Comment by duane

April 13, 2005 @ 12:09 am

Comcast has been very tempermental in the last week or so, not to mention the intermittent issues in the past. Take a look at http://www.betanews.com/article/New_Outage_Plagues_Comcast_Subscribers/1113367699 a good article in response to the current comcast problems.

Comment by chovy

April 13, 2005 @ 12:13 am

Here’s that url again…

http://tinyurl.com/4dq9b

Comment by chovy

April 13, 2005 @ 12:15 am

I heard about that DNS problem when I was fishing dslreports.com.

But my problems have been going on a lot longer than that (2 months almost).

I think I need a new cable from the main unit into the complex, all the way up to my apartment.

Or move. I wonder if I could sue comcast, and get them to pay my rent at a new apartment building, because they won’t fix the issue here.

I’ll have to talk to my lawyer buddies from highschool about that one!

Comment by juancarlosb@gmail.com

April 14, 2005 @ 8:07 pm

I’m having similar issues in Philadelphia with Comcast. After 3 years with no issues, the modem goes berserk every hour or so, and the problem is always there when the cable feed is split and gets better when the main feed is unplugged and plugged back in. The splitter’s not new, though, and these problems came up out of the blue without my changing any hardware or software. Very frustrating. Local comcast is no help — they say “get a tech to your location”, but otherwise have no clue. -Juan

Comment by chovy

April 14, 2005 @ 8:32 pm

Juan,

Try plugging your main feed directly into your modem. I had replaced wiring and splitters but it didn’t help.

After bypassing the TV, I’m still getting connectivity issues a few times a day.

What you need to do is have them escalate it to a supervisor. I finally got them to agree to run a new line into my apartment. But they need permission from my landlord, and he seems to be out of town at the moment.

Comment by Joe

April 30, 2005 @ 11:37 pm

It seems you are not alone. My Cox service does the same thing. Intermittent disconnects like after 15-20 minutes.

Nothing showed up in my Motorola logs and my Linksys router handling the web just fine, with some fine hacked up Sveasoft firmware. It handled it fine before with low latency and minimal problems. Now I have them.

I will probably look for some firmware updates. =/

~ Joe ~

Comment by Anonymous

May 3, 2005 @ 9:41 pm

Minnesota — Very-very familiar situation. I’m having them drop another line into the house from the box attached to the house. I’m hoping the residing of the house is the culprit(sp?). Coinsidental? I have VoIP (AT&T) and the IP address remains consistent. If I bypass the VoIP unit, I get a completely! different IP address assigned by the modem. I bet this is why Comast is just ‘tooting’ their internet phone, but not delivering (not available in all areas). Never know when I pick up the phone if it’s going to work — even when the lights are all green!! I’m also getting a new modem(DOSIS 1.1 to new 2.0). God, I hope this gets resolved–I don’t want to have to DSL with Sprint (less for your money) and the service is no better.

Comment by motiv8x

May 3, 2005 @ 9:59 pm

Well, after 5 technicians, I finally got one that had the bright idea of climbing up into the attic (I didn’t even know my apt. had one).

Anyway, he saw the neighbor had a feed going off my main line, and disconnected it. Problem solved.

If you split the wire more than once, they claim it could cause problems. In all honestly, I think it’s a load of crap. Most house holds have several TVs, are they saying internet wouldn’t work with more than 1 tv? Fortunately, that’s all I have, so it’s no bother right now.

To that last poster:
I have packet8 VOIP and it works fine (most of the time).

Comment by Anonymous

May 20, 2005 @ 1:26 pm

just to let you know ,it is not splitting that is the issue but ingress(outside signal interferance),the person who tapped into you caused the problem.

Comment by chovy

May 20, 2005 @ 1:32 pm

but the tap was always there. What could cause signal interferance?

Comment by Anonymous

May 30, 2005 @ 12:24 pm

A loose fitting, bad connection behind the other persons T.V. .A Whole lot of other things.Having cable in an apartment can be a pain, when people can get access to splitters and taps.

Comment by Anonymous

June 18, 2005 @ 10:35 pm

I have this same problem this week. A Comcast technician came, replaced all the connectors and said it’s a “loose connection” problem. The network did get repaired right after he fixed the connectors.

But problem came back in the evening. I did more experimentation, it turns out it’s a Wireless Router problem (even though the cable modem actually has a blinking cable feed indicator, it is very surprising that a router can affect the cable feed into the cable modem!).

Currently plugging internet directly out of cable modem to PC. No more intermittent disconnection.

I have a Netgear MR 314, 7 years old.

Comment by David

July 16, 2005 @ 8:58 am

How Comcast Censors Political Content
Or Why My Comcast Horror Story Is Better Than Yours
By David Swanson

Most Comcast internet customers seem to have horror stories, but in my humble opinion this one is a doozie and may even suggest threats to freedom of speech more significant than the jailing of a court stenographer.

