Comcast gets a new customer
By adamg - 1/1/09 - 11:08 am
Amy had been a loyal Verizon phone and DSL customer - until she made the mistake of trying to upgrade her service.
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Amy had been a loyal Verizon phone and DSL customer - until she made the mistake of trying to upgrade her service.
Comments
you will like Comcast, their service sucks a teeny bit less..
By aging cynic - 1/1/09 - 4:33 pm
Before policy change a few years ago, Verizon Wireless sent me a bogus charge for many hundreds of minutes I allegedly used. After realizing that my time and litigation (my only hope for solution) would cost as much as I would save, I called to increase minutes to "guarantee this would never happen again". I did this only after being repeatedly assured that spending MORE money would NOT extend my contract. They lied. Since then, I NEVER get into a cell phone contract. BlackBerries and phones are cheap on Ebay, usually 12-18 month old technology. Perfectly acceptable. (I know that predatory penalties have been illegal for the last couple of years.)No way will I ever again be handcuffed to these scumbags.
Sometimes people have to learn on their own, I guess
By Kaz - 1/1/09 - 4:42 pm
Hating DSL is natural. It's a crappy way to get internet. Leaving Verizon because of customer service or return on investment just to go to Comcast is jumping out of the frying pan to get into the fire.
DSL is "crappy"?
By Brett - 1/2/09 - 1:07 am
Hating DSL is natural. It's a crappy way to get internet.
Um...no, it's not.
DSL is not inferior to DOCSIS; the versions deployed and the speeds marketed in a particular area are one thing, but the technology is perfectly sound. If Verizon wanted to, they could offer far better DSL service, but they're more interested in FiOS at the moment...and they're not interested in coming into Boston.
Sadly, the standard wireless router Verizon provides for FiOS customers *blows*; they've had a firmware bug for almost a full year that makes some wireless devices time out trying to connect via WPA encryption, for example...and it can't handle high numbers of connections.
Both services can suffer from overselling; the cable companies can put too many people on one neighborhood circuit, and DSL providers can put too many DSL lines on an upstream connection from the CO.
Right now, Comcast is pulling a fast one by listing speeds you get with "Powerboost". Powerboost speeds can be flat-out amazing; 3MB/sec is routine if you hit a site like Apple's trailers section with the HD trailers. However, those speeds only apply to the first 10MB of network activity. Ie, about 3-4 seconds of transfer.
After that, you get throttled back to about 700-800KB/sec (6.4MBit/sec) which is still pretty effin' fast, but almost half of FiOS's minimum tier of 10Mbit/2Mbit (which doesn't come with any throttling bullshit- it just keeps going and going at that advertised speed.)
On the Verizon/FiOS access
By riggssm - 1/2/09 - 2:01 am
On the Verizon/FiOS access in Boston, it was explained to me that Verizon can't/won't provide service to apt buildings because of the Comcast franchise deal with the city of Boston.
I guess Verizon's made some preparations (into manholes), but won't run fiber into buildings until the cable franchise deal is restructured in a way that eases Comcast's exclusivity.
Comcast, screwing the public over even when they're not customers.
FiOS
By Ron Newman - 1/2/09 - 10:05 am
In Somerville, I believe the sticking point is that the Mayor insists that Verizon serve the entire city if they're going to serve any part of it. Comcast and RCN both do this, so it seems only fair to require it of any new competitor as well.
Could this be the situation in Boston as well?
Boston's issue with FiOS
By Kaz - 1/2/09 - 10:42 am
It is. Menino is also chummy with Comcast, so that doesn't help either. I'm sure there's quite a premium for a citywide license for Verizon to enter the cable market with their FiOS. Verizon tried to do an end-around on Menino by getting a statewide license instead, but last I heard they gave up on it because they were getting enough city-by-city to be satisfied on growth for now.
Blame Verizon, blame Menino...basically, the two sides refuse to come to a middle ground to the benefit of anyone within city lines.
RCN serves all of Boston?
By Allstonian - 1/2/09 - 5:10 pm
RCN does NOT serve the entire city of Boston. For instance, they serve about 60% of the length of my street, but stop five buildings short of my house. I'm stuck with Comcast only unless I want to go for satellite service.
Don't forget, they also have
By Scrooge (not verified) - 1/2/09 - 10:46 am
Don't forget, they also have recently applied bandwidth caps.
If you do a lot of uploading and downloading and are a heavy media user, you could find yourself shut off.
comcast v. verizon
By david_yamada - 1/1/09 - 5:31 pm
Having dealt with both lovely companies, my belief is that the Comcast v. Verizon debate is much like the choice given to condemned prisoners in Utah: Hanging or shooting.
Verizon gets a tiny nod from me, though I'd never fault anyone for going the opposite direction.
Speakeasy sometimes sucks slightly less
By neilv - 1/2/09 - 3:49 am
I pay highway robbery rates of $65/mo. for very slow Speakeasy ADSL, plus pay Verizon for the landline that it's line-sharing on for historical reasons.
I've avoided changing my service at all, even within Speakeasy, because there's a history of any of the three companies involved (Speakeasy, Covad, and Verizon) screwing things up, and then they get to blame each other. It's better to leave well-enough alone.
My favorite incident was Speakeasy years ago, which made me stop sending them dozens of new customers: "Oops, we accidentally canceled your Internet, we have to do a new installation through Covad when they can get around to it, we aren't going to put it on your dedicated line like it was a few days ago since now we're allowed to do line-sharing, and this isn't suspicious."
Most recently was Verizon having an extended line outage, doing maintenance, frying my DSL modem in the process, Verizon CSR saying "certainly" they'd reimburse me for what Speakeasy would charge me to replace the modem, and me wasting hours in Verizon CSR hell trying to get them to pay up the $99 that they said they would. I gave up when a none-too-sharp supervisor managed to leave me a big voicemail, and I didn't want to spend further hours of frustration to re-establish contact.
I'd write their CEO or Chairman about the $99, but this has already cost me several times that, and it's clear from their customer service that they *really don't care* what kind of service their company provides. It's all just financial constructions.
One benefit of Speakeasy: their customer/tech support people have generally been clueful. And at one point, they did seem to care, although I don't know if that is still true, after selling to Best Buy.
yeah right
By anon (not verified) - 1/13/09 - 1:13 am
Now that we are Best Buy there is a lot of culling the tribe. Those of us who have a clue are being fired for reasons that are made up. Looks like Best Buy wants another company with low paid employees who leave close to or within a year. There are no bonuses and no raises NONE. Loads have been fired since the quarterly meeting
Speed increase?
By Eighthman - 1/2/09 - 3:18 pm
I got e-mail this week saying that Comcast doubled my Internet speed. I've noticed no difference (yes, I powered down the modem first). Speed tests are variable anyway. And, what I have is fast enough.
Of course, I take such promises less seriously since it took them about 6 months to finally increase the size of my disk space, despite several unsolicited emails saying it would happen "this weekend."
Our heroine quickly discovers Comcast has some issues, too
By adamg - 1/2/09 - 11:30 pm
Amy reports the Comcast tech at her house couldn't figure out how to connect her Tivo/TV combo to Comcast. He'd never seen such a thing, before - since it was his first week on the job.
She also passes along the supersekret Verizon number guaranteed to get you to an actual Verizon employee in this country, as opposed to a call-center worker in India.