Comcastic - Part Two

In case you haven’t read the previous Comcast post, work got Comcast service turned on last Friday.  Today we went to look at the modem and found it half dead.

Half dead?

Yes, half dead.  Sort of.  The WAN side was blinking but the LAN side, which has four ports, had two ports lit up in spite of nothing being plugged into them.

I’m thinking Encephalitis.

I’m not blaming Comcast: it seemed to be working when they left.  We discovered that the DHCP address conflicted with an internal range and needed to change it, hence the look at the (semi-defunct) modem.

It was more the nightmare around contacting Comcast and getting something to happen (other than the two lights that stayed lit).

My coworker, ever the bright, shining light of optimism, said that it was our fault because once you go with Comcast, you know that the customer service will be absolutely horrid.  To be fair, I have Comcast internet at home and never have a problem with the service or getting in touch with a human on the phone.

The business service number they gave us was not in service.  The second number had me on hold for fifteen minutes, at which point I hung up.  This is the company that said there is a one minute waiting time on business service tickets.

I see.

After a day in which nothing else went well either, I finally got up the courage to try calling again.  After another fifteen minutes listening to “All of our service personnel are busy annoying other customers.  Please hold for the first available service person”, I was getting ready to reach through the phone and strangle the recording when I heard a voice that wasn’t pre-recorded.

Now you know that this is a business account.  Therefore I obviously had no choice but to be connected to India.  The sad irony of this is that Comcast is based in Philthydelphia, no more than fifteen minutes from where I work.

As you have read, this was not a good day for me.  But it would not be fair to take it out on the phone representative so I attempted to do my best impersonation of patient.  Or at least my best impersonation of “I’m not going to reach through the phone and strangle you with your own RG-6 cable.”

I have spoken to enough citizens of India to know the ways in which this works.  There’s usually a lot of repeating of the complaints.  This lady had a new twist: she had learned a lot of vocalizations like `okay’, `here it is’, and `I got it.’  And of course `mrmmph.’  Only she’d say `mrmmph’, as if she found what she was looking for, raising my spirits, until ten seconds later when she’d throw in an `I got it.’

I caught onto this way too quickly, making the operation even more painful.

I knew it was only a matter of time until I was requested to reboot the modem, so I was miles ahead of her: “Did that three times.”  She manages to locate, ping, and get inside the modem but can’t do anything else.  She tells me she might have to escalate this.

Of course you’ll have to escalate this.  Escalate it to the person who is going to bring the replacement modem out today.

Then she hit her personal best: Were the lights still on?

How the ($*# should I know - the modem was half a block away.

[run, run, pant, pant, look, pant, pant] No, the lights were the same.

“Ok, I will have to escalate this.”

I waited a second to see if this was a trap or not.  It seemed safe.  I couldn’t wait to hear what their definition of `escalate’ was….

She gave me the ticket number, at which point I felt it prudent to ask how quickly we’d see someone.

“Twenty four to forty eight hours.  Someone will be in touch with you.”

In touch with me?  The service was installed Friday, the modem is bad, and you’re going to have someone call me within two days?

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I suppose to be fair I should point out that Verizon set no less than five houses on fire while attempting to install FIOS.

We simply have no IP service…