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Adventures in Comcast support!
2009-Mar-19, Thursday 11:30 amCall.
Speak to a friendly, but unhelpful woman regarding this 'digital conversion' that they're forcing everyone into. It costs more, and because you must have a digital decoder box, suddenly, just using a basic video decoder card in your HTPC doesn't work any more. Nor does the digital feed work any more, because it's a proprietary, encoded digital signal. Oh, and SciFi, which was already flaky and wavy, now comes in about 12 frames out of 30. Oh, and did I mention this costs more too?
Fill in unhelpful woman. She makes notes in my account, and is going to transfer me over to tech support, so they can get me working again. I already know this WON'T work because in order to use the box, I need to be able to relay IR signals from the Media Center. The Hauppage card I have doesn't support the remote in Media Center, only in Linux land tools. (Yes, I lamed out because trying to configure MythTV was such a pain in the ass I gave up the first few dozen times.) So, in order to replicate the functionality I had just before this 'important upgrade', I'm going to have drop nearly $100 into the box just to get it working like it was before. And this is in addition to the increased monthly fee. Have I mentioned that already?
I get put on hold while unhelpful woman connects to TechSup to relay my 'concerns'. Suddenly, I find myself in the voicemail hell of the initial menus again, only this time, when I give my account telephone number, it says I don't exist in the system. When it says it's OK, that it will transfer me to an agent anyway, I get a message 'Your call could not be completed. Please hang up and call the toll free number again.' Wow! I wish I could get people to pay me exorbitant fees for this grade of customer support too!
Try 2: Went through the menus again, Trina got on the phone. I explained the entirety of this situation to her, again. She was going to get me to TechSup, but I circumvented that and she's now trying to get me an escalation to someone else. I spoke with Jamie next. We spoke at some length, and she's now searching for a means of getting me the DVR for free to replace the HTPC device I had in place prior to this upgrade of theirs. She found that she could get me a free DVR for 12 months. She asked if she could put me on hold while she got her supervisor to do the data entry for her (probably some sort of authorization issue), and then I got disconnected again.
Try 3: Blazed through the menu like a seasoned sailor through a hurricane. In the middle of my navigation, though, Jamie called me back and told me she was working on the solution as we spoke, but there was no need for me to remain on hold any longer. She told me she would call me back in a little more than 30 minutes with a date/time for a tech visit and to finalize everything.
Huh. My tracking of this was originally to help remind people what fuckups and worthless folk Comcast were at heart. But then along comes Jamie, and proves me very wrong. Well, all hail to her and her awesomeness because she literally did just save a customer.
Speak to a friendly, but unhelpful woman regarding this 'digital conversion' that they're forcing everyone into. It costs more, and because you must have a digital decoder box, suddenly, just using a basic video decoder card in your HTPC doesn't work any more. Nor does the digital feed work any more, because it's a proprietary, encoded digital signal. Oh, and SciFi, which was already flaky and wavy, now comes in about 12 frames out of 30. Oh, and did I mention this costs more too?
Fill in unhelpful woman. She makes notes in my account, and is going to transfer me over to tech support, so they can get me working again. I already know this WON'T work because in order to use the box, I need to be able to relay IR signals from the Media Center. The Hauppage card I have doesn't support the remote in Media Center, only in Linux land tools. (Yes, I lamed out because trying to configure MythTV was such a pain in the ass I gave up the first few dozen times.) So, in order to replicate the functionality I had just before this 'important upgrade', I'm going to have drop nearly $100 into the box just to get it working like it was before. And this is in addition to the increased monthly fee. Have I mentioned that already?
I get put on hold while unhelpful woman connects to TechSup to relay my 'concerns'. Suddenly, I find myself in the voicemail hell of the initial menus again, only this time, when I give my account telephone number, it says I don't exist in the system. When it says it's OK, that it will transfer me to an agent anyway, I get a message 'Your call could not be completed. Please hang up and call the toll free number again.' Wow! I wish I could get people to pay me exorbitant fees for this grade of customer support too!
Try 2: Went through the menus again, Trina got on the phone. I explained the entirety of this situation to her, again. She was going to get me to TechSup, but I circumvented that and she's now trying to get me an escalation to someone else. I spoke with Jamie next. We spoke at some length, and she's now searching for a means of getting me the DVR for free to replace the HTPC device I had in place prior to this upgrade of theirs. She found that she could get me a free DVR for 12 months. She asked if she could put me on hold while she got her supervisor to do the data entry for her (probably some sort of authorization issue), and then I got disconnected again.
Try 3: Blazed through the menu like a seasoned sailor through a hurricane. In the middle of my navigation, though, Jamie called me back and told me she was working on the solution as we spoke, but there was no need for me to remain on hold any longer. She told me she would call me back in a little more than 30 minutes with a date/time for a tech visit and to finalize everything.
Huh. My tracking of this was originally to help remind people what fuckups and worthless folk Comcast were at heart. But then along comes Jamie, and proves me very wrong. Well, all hail to her and her awesomeness because she literally did just save a customer.