I’m working on a campaign headquartered at www.afterdowningstreet.org that seeks to draw attention to the Downing Street Minutes and to lobby Congress to open an investigation into whether the President has committed impeachable offenses. According to a recent Zogby poll, 42 percent of Americans favor impeachment proceedings if the President lied about the reasons for war, and according to a recent ABC News / Washington Post poll, 52 percent think he did. But this story is nowhere to be found in the corporate media. So, our website attracts a lot of traffic.

In addition, July 23rd is the three-year anniversary of the meeting on Downing Street that produced the now infamous minutes, and we are organizing events all over the country on that day. Or, we’re trying to. But we noticed about a week ago that everyone working on this campaign was having strange Email problems. Some people would get Emails and some wouldn’t, or they’d receive some but not others. Conference calls were worse than usual (I can’t stand the things anyway) because half the people wouldn’t get the info and know where to call in. Organizing by internet is super easy, but when you have to follow up every Email with a phone call to see if someone got it, it becomes super frustrating. Volunteers have been complaining all over the country – especially now that we’ve figured out what the problem was and they know what to complain about.

We didn’t know it, but for the past week, anyone using Comcast has been unable to receive any Email with “www.afterdowningstreet.org” in the body of the Email. That has included every Email from me, since that was in my signature at the bottom of every Email I sent. And it included any Email linking people to any information about the upcoming events.

From the flood this evening of Emails saying “Oh, so that’s why I haven’t heard anything from you guys lately,” it seems clear that we would have significantly more events organized by now for the 23rd if not for this block by Comcast.

Disturbingly, Comcast did not notify us of this block. It took us a number of days to nail down Comcast as the cause of the problems, and then more days, working with Comcast’s abuse department to identify exactly what was going on. We’d reached that point by Thursday, but Comcast was slow to fix the problem.

During the day on Friday we escalated our threats to flood Comcast’s executives with phone calls and cancellations, and we gave them deadlines. Friday evening, Comcast passed the buck to Symantec. Comcast said that Symantec’s Bright Mail filter was blocking the Emails, and that Symantec refused to lift the block, because they had supposedly received 46,000 complaints about Emails with our URL in them. Forty-six thousand! Of course, Symantec was working for Comcast, and Comcast could insist that they shape up, or drop them. But Comcast wasn’t interested in doing that.

Could we see two or three, or even one, of those 46,000 complaints? No, and Comcast claimed that Symantec wouldn’t share them with Comcast either.

By the time Comcast had passed the buck to the company that it was paying to filter its customers Emails, Brad Blog had posted an article about the situation and urged people to complain to Comcast.
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001602.htm

Brad quickly added Symantec phone numbers to the story on his website, and we called Symantec’s communications department, which fixed the problem in a matter of minutes.

So, why does this matter?

Comcast has a near monopoly on high-speed internet service in much of this country, including much of the Washington, D.C., area. Many members of the media and many people involved in politics rely on it. Three days ago, I almost decided to put a satellite dish on my roof. There’s no other way for me to get high-speed internet, unless I use Comcast.

Comcast effectively censors discussion of particular political topics, and impedes the ability of people to associate with each other, with absolutely no compulsion to explain itself. There is no due process. A phrase or web address is tried and convicted in absentia and without the knowledge of those involved.

Now, did Comcast do this because it opposes impeaching the President? I seriously doubt it. Apparently the folks at Symantec did this, and Comcast condoned it. But why?

Well, we have no evidence to suggest that these 46,000 complaints actually exist, but we can be fairly certain that if they do, they were generated by someone politically opposed to our agenda. There’s simply no possible way that we’ve accidentally annoyed 46,000 random people with stray Emails and mistyped addresses. We’ve only been around for a month and a half, and we haven’t spammed anyone. In fact, during the course of trying to resolve the problem, Comcast assured us that they knew we hadn’t spammed anyone. And once we’d gotten Symantec’s attention, they didn’t hesitate to lift the block.

But it had taken serious pressure to find out what the problem was and who to ask for a remedy. We only solved this because we could threaten a flood of negative attention.

This state of affairs means that anyone who wants to stifle public and quasi-private discussion of a topic can quite easily do so by generating numerous spam complaints. The victims of the complaints will not be notified, made aware of the accusations against them, or provided an opportunity to defend themselves. And if the complaints prove bogus, there will be absolutely no penalty for having made them.

And this won’t affect only small-time information sources. If the New York Times or CNN attempts to send people Email with a forbidden phrase, it won’t reach Comcast customers or customers of any ISP using the same or similar filtering program.

And there is no public list posted anywhere of which phrases are not permitted. This is a Kafkan world. This is censorship as it affects a prisoner who sends out letters and does not know if they will reach the recipient or be destroyed.

What if I had tried to Email someone about a serious health emergency during the past week, but they had been using Comcast and I had been including the address of my website in my Email signature? Is this not a safety issue?

