Comcast, How I Hate Thee!

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My response to a monopolistic utility that provides sub-par service. Note the lack of a working modem in the graphic.

As I write these words the lights on my cable modem are blinking on and off… again.

These are not the good lights like “activity” that are blinking, but rather the bad lights like “send” and “receive” and “online” that continually blink on and off. I am a Comcast cable internet customer, and I’m getting kind of tired of wondering if my internet connection will be working.

This problem first began about six months ago. Nearly every Sunday my connection would go down for five or six hours. I’d call Comcast and the very sweet Canadian (“So your internet’s not working, eh? I wonder what that’s all aboot?”) help desk person would guide me through all the exact same steps as the Sunday before. We’d chit chat while the person pulled up my information and bounced through various screens, finally instructing me to turn my modem off, wait two uncomfortable minutes while we spoke about the weather and lapse into a strange silence that is only brought on when two people have to work together on the phone but will never meet or even speak to each other again. Then we’d turn the modem back on and get exactly the same problem: the bad lights are blinking and I have no connection.

And every week we’d schedule a technician to come out to my house. Sometimes I could get the guy to come the next weekend, sometimes it would take over a week. Sometimes they’d send someone out later that day. It was a completely random interval.

Each time, for about four different visits, a different nice Comcast technician would test the line and frown and shake his head and blame some part of the wiring from the pole to my house or my house to the wall jack or the wall jack to my modem. Each time the nice technician would replace the wiring he thought was the problem. Each time things worked for about a day or so after the technician left and then the internet would drop for a day all over again. We replaced modems, cables, jacks and even Ethernet cords to no avail.

Finally, I gave up calling Comcast. I was a beaten man.

Through trial and error I’ve learned how to fix my own internet connection. Here’s how I do it:

1. Pull the power jack out of the modem.
2. Unscrew the cable from the back of the modem.
3. Blow into the cable. (Okay, I really don’t have to do this but its kind of a habit from my days of trying to get old Atari 2600 and Nintendo game cartridges to work.)
4. Push the power jack back into the modem.
5. Screw the cable back into the modem.

Done. I don’t have to wait for two minutes or have some Comcast Canuck try to run some special piece of mystical cable modem detecting and resetting software. I can do this in under 20 seconds now and I’ve actually moved the modem so that I can easily get to the cable and power jack immediately.

I pay over $50 a month for internet access and I have no other options for high speed service. I don’t consider DSL to be high speed internet any more than I consider a Hyundai Sonata to be a luxury sedan.

I shouldn’t have to do this. My cable went down two more times as I wrote this article. As a consumer I’m basically screwed. Thank you, Comcast. I am now forced to do the only thing I can do:

Do you see this? This is me shaking my fist at you!

There. That felt good.

I would shake both fists at you, but I need this other hand to drop off your monthly bill in the mailbox. Please don’t cut me off…

This entry was posted on October 25, 2007 at 7:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.