Foo - Cable companies... almost as bad as insurance companies

Okay, here's me issue. I signed on with Comcast for the $20 internet special. Basically, my cable internet is $20/month until March granted I bundle another service with it. Well, they had a special on digital cable for two month so I went with that, thinking I'd watch the food network. I ended up never using the TV, and after the second month, I called them to change my cable TV service to the $15/month limited.

Well, they downgraded it, but to the basic $40/month service. When I got the bill I called them and told them about it. I was told I had to schedule an appointment for the service tech to come out and put filters on the line etc etc. Did that.

Got my bill the other day, and they STILL have not downgraded the cable. At this point, I've told them twice. What are my options? I'm going to call them up, but I want the difference back. The only competitor will cost me more and the actual service is slower.

Yes, they are as bad as insurance companies.

We use DSL for our phone/internets and FTA (free to air) satellite receivers for our tv's. We also use State Farm Insurance. No problems.

Is there any free-to-air stuff for the small satellite dishes, or do you need one of the old backyard-sized models?

Is there any free-to-air stuff for the small satellite dishes, or do you need one of the old backyard-sized models?

up here there is. My buddy owns one.

At home we have dsl and no cable for the tv.

Netflix just launches unlimited streaming video and we have a pvr box we record over the air hd.

Comcast is up there with Chase and WAL*MART as companies I
can only hope crumble to nothing in a slow painful death.......

Here, they are the only provider in our area. If you dont buy the 99.00 bundle
package with the Hi-Def Tv and Internet you pay almost 60.00 for just the
DSL internet. It is ethically and morally responsible to steal from them any
way you can.
:beer:

Ha. My boyfriend just had a big fight with Comcast today. We switched our service from our residential plan to be on his office's plan (I don't get it, but I guess it costs less and it's faster, so hey). And so we had a credit on the old residential bill for like $55 that they were supposed to apply to the new bill, but they didn't. Even after he called and chewed them out once. He was SO MAD when we got the "we're cutting off your service tomorrow letter!" Yikes. Glad he's never used that tone of voice with me!!! :eek:

Okay, here's me issue. I signed on with Comcast for the $20 internet special. Basically, my cable internet is $20/month until March granted I bundle another service with it. Well, they had a special on digital cable for two month so I went with that, thinking I'd watch the food network. I ended up never using the TV, and after the second month, I called them to change my cable TV service to the $15/month limited.

Well, they downgraded it, but to the basic $40/month service. When I got the bill I called them and told them about it. I was told I had to schedule an appointment for the service tech to come out and put filters on the line etc etc. Did that.

Got my bill the other day, and they STILL have not downgraded the cable. At this point, I've told them twice. What are my options? I'm going to call them up, but I want the difference back. The only competitor will cost me more and the actual service is slower.

You're going to waste more time trying to get your 20 bucks back. And i say try, because generally SBc and Charter and etc don't give the money back unless you are paying them 100 bucks a month. In which case they don't mind giving you 20 bucks back.

Comcast is up there with Chase and WAL*MART as companies I
can only hope crumble to nothing in a slow painful death.......

Here, they are the only provider in our area. If you dont buy the 99.00 bundle
package with the Hi-Def Tv and Internet you pay almost 60.00 for just the
DSL internet. It is ethically and morally responsible to steal from them any
way you can.
:beer:

You mean everywhere cable exists they are the only provider in the area :p .

We use DSL for our phone/internets and FTA (free to air) satellite receivers for our tv's. We also use State Farm Insurance. No problems.

Please tell me you're not using SBC/ATT for DSL. I have generally found that DSL is worse than any Cable Company because generally DSL companies want to charge the same price as cable but they want to offer 1/10th the speed.

You can try writing a letter to officially dispute the charge, spelling out the dates you downgraded, name of tech you talked to etc. Include a statement that since you did not order this service, you will not pay for it should they decide to continue delivering the unwanted data to your home.

Yes, they are as bad as insurance companies.

or worse, perhaps. Insurance companies don't (well, physically can't) orchestrate legally-sanctioned regional monopolies and then selectively abuse them by limiting certain protocols and then lying to their customers when asked about it.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/1417238

or worse, perhaps. Insurance companies don't (well, physically can't) orchestrate legally-sanctioned regional monopolies and then selectively abuse them by limiting certain protocols and then lying to their customers when asked about it.