Above all, though, this is a First Amendment issue, as is well laid out in this excerpt of a statement released today by People-Link.org, the organization hosting the www.afterdowningstreet.org site:

“This goes far beyond the normal anti-spam measures taken by major providers and represents an effective blocking of constitutionally protected expression and the fundamental right to organize and act politically on issues of concern.

“Most spam blocking measures focus on the email address or the IP address of the suspected spammer. While there are anti-spam measures directed at the body of the email, these usually target attachments that could contain virus programs.

“Targeting the inclusion of a website url can only have one outcome: that communications about that website and the issue it is presenting will be blocked from large numbers of people and that the communications from that site’s administrators and the campaign’s organizers will not reach their full constituency.

“Whether Comcast’s intention or not, this is effectively political and unconstitutional.

“It keeps people from getting valuable information about a campaign that is, in the opinion of many, critical to the future of this country’s political system.

“It disrupts the organizing of this campaign and cripples the campaign’s ability to use its most effective communications tool: the Internet.

“It damages people’s confidence in this campaign since many people who write the campaign can’t receive the response they expect and that the campaign has sent.

“Perhaps the worst part of this development is that Comcast has been reportedly doing this without the knowledge of the managers of this website or anyone affiliated with this campaign. In fact, no Comcast customer has received any indication that email to him or her containing this url was blocked.”

____________________________

DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997.

LINK TO THIS ARTICLE
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/794

Comment by Anonymous

August 18, 2005 @ 12:08 pm

I had these lost signal and dropped dns issues too and I noticed that they worsened after I had installed and started using some highly bandwidth intensive programs such as NASA World Wind.

It turned out that when the installer installed my CHSI service, he used the USB ports for data transfer rather than my high speed ethernet adapter. I have a ton of stuff riding on my USB interface and there just wasn’t enough bandwidth left over for the cable modem to function properly under heavy loads.
After several complaints to Comcast and a couple of low rent tech visits and hearing that I might be charged $50 for the next call since they appeared to be “unfounded” I sat down and figured it out for myself.

I rerouted the stream through the LAN card and everything has been fine since, allowing for the normal slowdowns during peak usage hours.
This took place the nigh before a tech was supposed to show up for one more go at it. Next morning they called and asked if I still needed the tech and I told them “No, he’ll probably just screw it up again. Cancel the appointment.”, which they did.

I’m pretty sure you’ve already considered something this simple or have already solved your own problem, but it’s just something else to look at when problems of this nature arise.

Comment by Anonymous

August 18, 2005 @ 12:09 pm

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

Comment by Anthony

August 18, 2005 @ 12:23 pm

Yeah. I don’t trust them to touch my computer at all. I don’t some low-rent tech fucking with my settings.
The last guy who did that changed EVERYTHING, changed my default browser to IE (from FireFox), changed my homepage to the lame-ass “my.comcast.net” page or whatever that shit is.

I was like, dude - you didn’t test the line. “He’s like, yes I did.”.

I said, “all you did was type ‘ping google.com’. That isn’t testing the line”.

He’s like, “yes it is”. and left.

Comment by Anonymous

August 20, 2005 @ 11:31 am

Here’s another horror story from Comcast. Before I start let me say these words and get it out –> they are thieves, frauds, greedy pigs.

I moved from my old apartment and cancelled my comcast cable TV account before leaving. The new apartment I moved (three hours away) also had Comcast, so I no choice but to sign up. In the mean-time they have been billing me for my old apartment AS WELL. As I was not getting the bills in my address I was not aware of it and it finally got to my credit report as well. That’s when I learned it and I then I called them back and they were not helpful at all, they made my life miserable, they admitted that I had cancelled the account before leaving and they had made a mistake in billing. But I was required to get a letter from my old building management (so I would have to take a day off), etc, etc a long list of things to do. As I was young and stupid I decided not to do it, hence spoiling my credit history pretty bad. I realized that I was not able to get a decent loan for my first house, because of that mistake. So I was pretty pissed with myself and with COMCAST for being a big FRAUD and ARROGANT, so I just called Comcast and cancelled their service. A good start. Companies like these are a plague for America, we don’t deserve these pigs running our services, I wouldn’t be suprised if this company goes down like ENRON did.

Comment by Anonymous

August 20, 2005 @ 2:49 pm

well, i’m sorry they f’d up when you left. (I stopped reading when you said you “did nothing about it” after they told you the paper work needed).

Granted, it’s a major f-ing hassle, but still, that’s your own fault. They gave you a way out and you chose to ignore it.

next time:
1) ALWAYS GET MAIL FORWARDING when you move.

Monopolies suck, this why I hate the phone company and the cable company.

I’m an advocate of city-wide wifi.

Comment by Anonymous

August 26, 2005 @ 6:25 pm

The Latest on the Comcast war front. I’m tha anonymous from a few posts up who had them install his connection on his USB port. I fixed that and thought I’d solved my Comcast problems. Now rethinking that opinion rather strongly.

