Comcast Continues To Suck, Film at 11
Irradiated by Stingray
The story thus far: In December of 2010, Qwest was doing line work on the main road behind our house, and cut our phone line. For whatever reason, the tech sent out to fix it couldn’t find the right “RECONNECT HERE” section in the time allotted before moving to the next ticket in the queue, and thus ran just a patch cord out to the main drop. Basically the equivalent of “Our power went out, can we run an extension cord to the neighbors?” We were assured someone would be along to fix it more properly within a week. Fine, if it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid. And on that premise, the relative importance of me calling and nagging them to come fix it right as the months wore on was fairly minimal. If it goes down, it would’ve been damn near a mini-vacation for me given my work setup. Eventually, or more specifically the day before yesterday, the original tech came by to make good. Which apparently was still not possible without MASSIVE INTER-CORPORATE OPERATION which is starting to make storming Normandy look fairly straightforward.
But this isn’t about Qwest, although they do rather suck. This is about the huge, gaping, rancid maw of suck and fail that is Comcast.
Now just by typing that particular company name, I can already hear teeth gnashing in rage at them, but the Los Alamos branch of Comcast is special. Having already experienced their unique take on content delivery (don’t), pricing (hookers & blow), and customer service (answering machine that isn’t hooked up), when we bought this house we naturally dumped them and jumped straight to satelite. Never had them, any of their crap, or anything even remotely to do with them at this address.
A while after we finished building our fence, Kodos (an only-dog at the time) set up a way larger than normal racket while out sniffing around doing dog stuff. LabRat goes out to investigate, and discovers that two comcast workers (truck visible on the main road beyond the fence) have decided that there’s not really much need to ask property owners for access, and simply hopped the fence to access… something. There’s a box back there that’s supposedly phone-related rather than comcast, but the relevant details are out. LabRat, not knowing that our county has a specific law protecting dogs that bite tresspassers, hauls Kodos in and the cops are called, curses muttered. Relevant to today’s story only in establishing pattern.
Fast forward to the great pyramid building operation that is getting our phone line unfucked. Part of this requires locating existing lines for apparently everything from original phone to ley, and the last two days have been a fustercluck of parading workers coming to find these things. Until today, the county, the phone company, gas, electric, druid, and everybody else have been polite, courteous professionals. “Good afternoon, sir. My name is LineFinderGuy and I’m from WeGotLinesHere inc to find the type of line I find for your phone project.” Cool. No problem, let me haul the dogs in, let me know when you’re done, and I’ll stay out of your hair.
Guess who doesn’t follow this pattern! Lunch today rolls around, so all three dogs are busy drooling on LabRat’s feet, when Yet Another White Truck not just parks near the house, but parks in the driveway in such a way that I ain’t getting anything in or out till it leaves. I wander in to the kitchen to tell LR of the arrival so she can distract the dogs with meat while I answer the front door and do the aforementioned “Hi I’m From” dance. As I finish explaining, I turn, and out the window lo but who do I behold? Why it’s some fat fuck waddling around inside the fence! Curiously, the doorbell remains un-rung!
Brimming with inquisitiveness, and considering that anyone stupid enough to enter a yard pretty clearly obvious as containing some quantity of dog at most times he may have means to Deal with said dogs, I inquired as to his name and JUST WHAT THE SWEET BLISTERING SHITBLAST YOU’RE DOING IN MY FUCKING YARD why he is inside my fence. Surprise washed over me as a tsunami when he revealed his affiliation with Comcast, stated in their native surly patois of “I’m with comcast. Who are you?”
It did not go better from there.
After extensive explanation of the complete lack of comcast, or any welcome for them and theirs, said fuck was eventually ejected from the property, though at a much lower velocity than would have suited me.
Thus, in conclusion, fuck Comcast and their shitdick asshole unprofessional jizzbags that work for them. Feel free to contemplate interesting methods of deterring such behavior in comments. I’m leaning towards electrocution, or “You’re in my yard without permission, sit your ass down keep your hands where I can see them and we’ll let Johnny Law handle introductions since you’re so bad at it yourself.”
March 30th, 2012 at 8:09 pm
I am so glad I live in a Charter jurisdiction… Sure, they can be a little dense at times, but at least they’re not maliciously stupid. Jesus.
March 30th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
C’mon……
Tank has been a good puppy.
He’s earned a new chewy.
And haven’t we been good readers?
Don’t we deserve new puppy pics of Tank and a new chewy?
BGM
March 30th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Hmmmmm, honestly if the county has an ordinance that protects your animals while they are protecting your property, I think idiot needs to be a chew toy. Just make sure you have some surveillance cameras to record the whole interaction.
March 30th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Weren’t you the one that took care of some annoying frat bros by electrifying your dorm room door? Seems to me a modified version would work well. Only problem would be making sure it was Comcast specific. Wouldn’t want to accidentally light up the meter reader.
