Tag: #suck

Comcast Episode Three: Revenge of the Box

Another week and still the high signal issues persist. I figured that since the tech that came out Saturday was one that had been there before and managed to get me fixed back then, I would see some satisfaction. I was wrong. While attempting to watch Good Eats last night I got frozen frames, pixelated video, trilling sound…the full Max Headroom treatment…that culminated in a nice box in the middle of the screen once again informing me that I needed to subscribe if I wanted to watch Food Network. Come on guys, it can’t be that hard to fix a signal problem.

So there I was, on the phone with Comcast yet again. The lady was really nice. I can’t commend their phone reps enough for their great personalities. She couldn’t find my ticket but informed me she was unable to see any that have been escalated. She tried to get someone on the phone from escalation but they wouldn’t answer. This is another area where I have to give kudos. She didn’t just transfer me to their queue and move on to the next caller. She placed me on hold and tried to get them on the phone before handing me off. That failed, though. We settled for an email to her manager and to the escalation team about the problem.

Today’s agenda will include calling Sid and negotiating a reduction in my last bill since I spent roughly 75% of my actual television watching time with either no service or unusable service. I shouldn’t pay for something I just cannot use. Besides, I doubt my tiny little bill will put them out of business if they credit it. As of my writing this, I still have not heard back from the escalation department even though I was assured they would contact me before now. So here’s the lesson boys and girls: Comcast has a great customer service department if you only account for the people that answer the phone when you first call in. Anything after that is a gamble that will most likely end in tears.

Now you may be wondering why I’m still fighting this after all my ranting. I have a daughter that loves Cartoon Network and Nick. If it weren’t for me leaving her TV desolate, I would have dropped Comcast like a bad habit long ago over this. That was then. Now she’s just going to have to get used to the idea of watching DVDs or reading books. I’ve been patient. I’ve been nice. I’ve really tried to work it out and Comcast’s customer service has appeared to sincerely attempt to fix my problems. Their tech support obviously has other plans.

The other part of my dilemma is that even with extensive use of Google, I am unable to find a well written blueprint for replacing a set-top box and cable television with a PC and broadband. This will be my next endeavor. There needs to be a simple and concise article written on the ways you can substitute internet television for cable. I’m thinking a modular blueprint so you can add or skip sections based on what you actually want to do with it. I want to get my normal shows on my HDTV, use the HTPC as my DVD player, home theater amp (5.1 surround), and set-top box. The ability to stream media from my iMac and/or Vista laptop will be a bonus.

Comcast Episode Two: Attack of the Fuzz

There I was, minding my own business. It had been a long day at work but the week was now over. I had made it to Friday night. Supper was eaten and the dishes put away. All I had to do was relax on the couch with Doctor Who. The episode teaser was intriguing. The Doctor has a daughter?

The show started and I was instantly mesmerized by the images on the 50″ plasma. Say what you will, but I like the way Doctor Who stories are presented. I like the writing. I like the acting. It’s probably my favorite show next to Good Eats (and nobody can top that one). But there was a problem. Max Headroom syndrome was starting again. It was a little spastic, but it was there…probably nothing to worry about.

Then it grew more pronounced. By ten minutes into the show I was having full blown half-second scene repeats. But it’s fine, I just want to see the show so I switch to the SD channel since HD was obviously on the fritz. The signal is so bad it’s like watching TV on rabbit ears attached to a 10″ tube set made in the 50’s. It’s during a commercial so I switch to another station to make sure it isn’t just a SciFi problem. Nope. Every channel is covered in more fuzz than a lint catcher.

But it’s fine. I just want to see Doctor Who. I can make out the picture and I can hear the voices. It’s good enough. So I switch back to SciFi. Instead of the show I get a box that declares I must subscribe to SciFi if I want to watch it. Now I know my bill is paid and everything is in good standing. So I switch to a local station…same message. Something is horribly wrong. I reboot the box.