Comcast experienced a general outage in our area Wednesday night at about 11 PM. The next day my service still had not been restored and I met some comcast guys in the hall who said the entire second floor of our building had been cut off and they were there to fix it.

I waited several more hours and then attempted to power cycle the modem and re-establish my connection only to find that my IP address had been changed to one generally reserved for people behind a router with it’s hardwired firewall. I don’t own a router. Couldn’t connect. Haven’t connected since on the cable connection, but I ain’t done yet.

I called the bulding superintendant and he told me that the Comcast techs had told him that someone “two or three blocks down the street” had complained that someone in our building was interfering with his internet service so they were going to “unplug a few things and make some changes. That alone is ridiculous. There’s no way my use of my cable internet connection can interfere with someone else’s cable internet connection three blocks away but that was their story and they were sticking to it.

Apparently, one of the changes they made was to install a router of some sort at the cable terminal in the utility room. Routers normally go between the user’s computer and his cable modem, not between a building full of modems and the outside cable connection. Even if it would work, you’re forcing that bulding full of people to share the bandwidth on what now amounts to a single internet connection. Not only would it be a stupid thing to do (and no surprise given the average intellignece level of your friendly neighborhood “cable guy”), but it definitely would not result in the high speed internet you had sold everyone for a pretty premium price. Of course I wouldn’t know for sure, because I was never able to get back on line to try it out.

In addition to all that there, a seperate local area connection had been established (and NOT by me) on my computer for each service and protocol that had been used by my old (working connection). I had a seperate connection for TC/ICP, another for TC/ICP version 6, another for each of the various transport protcols, yet another for NETBIOS, etc.

There’s no way a mess like that is going to work. I finally got my connection rebuilt and working and all the services and protocols back in their neat little rows and where they were supposed to be. Tested it thoroughly, made sure it was working. Trying to be prudent.

Computer was coughing and wheezing and staggering along under a massive CPU overload as it devoted 75% of it’s resources to trying to talk to someone who was no longer there.

Called Comcast last night and asked them when they were going to trot back out here and fix the mess they’d made of my $42.95 a month internet connection. Was told I had to make an appointment and the earliest they could schedule me was next Wednesday, the 31st. A WEEK after the original outage and four and a half flipping days from right now this minute.

Understand what’s being said here. “Yes, we caused the problem and we sincerely regret any inconvenience you may be experiencing but next Wednesday is the soonest we could possibly make it.”

I’m afraid I lost it. Good manners prevent me from telling you exactly what I told them in the exact manner in which the idea for a probably impossible physical act was conveyed to the “supervisor” I was finally connected with but it has to do with obscene acts with a rolling doughnut hole.

The attitude I got back of course was “Hey! We’re a flipping monopoly. You want broadband, we’re all there is so commit an impossible act on YOURSELF too”. Of course I was ready with my snappy comeback. I told him, I said, “Oh YEAH????”. Good one eh?

So right now, I’m back on my old dialup connection with a computer that’s operating marginally at best because of changes made in all my config and setup files by a bunch of ignorant jackasses with the collective IQ of a sack of rocks who have no intention of fixing the problem that’s causing MY problems until it’s convenient for THEM.

Oh and I’m PAYING Comcast for the time I’m on dialup too. No offers to prorate my bill for the outage period.

Removing their modem and files from my computer has helped the performance issues somewhat but it appears that I’m looking at a total reformat and rebuild to ever get the thing back into normal operation while Comcast just continues to regret any inconvenience I might be having. And even then I’m probably going to be faced with them attempting for no telling how long to force my connection past whatever roadblock they set up before they will ever admit their ignorance and simply put things back the way they were.

Ain’t monopolies wonderful?

Comment by Anthony

September 6, 2005 @ 12:29 pm

with regards to the software. I NEVER let the techs install anything on my computer. You do NOT have to use their lame interface to “setup” your computer if you know what you’re doing.

Comment by Anonymous

September 19, 2005 @ 6:12 am

Hmmm I’m having the same problem and I’m in the Atlanta Georgia area. This almost sounds universal because a friend of mine in a location other than mine and yours has complained about the same excact thing.

Comment by Anonymous

October 5, 2005 @ 12:22 pm

Same trouble here since April (ever since the 5MB upgrade). More than 20 techs, supervisors and the likes and still have the problem. Everything inside and outside my house has been replaced (at Comcast’s expense obviously) and they still can’t figure it out. They’ve tried to blame my router and ethernet hub, but plugged directly to the cable modem (theirs, not mine), the problem still exists. They blame it on ingress saying somewhere on the node someone is having problems and will have to go house to house to figure it out. They’ve had more than 6 months to do so and still no result. A co-worker of mine has the same issue and they feed her the same story. We’ve filed with the BBB and may take additional legal action. I’m refusing to pay until it is resolved. We’ve been on for about 4 years now and unfortunately (at least at this point) have no other high speed option for our location. Comcast sucks! eds_ryanjl@hotmail.com

Comment by chovy

October 5, 2005 @ 1:14 pm

Have to wait for Google WIFI in your area, or use EVDO from Verizon Wireless.

