with a thick accent in Mumbai who wants me to call him "Rick."
"No Sird... Eet ees! Rdeelee! My nhame ees Reek!"
But at least have faith that it's this bad for everybody. Steve Jobs and Donald Trump would hate having to deal with these people, too... They just pay an underling to do it for them.
Crid at December 11, 2007 11:39 AM
Wow.
Guys, all I can say is that brakes fail, airplanes fall out of the sky, safeties on pistols fail, the phone line can be cut, hard disks die and your next heartbeat isn't guaranteed, either. You can expect all you want. What you will not get, regardless of expense, is total reliability.
It doesn't exist.
Let this be something other than an exercise in being mad. Let it be a demonstration of what happens when false competition is allowed by people so eager to get a service for which there are few "roads". This is not a surprise at all - at least, it shouldn't be: you know what companies offer in your area before you pay a dime. You have a contract which tells you what redress you do or do not have (if it doesn't say, you don't have it). There are few companies in the hard wiring business, there is a body of customers properly viewed by investors as a commodity, and there are several levels of "service" which merely change the consequences of outages, and shift your signal to higher priorities.
I'm sympathetic - I have been mad at a dropped line before, and I will be again - but not so sympathetic to claim there was no way you couldn't know this could happen; that you should actually expect a perfect connection every time.
By the way, you might want to look around on that network some. I'm sure Gregg can show you or figure out how to tell how secure your line is, and how many people share your connection.
There's one other thing: who was it you propose to yell at? No one person even comes close to determining the quality of your cable signal. It would be just as logical to blame George Bush as it would the CEO of Comcast.
Radwaste at December 11, 2007 3:06 PM
Rad - Amy's problem here is that this was a planned maintenance outage, and Comcast couldn't be bothered to announce the fact.
I have Cox cable here. They sent out a mailing (separate from the bill) announcing that they would be doing maintenance in my neighborhood overnight on some night. Even apologized in advance for any potential inconvenience.
And when SBC (now AT&T) had an equipment failure, the first thing you got when you called tech support was an announcement that the following areas are experiencing an outage due to an equipment failure...
Comcast? Not a sausage.
And as Amy has said, she had backup comms available, but she didn't know if the problem was on her end with the cable or not.
Her problem has been from the very beginning of this thread with the piss-poor performance of the customer service department at Comcast, if there even is such a department.
brian at December 11, 2007 6:29 PM
brian, here's what was said:
"Servers are down. Servers will be up no later than 6 am." and "Don't know why the servers are down. They just decided 'We're taking down our servers and making changes to them.'"
These are mutually exclusive statements, signaling that more information is needed. In the meantime, an Internet service outage remains an inconvenience, not an excuse for blind rage, to the ordinary customer.
I'm waiting for a Comcast statement as to what happened, myself, although I am not a customer of theirs. If you have the news that the outage was planned, OK. Then, they suck; they also suck for not explaining what happened, if not apologizing.
Again: you will not ever talk to a person at a telecom company who is solely responsible for your quality of service. It's a team thing. And right now, you have just one team. How does calling them names make them happier to serve you better?
Radwaste at December 11, 2007 6:57 PM
Jeff Taylor at Reason agrees with you that Comcast is a bunch of inbred fucktards, and has the basic solution (competition)
http://www.reason.com/news/show/123174.html
Comcast's tech support call in line sucks ass, and Time Warner's does too, and for the same reason. I hate when that happy valium enhanced voice interrupts the music to remind me, should I have forgotten in the last 45 seconds, that my call is very important, and people are rushing around like maniacs to resolve my issue, and would I please ask the service representative about their new phone service options. I agree with Amy - SHUT THE HELL UP! It really sours my mood, and I'm sure the CSR who gets my call cringes every time he hits 'available' on his phone. I'll bet they have to replace melted headsets on a weekly basis.
After 20 minutes of a service outage, and they should be identifying areas where it's down and how long until it's up. One of the things they do here is give you the option of leaving your number for a callback from a tech, and a (reasonably accurate) ETA of how long the wait is. If it's a line break from a landscaper with a fiber seeking backhoe that's going to take some digging to fix, say so.
Hell, the incoming caller-id should be able to do a lookup and tell you that your neighborhood's fucked, or give you a few touch tone responses for you to say your cable/ net/ phone is down, and yes, you'd like a ringback when it's time to check it again.
The cable modem should have a better status indication of when the incoming line is fucked, and it can't lock onto the carrier, other than cryptically blinking. Something to give you some idea of "it's your shit", "the modem's fucked", "I can't hear shit", "cable's fine, the net's fucked", "would you like to buy a Rolex, cheap?"
Router and server wise, they're big enough that they shouldn't have a single point of failure. Time Warner used to be THE company to go to if you needed business grade pipes - they had you up in a week or less, while Southwestern Smell would take 3 months to get around to having it up for 'non critical testing', with no service level agreement enforcable, usually meaning another 2 weeks of the link being up and down. I suspect that someone just unplugs it every few hours, just for fun.
A router failure or blade server failure should not equate to a half a days worth of outage. Even the anencephalic monkeys who manage the IT department at my employer can manage better than that, and those people can't be accused of inbreeding, since they reproduce asexually, which is pretty startling for a lower primate, especially when it occurs in a staff meeting.
I think for a lot of consumer grade communications, from data to television, the city should franchise out some competition, and not the way they did the telcos - you can get MCI here as a local telco, but they contract it all right back to Southwestern Smell, so it takes longer and sucks more, for the same exact price.
I do tech support for a living. I even work on mission critical, enterprise grade stuff that companys buy for networks that cannot go down, and if it does, it's costing someone millions an hour, and there's NEVER a good time for it to go down. Needless to say, one of the first things to do is to triage the situation and give them an ETA for resolution. "I dunno" is not an appropriate ETA. My typical situation is different from Amy's, in that I fix broken hardware, and misconfigured software, and she had a service outage that wasn't due to anything at her end. It seems that her biggest complaint isn't that there was an outage (never a good thing), but the general indifference and lack of communication from the service provider, which would have let her make a business decision about how to spend the next couple of hours.
Wayne at December 11, 2007 9:27 PM
Just thank your lucky stars you didn't deal with this Comcast tech:
Link: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/anthony.triplett.janice.2.334001.html
Doobie at December 11, 2007 11:57 PM
Again: you will not ever talk to a person at a telecom company who is solely responsible for your quality of service. It's a team thing. And right now, you have just one team. How does calling them names make them happier to serve you better?
Responsibility comes from the top down. They set the standards (or lack of them) or go along with the lack of standards because it costs them less in the short run (and maybe even the long run because they're a monopoly). But, I see what they did as a form of stealing -- stealing my peace of mind. And it was entirely unnecessary. My landlord, for example, tells me when he needs to make repairs on my house, and that's fine, and I prepare to write elsewhere. He doesn't just come over in the middle of the night and start sawing through the siding.
Again, my issue isn't that they needed to do maintenance, but that they informed none of their customers. A big fuck you to all of us. Oh, and by the way, I'm sure I won't see a refund for the two hours I lost -- two hours of my sleep right before my final deadline day, which are worth considerably more than two hours of cable Internet.
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2007 12:31 AM
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