Joy! The signal is still bad but I can watch SciFi again. I’ve missed about 6 minutes of the show, but that’s alright. I just want to watch the rest of it. Unfortunately it blinks a minute or two in and brings me back to the subscribe message. By this time I’m on the phone with Comcast. The first call was pointless. I described the problem and the lady put me on hold. After waiting on hold for over 10 minutes I hang up and call back. Imagine that, I get someone on the phone right away. She isn’t overly helpful. She said there’s no problems in my area and I should just wait it out and see if it clears up. During all this I get it semi-working again and agree while trying to figure out what’s going on in Doctor Who.

But like a bad poker hand that you just keep getting dealt, it went right back to the subscribe screen. Now if you’ve been following my Comcast posts, you know this is a new DVR. You know that I’ve had new cabling run all over the place during the last year. And you know that Comcast techs should just about rent a house across the street because they are out here that much. So now I’ve missed almost all of Doctor Who. I make a third call. I get a guy this time on the phone. I actually feel sorry for him because I begin venting.

Now I’m not the kind of guy to just completely…ok…yes I am, but I am not so mad that I just burn his ears off. He does understand exactly how irritated I am, though. I get an appointment for Saturday so I won’t have to take a day off work. This guy is being very patient and offering some real help. It’s the first I’ve gotten tonight. So I thank him and hang up. Why? Because I’m busy buffering the episode I just missed on SurfTheChannel. Yep, I’ve found yet another site to replace the questionable service of Comcast Cable.

The tech that came out on Saturday has been to my house before. He remembers the work he’s done in the past and can’t believe they still don’t have it fixed. He tested far more stuff than any other tech and said he’d pass it on to thier senior guy who has been doing this for over 20 years. Actually, today is now Tuesday and I should have an answer as to what the problem is. (There’s a small chance it’s the cable in the walls.) And would you believe the guy told me that part of my problem the previous night was because of an outage? He laughed and shook his head when I told him the lady on the phone put me on hold to check with her supervisor to see if there was an outage and she assured me there was not one. Get it together Comcast.

Oh, after all this complaining, why am I still using their service? My daughter. She’s 11 and is thoroughly attached to Nick and Cartoon Network. While I can shift my viewing habits, I can’t yet bring myself to render her TV into a DVD player attachment just yet. It’s getting there really fast, though.

Comcast Episode One: The Signal Menace

Yep, it’s another Comcast post. The saga continues. I had a tech out Wednesday to diagnose my Max Headroom Syndrome and random HD DVR reboots. Of course, he had to call for some help back at the office because the box reported my cable service had been disconnected. Funny…I recall having paid my bill in full well before the due date and by that point I had not yet received the next bill. Turns out something freaked out but it was a quick fix.

Next was the actual signal problems. As of the time I am writing this, it is roughly the same as when the tech was here. The FDC is at -16 and the RDC is at 57. For those that don’t know, the RDC is high. This is the signal the box sends back to the office. According to the tech that was here this would be the source of my Max Headroom syndrome. He told me all sorts of odd things will happen when the RDC is out of whack. This tells me we don’t have it fixed yet because here it is Saturday and I still have a screwed up signal. And yes, Max Headroom TV is alive and well on my Samsung 50″ plasma.

But it wasn’t like this earlier today. I turned on the television and tried to turn on the cable box. It was unresponsive. After several minutes of playing with buttons I finally got it to respond somewhat. Guess what, it said my service was disconnected again. So I called in and was instructed to reboot the box which would be followed by a signal being sent to it….yet again. It worked but that’s twice in three days. This box is worse than my last one.

I know it seems that I’m constantly ragging on Comcast. And they do deserve it. Nobody should have this many problems for this many months. However I am obliged to say that customer service has been absolutely great. I know that they have shown up pretty high on lists of worst customer service ever but that has not been my experience. Frank and Melissa and Sid and the ladies that answer the phones locally have been kind and attentive to all of my calls. If Comcast could get their engineers to be as reliable as these people then their service would be tops. Unfortunately, their cable service around here sucks and is vastly overpriced for the intermittant and flaky reception.