Comcast DOES suck, and now I have SBC DSL, and their customer support is worse! (hard to believe, I know).

Comment by Anonymous

November 24, 2005 @ 1:49 pm

Why are we bashing comcast here?

http://www.mbmsys.net

Comment by chovy

November 25, 2005 @ 5:07 pm

frustration…I no longer use ‘em, and I’ve since realized comcast is bad and unable to fix problems when they don’t know the cause, but that SBC has no support at all.

Comment by Charles Price

April 28, 2006 @ 3:30 am

For whatever his reasons I finnaly got the answer from a “Comcsat Tech” When they switched thier service to DHCP, to protect themselves against cable theft. What happens is they change the IP going to your modem several times a day. In doing so MOST routers cannot keep up with the change, and this causes the “Time-out” issue we are all having. We as comcast customers are paying the price to curb the theivery of others.

Comment by Michael Shaw

April 28, 2006 @ 6:39 pm

On February 27th, three days prior to Verizon installing their FIOS service, a Comcast representative came to our door offering an all in one package with a price that couldn’t be beat. However, as you read on you will realize that the old adage is true. You get what you pay for. Two months later, I have a single service provider, no indication that my service will be restored in the near future, and a services team that doesn’t seem to care that I have ISP options now. Apparently, keeping me as a customer is not worth the 96 dollars I’ve asked Comcast to credit my account for the 10 hours I’ve spent on the phone over the last two months. Yes, I’ve been calling weekly to track the status, and yes I’ve been keeping track of my time.

When the Comcast technician came to install the phone service, he informed us that the signal to the house was weak and that it may impact our viewing options. He explained there was nothing he could do and would need to transfer the trouble to another maintenance department.

After two more visits from the same department and two weeks later, it was finally clear that another maintenance department was needed to tackle this “weak signal” trouble. Finally, we were on the radar! Only seven weeks to go and our service will be restored.

Why would some one wait this long for a service repair when Verizon FIOS is always an option? Because ladies and gentlemen, Comcast’s disconnect department defused the situation by offering full credit when I called to discontinue my service. However, I received a bill with the full balance. I called to find out how this mistake was made and was told they will only credit my account after our service was restored. Huh?? Did I hear that right?? They get to invest my money as I continue to pay full price for degraded service?

After an exhausting debate with a service manager, they finally agreed to credit us a portion of our bill. Early this week our Internet service dropped, and Comcast claims it’s due to that nasty little “weak signal” trouble. I explained that I call weekly to get a status on the repair date, but for some reason I haven’t been able to get a report in the last two weeks. Comcast tells me that for some reason they can’t see that the repair has been scheduled. Okay, never mind that my Internet service has been acceptable all this time, but for some reason this week the “weak signal” trouble has made my Internet connection unusable. So at this point, you would think they’d be willing to credit my account for the full amount. No, I still have phone service.

Unfortunately, I don’t see it that way. I have one service provider and one converged multi-media service. If one subset of that service is degraded, in my case 2/3, you have not met your obligation as a Covergence Service Provider.

It’s ironic that the one service that I added to my Comcast account has disrupted the two services that I’ve never had a problem with. So, they won’t budge on the credit.

It’s this hard-noised stance that will sink Comcast. The only distinguishing factor in this Convergence Service Provider frenzy is customer service and support. You can boast 4,000 channels, but who really needs 4,000 channels to choose from?

I’m surprised Comcast has such an arrogant attitude in such a competitive Market.

On May 5th Verizon will be my new Convergence Service Provider and my single point of service.