March 31st, 2012 at 3:18 am
Amen. Years ago, I worked for a local cable company that was bought up by Comcast. It was a lean, profitable operation. They managed to make it hugely leaner by slashing service and commercial insertion departments 50 and 100% (I think everyone else by 30%)…and lost money. Impressive.
March 31st, 2012 at 5:51 am
Tank = chewtoy… And if the cops get there in time? Oh well…
March 31st, 2012 at 6:26 am
Add a “Dog on Premises” sign (assuming you don’t already have one) to both front and side access, and let’em get chewed on. If your locality protects the dogs that are protecting their property and the idiots don’t bother to read the sign and think first then they deserve it.
March 31st, 2012 at 6:55 am
Cable-guy backstory: My parents are not as young as they used to be, and my mother really, really needs her weekend sleep. They have to have a very high speed internet because of sending medical images to the house (long story).
Dad finds a better deal on high speed internet that adds phone service. Schedules work for Tuesday, because it requires cutting into the bedroom wall to run a new line to the phone. Phone rings at 0730 on Saturday, “Yeah, I’m gonna be in your neighborhood and I’ll be there at 0830 to hook everything up.” The guy would not get the hint, couldn’t understand what the problem was, and finally Dad told him and his company where to go. And then customer lack-of-service failed to understand why my parents opted to stick with “slightly less cruddy” internet provider, despite numerous phone calls.
March 31st, 2012 at 7:46 am
Having done similar field work in the past for the telco, allow me to share a little insight: As unwise as it is to go into a residential backyard where there is a high probability of aggressive canines, in Texas at least if you have a phone or cable line in your yard then said utility will 99.9% of the time have an easement that allows them access to your yard, including without your permission.
That being said, common courtesy says that they knock and let you know first, if for no other reason than to make sure any aggressive critters are properly stowed, but also to avoid looking down the business end of a shotgun.
There were many times where I was in the backyard digging a trench through Housewife’s petunias when the resident came home and was quite perturbed. Understandably so, but these things happen when you plant a flowerbed on top of our easement. Sorry, sucks to be you.
In the cases where the resident (or often myself) called the local deputy, they usually told the resident to go back inside, but away the sodding firearm, and let us do our work.
Again, YMMV, and this was in Texas. I don’t know what the law is where you live.
Myself, I never had ANY issues working in yards, even where there were large barking dogs. In fact more than once the owner came home to find a happy slobbering dog happily getting ear scritches from me while I worked on the NID in their yard. Usually the owner was pretty perturbed, not necessarily at me (hey, I’m the guy fixing their problem) but at the dog that they had previously assumed would keep any and all trespassers from their property.
March 31st, 2012 at 8:50 am
I think it is a requirement that cable companies lack common sense. I had a charming interlude with a crew that really, really wanted to drive their truck across the lawn, failing to understand that to do so would mean cutting some seventy year old apple trees and driving across four garden beds. Granted the house connection is three stories up and you do need a big ladder. They had the ladder, but walking a hundred feet with said ladder was apparently impossible, though the power and telephone companies had managed it, as had the private electrician.
Actually, in all fairness most of the linesmen are decent, but the customer service reps…oy!
March 31st, 2012 at 10:05 am
I think the issue is that even if the Comcast folks had Right of Access or whatever, LR and SR were obviously home (cars in driveway, etc.) and deserved the courtesy of being told, “Hey, I need to fuck around in your backyard to find The Maginot Line.”
Also, I gotta say? Kodos loves me, and I still don’t think I’d vault their back fence. Dog is one BAMF, of the “my, what big teeth you have” variety.
March 31st, 2012 at 10:22 am
Daniels: If it did/does come to having Dep. Fife wander by say “Fine, let them work, put the heater back over the mantle,” fine, but the stacking of rudenesses (total driveway block, as Indy said, obviously someone home skip the knock anyway) vaults way over the line of shit up with which I will put.
As for the dogs, the last time Comcast pulled this shit, the only reason they *didn’t* get chewed is because Kodos was working alone, and only had one mouth while there were two of them. They were, however, very firmly pinned to the fence in the “Maybe we can meld through this to escape” fashion. With three of them on station now, even if one is only 7 months old? Probably gonna suck to be somebody, and I don’t think the dogs are gonna be upset.
March 31st, 2012 at 10:46 am
Pretty much. We never leave the dogs outside when we’re away (unless the trip is of the “ten minutes there and back” nature) precisely *because* we understand sometimes county/utility has a legitimate reason to fuck around in our back yard and we don’t want to create the situation.
Rolling up, not knocking, and barging in when the place is very clearly dog-inhabited and the residents are very blatantly home = playing stupid games for stupid prizes.
As for electricity, we have that. It’s to keep the dogs inside, not anyone else outside. This also means that unless we have turned the fence off, once you hop that fence you’re not leaving the same way. This is not the point of the design, but it’s another really good reason we need to know about it if you need to be in the yard and the dogs aren’t inside. And yes, there are various “do not make a bad decision” signs on our fence.