This week is Comcast’s last chance. I’ve been patient but I will not continue to pay for this junk I’m receiving. They don’t offer an HD DVR that works. It’s all the same schizo model with the same shoddy firmware. They still charge too much for cable service when there are free options available on the internet. Customer service is not a reason to pay for crap. So thanks Frank and Melissa and Sid, you’ve been great and I can’t say thanks enough for the time and effort you’ve devoted to one single customer but your company just isn’t making things right. You did right by me but the techs and engineers have dropped the ball enough that I’m down to giving them this last chance.

Why Customer Service isn’t.

I’ve used Vonage as my home phone service for a couple of years now. They’ve been great. I only had one issue and that was back in February 2006 when I first switched and they were able to take care of the problem in a matter of moments. So the service has been wonderful. However, I use my cell phone exclusively now. As a matter of fact, the cordless phone I have connected to my Vonage router has been dead for about 4 or 5 months now. I just don’t use it any more. So why pay the $30 a month?

Thus I attempted to call Vonage last night to cancel this service. I am greeted with an obtuse voice menu. After fumbling through the different menu levels for a couple of minutes I finally find the place where I can cancel my account. The nice recording transfers me over to the department that deals with that…and I get a message with the office’s hours and a request to call back during normal operating hours. Nice.

So I call back today. This time I navigate the menu deftly and get a real person on the phone. He asks me for my name and phone number which I provide. He asks for permission to call me by my first name. Then he asks for my PIN. I don’t have a PIN. He looks at something and tells me that it was generated by their computer. I suggest they ask their computer what it is then because I don’t have it. So he asks me the security question on my account. Apparently I don’t know what my all time favorite movie is. (The Princess Bride for those that are curious.) So he asks some account details and finally concedes that I am actually me. Wonderful.

At this point he asks what it is that I want. I tell him that I want to cancel my account. I was actually surprised because he asked one or two basic questions and didn’t give me some big customer retention spiel that reeked of having been written by a used car salesman in an orange checkered suit. It really looked like I was finally dealing with a company that understood. Of course, he did ask why and I told him that the service was great and I would recommend it to my friends…I just don’t use it personally any more. Nothing more was asked to my further surprise. And then he hit me with it…”I just need to transfer you to another department to finalize the account cancellation. Please hold.”

I listen to hold music and some lady that is way too happy about what Vonage can do for phone service. Eventually a real person picks up. She asks me for my name and phone number which I provide. She asks for permission to call me by my first name. Then she asks for my PIN. Sound familiar? Yep. Apparently they have to verify your identity after putting you on hold. I can only assume that this is because of the threat of being abducted by aliens and replaced with a doppelganger while on hold. There must be some sort of epidemic like this going around. And of course we cannot have alien doppelgangers randomly canceling Vonage phone accounts. The impact of such a thing could throw the entire world into chaos and destruction.

So I go through all of the questions again. Finally she asks what I am calling for. Do these people not bother to forward information when they transfer a call? I understand the need to have in house verification done. I have no problem telling a second person “Yes, I did request to close my account and here’s why…” That’s fine. But don’t make me go through all the identification hoops repeatedly and start completely over every single time I’m put on freaking hold. But wait…it gets better. This lady is the passive aggressive customer retention ninja.

She makes an offer to give me a discount on the service. I decline. I even repeat my reason of not using the service. She replies with “I understand.” Then she offers me a free month. I decline. I reiterate that I only want to cancel the service. “I understand.” Another offer with a bigger discount for a longer period of time. I-

At this point I have to mention that I have been fairly patient even though I am a little irritated at having to start this whole process over after being transferred. Now…buckle your seatbelts kids…

“Lady, I really just want to cancel my account. I will not pay for a service I do not use anymore. I do not want a discount. I do not want a free month. I want this account closed. I want it done right now without any more delays or offers. If you think that might be too hard for you, put me through to your manager so I can get them to do it. And do so without putting me on hold because I am not going to start this whole story over because you guys think I might not be the same guy you talked to 15 seconds ago when you pressed the hold button.”