Fortunately I live where I have a choice, Comcast, or Hargray (local cable company). Hargray is great, Comcast ain't.

I wish WiMax or 4G, talked about tons by providers would actually come to fruition. It would rock to be able to use that as an alternative to the usual choices, cable or DSL.

GSM will be an interesting market in a couple years. Verizon plans to kill their CDMA lines and swap completely over to it, so maybe we will see some broadband-capable speeds to the cellphone.

You can try writing a letter to officially dispute the charge, spelling out the dates you downgraded, name of tech you talked to etc. Include a statement that since you did not order this service, you will not pay for it should they decide to continue delivering the unwanted data to your home.

I'm going to call. This is my next step. Write a letter and send it with confirmation so they have to sign for it. I'll give them a time limit, then it becomes a fraud case.

Okay, here's me issue. I signed on with Comcast for the $20 internet special. Basically, my cable internet is $20/month until March granted I bundle another service with it. Well, they had a special on digital cable for two month so I went with that, thinking I'd watch the food network. I ended up never using the TV, and after the second month, I called them to change my cable TV service to the $15/month limited.

Well, they downgraded it, but to the basic $40/month service. When I got the bill I called them and told them about it. I was told I had to schedule an appointment for the service tech to come out and put filters on the line etc etc. Did that.

Got my bill the other day, and they STILL have not downgraded the cable. At this point, I've told them twice. What are my options? I'm going to call them up, but I want the difference back. The only competitor will cost me more and the actual service is slower.

Give up broadcast programming altogether and spend your time doing things other than being fed by mass media. I did this 3 years ago and will never go back.

I don't watch TV. My TV is sitting in the closet. I use cable internet, because I'm willing to pay more for the speed. It costs me less to bundle the most limited cable TV service with the internet service than it does to get the internet alone. I don't want to switch to the competitor, because I'll have to pay more, and everyone around here uses them, so it'll be slower as well. I just want them to stop jerking me around.

I just got $40 worth of discounts from Time Warner Cable because of a problem that was not their fault, and they couldn't fix. They'd consolidated the many Dallas channel lineups down to three. When they did so, they published the new "upgraded" lineup, and TiVo took that to mean that all of their Dallas customers got the new lineup. The channel guide on the TiVo didn't match what the cable box was producing. I thought it was a Time Warner issue, since they'd sent me a new channel listing. I figured there was something wrong with my cable box. The phone tech tried to reset it, but that didn't work. She scheduled a technician to come out and swap boxes on a Friday between 11am & 1pm. He never showed.

I called at 1pm, and learned that the tech had canceled the call because he'd called twice, and received no answer. He noted on his ticket that he'd left messages both times. My cell phone only lists one missed call, and no voice messages. After discussing the issue with the customer service rep, she finally was able to reschedule the appointment for later that day, between 2pm and 5pm. I called every 30 minutes starting at 2:30, to make sure that the tech didn't cancel the call. Guess what, he again canceled the call claiming that he'd called twice and received no answer. My phone did ring once while I was on the phone with a CSR at 5:05pm, but before I could even move the phone into my line of vision to see who it was, the caller hung up. The CSR said she'd immediately put a note in the technician's field to let him know that she was on the phone with me, and that I was waiting for him. He canceled the call anyway.

I got another appointment for Sunday, between 1 & 5. Again, I called every 30 minutes to ensure that the call wouldn't be cancelled. Again, the technician was a no-show. And again, he canceled because he claimed he called twice with no answer. I even had them put an alternate contact method on the work order, and he never attempted to use it. This time, both my wife and I called to get a supervisor so that we could get someone out to fix our cable. She was finally able to get one on the phone. She had me talk to him. He had me try a few different things, and finally discovered that we had the correct lineup on our cable box for our area. There are 3 lineups in Dallas: Dallas, Dallas (upgraded), and Dallas MDU. My TiVo had the Dallas (upgraded) lineup, and the cable box has Dallas. There was nothing Time Warner Cable could do to help me, it was a TiVo issue.

I got the issue resolved with one call to TiVo.

I'm still pissed at Time Warner Cable. If the first technician had shown up, we'd have discovered the problem was with the TiVo on that Friday morning, and I could have called TiVo that day to get the issue resolved 5 days earlier. I also wouldn't have wasted close to 20 hours of my life waiting on a technician to show, an on the phone with CSRs when he didn't.

Just be glad you aren't dealing with Verizon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2isSJKntbg