Comment by Anonymous

June 19, 2006 @ 6:12 am

I have been experiencing difficulty with Comcast in the Charleston, South Carolina area. I recently moved here from Michigan and “bought into” Comcast high-speed there because I was initially told that I could transfer my service when I moved. Um well, no it doesn’t work that way.
To make a long story short, I use VOIP as my telephone and fax provider. I am self employed out of my home so it is imperative that I have consistent quality service. After three weeks here I began to experience poor telephone audio quality and inabliity to fax more than a few pages at a time before the connection broke. Believing, at that point in time that Comcast is reliable and VOIP is new, I called Vonage and eventually ended up “getting Yankee” all over some guy who resides in India. With his patience and understanding that I am American and prone to loosing it from time to time, we isolated the issue to poor latency through Comcast. Each ping test I performed indicated that I was experiencing a loss of packets from 5% up to 25%. UNACCEPTABLE!
Well, the cable technician was out yesterday (on a Sunday, can you believe it). He went out to the box (I live in a rented townhouse) and said that he replaced what looked like a badly corroded connector. Now, I just moved in here three weeks ago. Amazed that the cable guy who initially installed the cable here didn’t change it out. Anyway, yesterdays technician ran a ping and download/upload at the same time. Milliseconds were in the thousands and I pointed that out to him. He said that it was because he was testing download/upload at the same time. DUH. So run another test, okay? Oh, no it should be fine. As soon as he left I powered cycled my entire system and the ping results and time outs had not gotten any better. I called Comcast and let them know that the issue had not been resolved and they got ahold of the tech who said that he would be back out. This was at 11AM. By 2PM I was getting antsy. I called Comcast and the girl I talked to said that there was no answer at the techs phone but she would page him. Well, I went off on her too. By 8PM I dedided that I had better schedule another tech visit which I did and he said that because this is an ongoing problem he could “squeeze me in” on a techs billett. So now I am waiting again for the tech to show up. I believe that the wiring from the box to my townhouse should be replaced as well as the cabling inside of my abode. Not that I really think this will help. I have scheduled Bell South to issue me a telephone number and DSL service which will be installed next week.
What I find incredible is that the signal for the t.v. and the internet is strong enough to transmit. However, the signal is not strong enough to transmit for VOIP which, accourding to Comcast will be implemented within the next couple of weeks. None of the techs appear to have the knowledge to increase the signal which should at least be less that a .5% loss EVER.
Yep, I am really not in a good place with this but I refuse to be victimized by a corporation that refuses to treat good paying customers as just that. I have other options and I wll continue to pursue those options until every source available has been exhausted. I will have this situation resolved one way or the other.
Guess it wasn’t such a short story after all. Tough!

Comment by Mr.cool

June 19, 2006 @ 8:11 am

First thing obviously Comcast does not suck, They have over 11 million customers. Most of the posts I see here are people crying because they do not know how to troubleshoot on their own. I quote:

Yeah. I don’t trust them to touch my computer at all. I don’t some low-rent tech fucking with my settings.
The last guy who did that changed EVERYTHING, changed my default browser to IE (from FireFox), changed my homepage to the lame-ass “my.comcast.net” page or whatever that shit is.

I was like, dude - you didn’t test the line. “He’s like, yes I did.”.

I said, “all you did was type ‘ping google.com’. That isn’t testing the line”.

He’s like, “yes it is”. and left.

You are an idiot the tech was checking for packet loss. And sweet language that really got the point accross that you are someone to listen to. I have had Comcast for 5 years at 3 different address’s, not had one problem. And to the person who started this thread, Comcast is not responsible for the lines or splitter’s owned by your apartment complex so don’t bash a company because you libe in the Ghetto.

Comment by chovy

June 19, 2006 @ 8:16 am

Pinging did not solve the problem, as you’ll notice above, it was intermittent, and would work for 15 minutes if you recycled the modem. The guy obviously had no clue how to fix it.

Eventually, it was fixed by a comcast employee, not a contractor, (the 4th one to my house mind you) who saw in the attic that the neighbor had spliced off a feed from my line. Removing that fixed my problem.

Comment by Quit crying

July 29, 2006 @ 6:16 pm

yeah, i realize this is old and so what. to the post directly above mine…..do you see your isse yet???? your neighbor stole your connection….but some how you see it as being comcast’s fault. lamer number 1.

to the dude that complained that comcast was blocking his emails because of a url…..didn’t you say it was symantec later in that post??/ yeah you did….then you further screwed yourself by saying symantec is owned by comcast. It may be…I have no idea. What I do know is that comcast techs wont troubleshoot issues with symantec which tells you one thing….come on you get a guess here…..no guess? THEY ARE A DIFFERENT COMPANY, RUN BY A DIFFERENT SET OF RULES!!!! If they felt the need to cease your url that’s there issue….comcast can no more tell them to allow your emails then they can tell HBO to let you see tits. lamer number 2.

there are some real issues here…but most of you are just crying because YOU, not the 4-5 techs that have been out, have no idea what your doing. one of you even mentioned that the tech fixed your issue, but then you later messed it up trying to be a comp tech yourself! Maybe you should learn how to operate a computer before you bash your ISP. You all make me laugh. I’m going to verizon…im going to SBC. read this next part:
NO INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER CAN GARUANTEE 100% SERVICE. if they say they can thier lying. OH yeah before I leave….packet loss doesn’t come frome the signal from comcast to your modem only. the connection(s) (plural s for those of you that use routers) between your comp and your modem as well as the bus IN your pc cause packet loss also. LEARN SOMETHING….and then complain.

Comment by Dave

August 8, 2006 @ 1:33 pm

You fucking retard, just like every other stupid American, it’s “Scientific-Atlanta” (dpx/dpc-2100) not AMERICA.

Comment by chovy

August 8, 2006 @ 2:12 pm

ok.

