I have had my absolute last straw with Comcast.

[dustedspotless]

When I moved into my apartment, a Comcast employee came to hook up cable and internet. He came about 4 hours early, which is not necessarily bad, except I wasn't expecting him until later so my computer wasn't set up. I had had Comcast before so I just gave him my laptop to test that the internet connection was working and went back to unpacking.

Comments

[marzipan_robots]

Sounds like classic Comcast. Get Verizon if you can and call it a day. Much better service, much better channel lineup, much better internet.

[d_rosetta]

Good to know. I'm getting my FIOS installed this Friday. I'm very excited about it!

[karebear82]

Goodluck ever getting them to show up at your house.
We had to fight with them for my Grandma for days. They made appointments, guaranteed times and then didnt show up. When we called them they would say "Were very busy and the appointments are never guaranteed. Ive never wanted to reach through the phone and strangle someone so badly.

I hope your experience is better!

[d_rosetta]

I hope so too. I took a personal day on Friday so I could be there while they hook everything up. The appointment is set for between 8am and 12pm, and they has best show up closer to the 8am mark! If I'm waking up THAT early on a personal day I do not want it to be for nothing. If they cancel on me? Hellfire and brimstone!

[sleepsong]

I had horrible experiences with them, too, and complained about them to the Better Business Bureau. I don't know if that helped anything, but it made me feel better at least.

[bluescissors76]

I live in Wheeling, and we have Comcast (who I think *does* have a monopoly down here) and we've had really good experiences with them. The guy hooked up my Wii to the internet even though we hadn't scheduled that service, and was totally nice and helpful about everything. When I was in Pgh, though, the opposite was true, and Comcast made me want to rip out my hair.

[marzipan_robots]

yeah, my friend's parents in high school had comcast in harrisburg and they had the shittiest service ever. you must have had good luck.

[rapier1]

Actually, I live in Pittsburgh proper and have never had a problem with comcast. Everytime they've had to come out they came out when they were expected, did their job properly, and got things working in short order. There was one time we had a problem with getting the cable internet set up correctly. They spent half a day, replaced a lot of the splitters, rewired some things, and got it working. When we had them come out to hookup the cablecard in our tivo they upgraded our splitters again and got everything set up inside of an hour. I was really happy with them.

I believe comcast subcontracts out a lot of their install work. The problem might come with shoddy subcontractors. I'm not sure why the OP got hit with a $200 bill. I'd like to know if they contacted the billing center to find out why.

[mike_brendan]

The Pittsburgh ComCast office is absolutely terrible. I'd report them to the BBB as well.

When I moved from my apartment to my current abode, they wouldn't move my phone because my new address wasn't in their database and questioned whether I had that right or not. Never mind the fact that the new addy was 100 feet from my apartment. After they forgot to do the paper work to get the addy in the databse, I switched to Verizon. Internet followed shortly after, and ComCast gave me grief about that, insisting that a technician was needed to unplug the cable modem.

Yeah, bad all around.

[beeporama]

We've just switched from Verizon to Comcast at my house. Both have been absolutely terrible.

Big telecommunication companies are like banks, computer makers... heck, any enormous companies: there will always be customer service horror stories. Unfortunately, I don't know of any alternative that does not have atrocious customer service, no matter how much I'm willing to pay.