Posts tagged comcast
Comcast Bought My New Xbox
Jun 15th
For whatever reason, Comcast sent me a $150 Visa rebate card. I vaguely recall why having something to do with an account creation deposit and accepting the terms of service for my contract. Needless to say it was a pleasant surprise!
Last week, our Xbox up and red ring of deathed. First it was doing some fun video locking up accompanied by loud crackling. I found a trouble shooting article on Microsoft’s website for it and determined it wasn’t the hard drive. Yay! It was the actual console.
To be fair, it lasted almost 4 years of infrequent use as a first or second gen Xbox. Not too shabby. The timing of it just sucked. Trey was very much looking forward to getting his couch potato on in advance of the wedding weekend. We wandered out to Best Buy and bought the plain olds arcade Xbox with no hard drive. My rationale being if the hard drive from the old console was crap, it would still be cheaper to buy that console and a huge drive separately than the elite.
My cunning plan worked fine however and we plopped the hard drive on the new Xbox and were up and running right away. It was really nice not having to recreate gamer tags and restart all our games.
Yay technology and thanks for the happy surprise Comcast! I take back all the nasty things I’ve said about you. 
Comcast Update – FIXT!
May 11th
As anyone knows, when you have a problem with your cable, phone, or Internet and it’s a really weird, erratic, hard-to-pinpoint problem, when a tech comes by to fix it, the problem is no longer there. This was my problem. My voip modem would just stop working of its own volition. I have called Comcast 3 times to fix this mystery problem.
The first call, the tech told me there was a short in my phone line and that was probably causing the modem to short out and that’s why it was being a bastard. He was only half right. There was a short in the phone line and he did fix that, but that wasn’t what was disconnecting me.
The second call went not quite as well. Got on a call with a really super excellent tech chick who was so empathetic and awesome, but she couldn’t get me an appointment earlier than nearly a week later. She tried transferring me to a different area to possibly get me more expedited service and an earlier time. That guy was a dick. Total douchebag dickweed. Those Comcast commercials where they say “If the customer’s not happy, Comcast isn’t happy”? Yeah, he didn’t get that memo. I understand that they contract out their service calls and there’s always service calls, but there needs to be a better system to help customers who aren’t receiving service. It is not cool to have to wait 4 days for my problem to be resolved. Fix it the next day. So, I scheduled the service call for a day I wasn’t going to be home and let them dangle in the wind. It was petty, but it made me feel better.
The third call almost went the same way as the second, but I was channeling something oddly zen that day. The earliest available appointment was great if the tech came at the back half of the service window. I asked if there could be a note telling the tech to do that. And there must be some sort of asshole clause, because the dude I talked to got cold as ice as soon as I made mention of that stating that was not possible because it is a window and they show up within that window. Achtung, Herr Scheiße Burger. Slow your fucking roll. So, I said fuck it, that won’t work for me, gimme the following Monday. A week+ from the time of the phone call. Fiance was confused. He was pretty convinced I was going to give them hell. Honestly? Not worth it. The problem was inconvenient as hell, but manageable overall.
Dude-guy who did my original install was who came by on Monday. He was all set to head into the basement where he’d originally put it. I told him, “Yeah, I moved it. That wasn’t really working for me.” So, he did all the usual things plugging in his meters and yadda yadda yadda. And then it happened. The most wonderful thing that could ever happen on a service call. The impossible to predict and reproduce random problem happened. That little bit of vindication, “See! I’m not crazy! It does do what I said!!!”
Water + Cable things = Bad News. Apparently. Dude-guy replaced the stuff on the outside of my house, came back in, tested it and not only was it working, the signal was better! Kick. Ass!
Only one downside, tho. I was this > < close to getting a new modem out of the deal. No trouble found with the modem = no new modem 
Comcast Causes Earth-Shattering Kaboom
Apr 30th
So, I’m a nerd girl — In the country — (It is the name of the blog, after all) and as such a nerd country girl, I work from home. My needs are simple when working from home:
- Solid, fast Internet connection
- A comfortable work area
- Land line telephone with speaker phone and mute functions
- Electricity
These are not complex or intricate demands. Yet, at several points in the day, today I lacked 50% of those things. As amusing it would have been had my chair just up and collapsed from under me and as tragic as having no electricity would have been, those two requirements to remain steadfast and true today.
Thanks to dear old Comcast, my phone and Internet went on walkabout for several hours this afternoon. Not only did they take their post-lunchtime sabbatical, they decided it would be a fine time to do so during a conference call.
When my work laptop loses lan connection as ungracefully as the modem deciding it is tired and wants to take a nap, I get one of these:
So, it came as no surprise to me that when I lost connection, it took me an hour of cajoling my work laptop into shutting down gracefully before having to give up the ghost and holding down the power button and start from a fresh reboot.
Needless to say, I got kinda angry.
Hopefully the weekend will prove to have better things in store.