I know it sounds like I was being a real dick. And you’d be right. I was. But I figure after having proven my identity twice and telling the entire story twice and asking for this one thing over 8 times…I was entitled. Especially since she kept responding with that same phrase of “I understand.” She obviously did not understand because she kept making offers. I cannot abide stupidity. If the guy tells you that the only phone he has hooked up is a cordless and that the battery has been dead for 4 months because he doesn’t use the service…you aren’t going to convince him to stay. Just give it a rest and fulfill the damned request.

She did finally cancel my account. Then she asked if she could “help” me with anything else. Those quotes are not a sexual reference. I don’t really consider what she did help. Anyway, I managed to politely decline the offer and thank her for her efforts. Then I hung up while she was talking. I had to protect her because she sounded like she was about to make one last offer. If I had stayed on the phone for that, I probably would have gone Sam Kinison on her and that’d just be mean.

Which leaves me to ask…what the hell is wrong with you people that make corporate decisions? When I called to cancel my account it was simply a step to save money while I tried to get some debt paid off. I fully intended to get the service back if I ever wanted a home phone again. But after that experience, Vonage, you can kiss my backside. I don’t deal with companies that refuse to fulfill a simple request without 30 minutes of arguing about it on the phone. You can keep your service. I’ll be using something more along the lines of Skype when I decide to hit up land lines again. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

Sci-Fi’s Flash Gordon

I’m old enough to remember watching the old 1980 film Flash Gordon. I liked it. I still do. As a matter of fact I watched it a couple of weeks ago and found the hammy acting and horrid “special effects” nostalgic and amusing. Ming was as cliché a villain to ever touch the silver screen. Zarkov was suitably eccentric for a run-of-the-mill mad scientist. Vultan was the perfect boisterous warrior just waiting for his moment to strike. HOWEVER…

Sci-Fi’s new Flash Gordon series is just bad. I managed to eke through three or four episodes trying to give it a chance. I know that starting a new story requires a little time to set up the world and the characters. But the blasphemy they’ve done to a cult classic is just wrong. Yes, I know that Flash started as a comic and has enjoyed a long run of radio shows, movie serials, and various live action and animated television series before now. But the Flash Gordon that most people today will remember is the movie from 1980.

They’ve turned Zarkov from a brilliant yet eccentric lunatic into a fidgety, bumbling, cowardly parody of a man. A man that creates devices that don’t work. Great work, guys. Flash is a track star…a far cry from the football all-star he was in the movie. Dale has been turned into Lois Lane a-la Smallville and Ming looks like some James Bond-esque euro-trash villain. Absolutely brilliant.

Now production is decent. The special effects are right up with what you’d expect from a Sci-Fi TV series and the camera work isn’t bad. The title theme is a cover of the 1980 movie theme by Queen. But after that it’s all down hill. The dialogue is stiff and uninspiring as are the characters. While the movie didn’t make any history for a quality script, there were engaging characters. I haven’t had such an effect with this series. What I see here is a bunch of cardboard cutouts from all the worst written paperbacks to ever grace the trash can.

At the very least I would have hoped for something bad enough to be enjoyable much like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But sadly all we are rewarded with for spending our Friday’s watching this is a lost hour that could be used getting the lint out of our navels. At least that would have had something positive about it.

New Vista Patches

According to this article at arstechnica.com, Microsoft has finally released a couple of patches to address performance and compatibility issues. The biggest issues addressed by the performance patch in my opinion would be:

•When you copy or move a large file, the “estimated time remaining” takes a long time to be calculated and displayed.
•After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen.

As for the compatibility patch? Only one item jumps out at me (probably because I experience this all the time):

•The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly.

These are listed as KB938979 and KB938194 on Microsoft’s website. With any luck, they will be included in Patch Tuesday’s release. I like Vista. I like it a lot. But it still has a way to go before it becomes the true successor to XP. There is simply no excuse for some things, like the amount of time it takes to unzip a file. I’ve tried several experiments to attempt to solve my performance problems with zips. They all had the same result. My Packard-Bell 486SX/25 unzipped files faster. So kudos to Microsoft for working on the issues and here’s hoping they get the rest of these performance lags fixed soon.