Comment by Mike

August 10, 2006 @ 12:57 pm

It was like deja vu reading this and other problems with Comcast for years I’ve been using AT&T/Comcast with very few problems. In fact, performance seemed to get better and better up until a few months back. Since then, reliability has been dropping rapidly until as of a couple weeks where I now have a connection only 50% of the time. Almost every time I have to power cycle my modem to get it back.

I’ve bypassed splitters and routers to go directly to a single PC without any change. I will admit the area I live in is undergoing tremendous growth and Comcast is pushing more and more services like phone and digital cable services.

My theory is that Comcast has hit an infrastructure brick wall in their ability to service evergrowing numbers of users, additional high speed services, and more demanding applications.

Quality of this monopoly has given way to looking for new ways to line executive pockets at any expense. Of course, we’ve seen this story play out again and again. But until technology becomes cheap enough to dethrone the current monopolies, we’ll just have to wait.

Comment by Paul Cohen

August 24, 2006 @ 11:25 am

This is happening to me now! It has been going on for at least two months and I’ve had tech people out at least eighteen times. It is insane; nothing works.

Comment by chovy

August 24, 2006 @ 11:40 am

You need to ask for Level 3 support as soon as you call into their tech support line. Tell them you will not go around in circles again.

Also, ask for a “Comast Employee, not a Contractor”…big difference here. The contractor guys know how to double-click on a few icons to install your internet connection software, which really isn’t even needed.

Comment by Magus

August 25, 2006 @ 3:23 am

I have had comcast internet for about a month, and it was all good until last week - when the connection began to drop every day around noon, and then several times a day requiring power-cycling to get it back on. I am in the midst of trying to solve the problem. I live in Northern Califonia, and Comcast isn’t the only option, but they are the only ISP with 8mbps internet access (Earthlink says they have 8mbps DSL, but they won’t confirm to me HOW they can do that when ATT says out of range… I don’t trust Earthlink’s “mystery” so I won’t fuck with them until they explain this to me…). I just want to say to the people who came in here to bash those who are complaining to go pike-fuck yourselves in the ass. You don’t jump down people’s throats because they don’t “know what you know”, or because they complain. That’s just stupid and immature. So what if somebody forgot to forgive the retarded cable guy, or didn’t logically attribute his/her problem to something they mentioned? Why are you so put off about it? Why don’t you offer soem actual help, you OAF, instead of spreading you stank-breath flames all over the place? Yu talk of others crying - it’s YOU that is moaning and bitching just because “you can’t stand” to read others peoples opinions and problems. I don’t know what Military State you live in, but here in America we have what you call “freedom”, we can complain about fucking Comast or whatever broken peice of shit company we want to, and we don’t have to spell piece right if we don’t want to either. If you don’t like being free, then tie a rock to you dick or your clit and jump into the fucking ocean until your head finds better use - like submariner implosion, you useless, hapless, fart bag.

Comment by Magus

August 25, 2006 @ 3:27 am

Oh yeah - who really give a fuck whether its a contractor or a moronic employee - either way they both work for Comcast - and somebody not know which one of those idiots you are is really not a big deal - just fix my shit and take you funky, ignorant ass out of my house you dipwad.

Comment by mike

September 2, 2006 @ 2:16 am

I have been having this drop connection issue ever since i got comcast. I also have a single splitter with one tv and a modem. Whats crazy is when i power cycle the modem nothing fixes only unplugging the cable from either the splitter or the modem and plugging it back in fixes the problem. I have had the “techs” out here 4 times and all the do is change a splitter (which requires them to unplug the cable wire and plug it in) as soon as they do that it works for maybe an hour or so them i gotta repeat the cycle. Im so tired of this and i think its time to give dsl a try cause speed dont matter that much when i get disconneted from my madden online games 50% of the time. Oh i for get to mention i have a linksys router also. I just cant figure this one out and obviouly comcast cant either.

Comment by lokin

September 18, 2006 @ 8:51 am

Hey, just came across your problem and was wondering if you still needed help with it? I see you have a boat load of posts so I didnt want to beat a dead horse. I am familiar with troubleshooting comcast internet connections.

On the side… where can I find more info about your spiffy little pop ups on the specific words underlined in your text? Similiar to alt or title attributes? That is awesome! I am a student at the art institute of atlanta for interactive media design and I am fond of new ways to make the net more user friendly. My latest coolest discoveries are crazy egg (heat and cold outlines over your website for seo research) and last.fm which is social tagging for music similiar to magnolia but specificly for music findability..(think delicious for musicians) Microformats are pretty cool too.

Thanks for the info, and let me know if you are still having trouble with your comcast service.

cheers.

Comment by yes! still problems

September 20, 2006 @ 8:58 am

I have the same problem described. I have to reset the modem (motorola surfboard 5120) bu unplugging it 2-6 times a day many days. Some times the connection is completely lost and it will not reconnect for a few hours.

