Major Mike's Musings» Blog Archive

SIDEBAR

»
S
I
D
E
B
A
R
«

Comcast Saga

April 22nd, 2008 by Mike

Comments Feed

Back in the 1980s in Indianapolis we had Comcast as our TV provider. When we bought the house, it had already been wired for cable in a couple of spots and the TV reception was bad so we ordered Comcast, which was the only cable provider available. After a few years, I got so frustrated with Comcast¹ , that I was one of the first to switch to DirecTV (Satellite) when it first came out. We were faithful DirecTV customers until we moved to The Villages, Florida.

When we moved, The Villages owned cable company, Clearlink, was reasonably priced (cheaper than DirecTV), had all the local channels, and had the Villages owned TV station. It also included free membership in TheVillages.net, where we could make tee time reservations and review entertainment and recreation schedules.

Before the year was out, however, The Villages sold out to Comcast, who graciously let us keep TheVillages.net and agreed to only gradually raise the prices to the Comcast level.² I was cautious about the switch, but quit complaining when the high-speed internet connection speeded up. After all they were the only cable company we could do business with.

So far so good, right? Wrong. Last Christmas, we decided to treat ourselves to a new TiVo HD. We love our TiVo and thought it would be cool to have one that would record HD programs and have two channels so we could watch and record different programs at the same time. So far things have not worked out so well. Comcast seems in capable of getting both tuners working. You can click on “Comcast Saga” in the upper right corner, or here for complete details of the fiasco. Please read it then come back here to comment.

I have a few questions for you.

Do you think Comcast would do a better job if it had some competition in the cable market?
What cable company/TV provider do you have?
Are you satisfied?
Have you ever had similar fiascos with your cable provider. If so what happened?

- - - - - footnotes - - - - -

Billing mostly: frequently charging for services we didn’t order and didn’t have and changing billing cycles so it was impossible to tell if the charges were correct [↩]
By the way, the prices eventually went up about 60% to meet the Comcast prices…and we just got another rate increase. [↩]

3 Responses

Mandy writes:
April 22nd, 200819:51at

Wow! I thought that this was only a problem I had the joy of dealing with! The bad thing is that I don’t have all of this fancy-log that you have.
I will say first that our solution to this problem is to only have four channels. 6-8-13-59. That’s all. It’s really wonderful. No cable bill, no losing channels in a storm, no crappy customer service.
We had many of the same issues, but we had lots of dealings with leasing equipment from Dish, and when they didn’t work correctly, they wanted us to BUY, yes buy, new stuff, and have our rates go up too.
Anyway, you know how our story ended. HAPPILY!!
bonnie writes:
April 23rd, 200812:32at

I have Time Warner and include digital phone with it and the rest. I don’t have an HD set or tivo.

Oh the exif? you referred to in my comment area. Is that the memory in the camera?
Vicki writes:
April 25th, 200806:47at

We too had Comcast for many years for TV & internet. My husband found a great amount of joy in calling them to cancel service! Their customer service leaves out the service part, and their prices continue to rise as fast as gas prices. We went with Dish Network, and were very happy with it, and loved the DVR (same as TiVo). A couple months ago, we also bought an HD TV & shopped around for HD service. AT&T U-Verse had the best price on HD, so we switched. The TV service is pretty good (except when it got knocked out by an earthquake!!), but the internet service leaves a lot to be desired, and their customer service is almost as good as Comcast’s! Mostly it’s all just a pain in the rump…but Dish Network has been our best bet so far. I think the satellite companies have competition, so they work the hardest to keep their customers!