March 31st, 2012 at 10:54 am
Having had Comcast for quite a few years (local monopoly
), I have some experience in their quality, both in service and actual television, and am not that interested in going back.
Having seen a number of different reports of Comcast techs drilling through power lines (and thus setting the house on fire) or physically disconnecting non-Comcast telephone lines/equipment to “install” (not install) unrequested Comcast phone service, I’m *really* interested in avoiding them entirely.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:33 am
One of the happier days in my recent past was the day that I gave Comcast back their cable boxes and terminated their service. They took over the local cable company and once they did, the suckitude quotient went up a couple orders of magnitude.
March 31st, 2012 at 1:29 pm
If he parked in your driveway have the truck towed. Let a dog pin him in back if you need time for the wrecker to get there.
March 31st, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Have their truck towed if they block the driveway again.
March 31st, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Four experiences with ComBastards (as they are commonly known here).
One: Living in a place where they were sole provider for cable TV, and SatTV was unknown at the time. They swore up and down that my neighborhood was ‘not wired yet’ for cable, and they would let me know when it was. Two months passed.
There was a Combastard cable box alongside the end of my driveway. I ran it over with my truck. When they showed up to repair it (Two hours… a worlds record), I let the repair guy know I was going to run it over daily till I had cable. It was installed the next day.
Two: Once again, a house where cable was the only option when I moved in. A year later, after bleeping TERRIBLE service and jacked up bills, I managed to get satellite TV (First house in my township to do so). Combastards said I had to return their equipment to their office (Snicker). I said “It’s your crap, not mine. It belongs to you. It will be on my door step in the morning. I don’t care WHO removes YOUR crap from MY property”. When they got their the next day, there was a pair of cable boxes, two remotes, and every foot of Combastard cable that had run from the pole to my house, all piled up. It took me hours to rip that cable out of the my ground.
Three: Same house. #1 son was renting a basement apartment from me. It seems he had called Combastards to get his own cable without saying anything, which I discovered as my satellite TV went blank when the Combastard idiot severed the line from the dish to my home. I walked outside to find this moron ripping out my Sat cable.
I told the genius to hang on a moment, I’d be right back. I went inside and called the police to report a vandalism in progress along with trespassing. I went outside, told the guy I had called the police, that he was trespassing on private property, I was the property owner, and he had till the nice staties showed up to repair the damage. It took three repair crews the entire day to fix what he had done. The police were not amused with his actions, nor his attitude. He almost ended up in the back seat. I think the officers had some experience with Combastards as well.
Fourth, and last direct experience: Friends had a home I was renting part of. They arranged for Combastards to install cable/DSL. When the installer was there I spoke with the lady of the house (She who MUST NOT be screwed with), and told her she was about to be lied to. It took fifteen minutes till the Combastard man crossed the line, and presented billing that was wildly different than she had signed up for. He left the house shortly after with his ears bleeding (metaphorically). His tool box landed on the lawn seconds later.
I have NO use for that company. They set world records for terrible customer service and predatory billing practices.
April 1st, 2012 at 5:24 pm
No, I think your first inclination in this instance would be perfect. Sit there, shut up, and I will call the police is a perfect response to someone violating your property.
April 2nd, 2012 at 7:33 am
I can’t think of anything appropriate that wouldn’t also possibly impact the puppies. I was thinking tripwires with bouncing betties, but the doggies might trip those and the doggies belong there.
My “Comcast sucks the sweat off a dead man’s balls” story is that they were installing VOIP service in the area. I had bad to no service for 21 out of 28 days. Numerous calls to customer disinformation service netted me no fewer than 5 “If you had called me first this would have been solved right away” lies. I suggested that they were having growing pains with VOIP. They claimed it wasn’t the case.
5 scheduled service calls were either auto-canceled after “a problem was found in your area” or once by the tech who just didn’t want to do the service. Equipment was blamed. (also proven wrong) The final straw was when they blamed solar flares. I checked on the SOHO (SOlar Heliographic Observatory) website for solar weather. It had been the quietest 3 months on record. Nothing above a B class flare.
One fired Comcast internet connection later and I was recieving calls about upgrading my basic service to digital. They sounded surprised when I told them I don’t negotiate with terrorists. They insisted that I had only “lost” 2 channels. I named three additional ones that I was watching.
Seems like their customer service script was written by John Lovitz. Yeah, the problem is with your firewall. Yeah, thats the ticket. I’ll have my tech, Morgan Fairchild, check it out for you.
When I vacated that place, I got satelite and internet through AT&T. I got calls from Comcast at the new number. I informed them the first time that the person they were trying to reach did not have that number and that any subsequent calls would be reported to the National Do Not Call registry. And I did it too.
April 4th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
I see from your narrative little has changed over the years. I worked for the Bell System for Western Electric back in the day. The joke then was: “There are two types of customers, those waiting on a phone and those waiting on a dial tone”.