I have had repeated service techs come out. They all do the same thing. They meter it and find nothing. They replace the connectors at the pole, perhaps the filter, and the ground wire. They reset the modem. Nothing is fixed. Luckly the last tech came out and it was finally spotty at the right time! NO CONCLUSIONS YET…

I have the simplest set up. There is a drop from the street, a filter, and then the single line coming through a hole in the side of the house (no splitter or other things attached. The connectors have all be replace on the line (my side and theirs. The cable on our side is new. The modem is a year old and they say it works fine.

Comment by yes! still problems

September 21, 2006 @ 2:21 pm

Today cox came and replaced nearly everything. They found on the third trip that there was a split on our side of the d-trap that was not necessary, so they took that out. The drop and everything up to the box outside of the ground wire was replaced. All looked good for about 15 minutes. Then the signal dropped again. Firmware was pushed to us for the umtenth time and we were back on. Final move was to repalce the cable from the modem to the single jack we have in the house. This might have been the problem. We will check back in later next week to tell you what is up. We were told that dipping to 140kb/s upstream was fine becuase we were sharing bandwidth…huh!…We hve a surfboard 5120 and wonder how low the signal would need to drop so that the modem would disassociate. Any facts out there?

Comment by yes! still problems

September 21, 2006 @ 2:23 pm

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/signal.html#reboot

This page is a really great one. Although you might not think to replace the wire closest to the modem, perhaps for many this is the true culprit. We think it might be at our house. We experience regular dropouts in signal downstream.

Comment by Bill

October 3, 2006 @ 4:54 pm

All those who have been plagued with cable dropouts I fully sympathize with you. I wanted to share a solution to my dropout problem that may help some. Grounding in a house is very important. The distance from the house without a grounding rod to the main power source outside with a ground can certainly cause serious problems. Oftentimes one can get shocked with the difference in voltages that exist between the main source and the house. In my case it was 80 volts OUCH. I installed a grounding rod at the circuitbreaker box (location of rod outside my house). This took care of the problem for me. Then I encountered a problem with my internet connection. Using a network setup, I kept losing my connection. After checking that indeed I had a signal from my isp I started checking the ground loop. Sure enough the ground at the end of the loop was very weak and causing all kinds of problems;noise, signal strength,etc etc. Adding another good ground to the end of my cable solved the problem. Now if I can just figure out how to get my service for free lmao.. Hope this helps someone. Cub

Comment by Judy

October 16, 2006 @ 6:48 pm

It took about 2 years, but I finally got a tech who knew what he was doing to fix the problem. Before I fanally got a diagnosis, I replaced the modem and the splitter (tv-modem) several times.
The solution: Turns out I have 5 tv’s on the system. The tv connected with the modem is in the room furthest from the cable source coming in to the house. Simple solution was the cable company boosted the signal to the house. SO FAR, problem solved.

Comment by IHateComcast

August 26, 2007 @ 9:00 am

We are in Texas…We were doing fine under Time Warner’s Roadrunner until Comcast took over…. I always get cut off in the middle of working on something online…. Never ever happened to us under Time Warner…. All Comcast did was took over the operations with the same equipment…. What’s Up Comcast?????

Comment by Rhonda

September 22, 2007 @ 8:47 am

I have been a comcast customer for the past 7 years without ever having this problem until January of 2007. It is now August of 2007 with about 100 service calls to my house and still have the same intermitting problem. This company sucks!

Comment by Benevolent

September 29, 2007 @ 1:26 am

If you think comcast sux you should try wildblue,they are by far the worst internet connection I have ever had in my life that and these people totaly rip you off.I will definately be going back to Comcast highspeed internet a.s.a.p.

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Comment by ComCast Sucks

December 18, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

Comcast is a terrible company.

I’m sick of them sending techs to replace faulty equipment. 5 modems later, I just buy my own and , gee, my internet is still working. guess, I’ll have to buy my own HD-DVR.

They have even disconnected my service ( accident ) and it took them 6 days to get some idiot to come back out and plug it back in.

Everyone I’ve spoken to in my neighborhood ( which is literally everyone) is dumping Comcast in the spring, when Fios is supposed to be available in northern Baltimore/Towson, MD.

Worthless monopoly, with Shit service.

Comment by Scott

June 3, 2008 @ 11:23 am

Did you ever figure out what caused this? It’s just starting to happen to me now where I lose internet access AND my On Demand service at the same time for an hour or more a day. Of course, they’re coming out to check my modem which I tried to explain repeatedly wasn’t the problem but it’s the only way I’ll hopefully get this resolved is by going along with it. I’m thinking it’s signal strength.

Comment by chovy

June 3, 2008 @ 12:21 pm

Make sure you get a Comcast employed technician, not the outsourced technician, they are more knowledgable.

For me, the problem was in the line, after about 8 house calls, someone finally traced the line and saw a split in the line going to the neighbors apartment.

Removing that fixed the problem.