Comcast Must Die

Wahey, a bonus post this week! And still no mention of biking. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I'm writing to tell everyone about the games Comcast plays. I use them for my high-speed internet and nothing else. And for the record, THEY were the ones who started messing with my bill, not me.

I was perfectly happy with my service for a couple of years. Then out of the blue they called to offer me bundled cable. Despite my insistence that we had satellite and were quite satisfied with it, they offered to bump me up to slightly better internet, and the bundled cost would be about what I was currently paying.

Just to get the guy off the phone, I agreed. Idiotically.

We've used the cable a total of about three times, hardly worth it. And in the past six months I've seen the bill slowly going up and up. From a reasonable $56 a month to now $68 a month. Just for internet! (and cable that I never wanted to begin with.)

So I got into an online chat with Comcast to get the cable removed. After waiting so long for them to "access my information" I thought they were walking to another building to get to it, they came back with another offer to keep the cable but "upgrade" to "Blast Internet" for only $29.99 a month (for six months). I don't know what the deal is with their cable, but they're apparently desperate to get you to keep it.

I fell for it. I figured I'd just downgrade after six months, while living off the pure profit of only paying $30 in the meanwhile. I was so young, so naive. The sea looked warm to me, and the sky looked blue.

I did nothing for a month. Then I logged on to pay my bill, only to discover it still hovering at the $68 mark. For "Blast Internet" (which frankly didn't seem worth even $30 -- Tery railed at me daily for how much slower it moved. Which pleased me, as I was afraid of getting hooked on blazingly fast internet and not wanting to return to plain old high-speed internet).

I called to clear it up. The first person I talked to ("first" is the key word here) said, "Huh. It looks like they didn't finalize the order." What, they forgot to hit enter? She assured me the change would be made.

So I checked back online a few days later. No change. So I called back. The second person I talked to removed "that Blast Internet that I didn't need," offering me instead plain old high-speed for a promo price of $19.99 a month. Well. Even better! Or so I thought.

A few days later. No change. By this point, you can imagine, I was getting pretty irked. Was this just a case of complete (and universal) employee incompetence, or a secret company policy to mess with the customer? I wasn't sure which answer would make me feel better.

Instead of jumping on the phone on the spot to open a can of whup-ass, I instead did some online research into other customers' experience with trying to change their bills.

There's a whole site called comcastmustdie.com dedicated exclusively to customer complaints, so large it had to be broken down into categories, and then eventually branched out into a sister site. Not good.

I learned a couple of things: First, that I really couldn't complain. There were people who have spent months, even years, trying to fight their bill down from the hundreds of dollars a month it had blossomed into, or even trying to convince a collections agency that they had canceled their account and no longer owed Comcast anything.

Second, that even if Comcast DID get me onto the special promo price, they have a way with jacking with it monthly, sneaking on hidden fees, etc. so it's usually more headache than the little bit of savings is worth.

The other puzzling thing is this: every time I call, I have to go through the automated menu, including a stop to hear my account balance. And every time I call, it goes down without me paying a cent. The first time it was down to $60. The second, down to $54, which ironically is the price I just wanted to get back to when I started this madness.

I don't know why the phone balance and the online balance don't match. I don't know what will happen if I just pay that phone balance, don't say a word. Will they come back claiming I owe them the additional $14? Can I then come back and point out I SHOULD be paying $34 less? Stupidly, I haven't recorded any dates of these conversations, let alone the conversations themselves. It would be my word against Comcast's, I suppose, and they've proven themselves to be less than honorable.

I've got another week before the bill is actually due. I'm mildly curious to see how much further it will go down. It's like playing the plane ticket guessing game, which I've never really enjoyed.

The last thing to know is that, unfortunately, Comcast pretty much has a monopoly in Denver on high-speed internet. Qwest offers DSL, which I've heard nothing but bad about (much slower). AT&T and Verizon FIOS aren't available for my zip. So canceling isn't an option, even if they didn't make your life more of a living hell if you try to.

What the hell would you do??

ADDENDUM: Haha, don't know if you can see my Rickman mood theme, but the icon for "aggravated" is, appropriately, him on the phone doing a facepalm.