After 17 years, I finally decided to pull the plug on my old cable company and switch back to Comcast for tv and internet. Almost immediately, I’ve come to regret that decision.
I also decided to purchase a shiny new Tivo Roamio Plus to replace my trusty old Series3 that I’ve had for the last 8 years. Based on what I read online, I was expecting to have a bit of a headache with Comcast in getting their service working with a Tivo and a cablecard. I had no idea just how much of a problem it would actually be.
My service install appointment was scheduled for 1:00PM on Thursday. The technician calls me in the morning and says he’s running ahead of schedule and asks if it’s ok for him to come around 11:30. Kudos to him for showing up early! However, he didn’t bring the cablecard that I ordered. He admitted that he hadn’t really looked at my order before heading over. He also mentioned that they “didn’t really support cablecards anymore” and offered me one of their HD boxes. I reminded him that the FCC requires them to support cablecards and I asked him to check and see if one was available. He made a few calls and said they were out of them at the warehouse and the card would have to be shipped in from another state. I called the toll-free Comcast number and explained the situation. They told me they had 6 cablecards available at the local office. She spoke to the technician, who then called his supervisor. He told his supervisor that “he was too busy to deal with this today” and told me that I would have to go to the local office and pick one up myself and do a self-install. He then proceeded to string an orange cable across my yard and installed a new interface box on the side of my house. I asked him about the cable in the yard, and he told me “that another team would be by in a week or so to bury it”. Now, I live in an older neighborhood with overhead wires, but I figured this was just their new way of doing things.
As soon as he got the internet up and running, I went to the main office and picked up a cable card. I installed it as directed by the instructions and called the “cablecard hotline” to have it activated. Two hours later, I was still on the phone with them and unable to get the card set up properly. The agent on the phone told me the cablecard was provisioned as a cable box instead of a cablecard on my account. According to him, the only way to get this corrected was to drive back to the local office and have them change it in their system, as there is no working number for my local comcast office. I drove across town to the office and spoke with a desk agent. They changed the provisioning in two seconds with a “sorry” and a smile. I drove home and called Comcast again. They still couldn’t get the card activated and scheduled a truck-roll. The earliest appointment was for Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, a very nice technician shows up. I explain the situation to him and the first thing he does is examine the wiring on the outside of the house. He ripped out everything the installer put in and ran new cables (overhead) and new cables to the cable modem and living room. He apologized for the poor job the installer did and was generally very helpful. He called the Comcast back office and tried to get my cablecard activated, but ran into the same problems I did. They determined that it was a defective card and would need to be replaced, but the earliest they could bring me a new card would be Tuesday (4 days later).
When the technician left, I returned to the local office and swapped the cablecard for a new one, thinking I’d do the self-install again. I explained what had happened the first time I picked up a cable card (that it was provisioned as a cablebox) and asked him to make sure that it was provisioned in their system as a cablecard. He assured me it was correct and I was off to try again.
I called the “cablecard activation hotline” again and ran through the same thing again. Once again, the cablecard was entered into the system as a box and not a card and they said that it was not something they could change, only the local office could change it. After being transferred approximately 12 times over 4 hours, they finally changed it in their system but was still unable to get the card activated properly. Now they are telling me the card had already been paired with a cable box, so it’s impossible to pair it with my Tivo.
Since it’s the holiday weekend, I now get to wait until Tuesday for another truck-roll. Most likely, they will neglect to bring a cable card with them.
I’m curious WHY Comcast has such poor support for cablecard devices and why nobody (even in their cablecard hotline) seems to know anything about cablecards or tivo.
I’m over it. I’m DEEPLY regretting switching back to comcast.
On a side-note, the Roamio does a great job with Netflix, Amazon and Youtube. Since I can't watch TV, it's keeping me entertained.
I also decided to purchase a shiny new Tivo Roamio Plus to replace my trusty old Series3 that I’ve had for the last 8 years. Based on what I read online, I was expecting to have a bit of a headache with Comcast in getting their service working with a Tivo and a cablecard. I had no idea just how much of a problem it would actually be.
My service install appointment was scheduled for 1:00PM on Thursday. The technician calls me in the morning and says he’s running ahead of schedule and asks if it’s ok for him to come around 11:30. Kudos to him for showing up early! However, he didn’t bring the cablecard that I ordered. He admitted that he hadn’t really looked at my order before heading over. He also mentioned that they “didn’t really support cablecards anymore” and offered me one of their HD boxes. I reminded him that the FCC requires them to support cablecards and I asked him to check and see if one was available. He made a few calls and said they were out of them at the warehouse and the card would have to be shipped in from another state. I called the toll-free Comcast number and explained the situation. They told me they had 6 cablecards available at the local office. She spoke to the technician, who then called his supervisor. He told his supervisor that “he was too busy to deal with this today” and told me that I would have to go to the local office and pick one up myself and do a self-install. He then proceeded to string an orange cable across my yard and installed a new interface box on the side of my house. I asked him about the cable in the yard, and he told me “that another team would be by in a week or so to bury it”. Now, I live in an older neighborhood with overhead wires, but I figured this was just their new way of doing things.
As soon as he got the internet up and running, I went to the main office and picked up a cable card. I installed it as directed by the instructions and called the “cablecard hotline” to have it activated. Two hours later, I was still on the phone with them and unable to get the card set up properly. The agent on the phone told me the cablecard was provisioned as a cable box instead of a cablecard on my account. According to him, the only way to get this corrected was to drive back to the local office and have them change it in their system, as there is no working number for my local comcast office. I drove across town to the office and spoke with a desk agent. They changed the provisioning in two seconds with a “sorry” and a smile. I drove home and called Comcast again. They still couldn’t get the card activated and scheduled a truck-roll. The earliest appointment was for Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, a very nice technician shows up. I explain the situation to him and the first thing he does is examine the wiring on the outside of the house. He ripped out everything the installer put in and ran new cables (overhead) and new cables to the cable modem and living room. He apologized for the poor job the installer did and was generally very helpful. He called the Comcast back office and tried to get my cablecard activated, but ran into the same problems I did. They determined that it was a defective card and would need to be replaced, but the earliest they could bring me a new card would be Tuesday (4 days later).
When the technician left, I returned to the local office and swapped the cablecard for a new one, thinking I’d do the self-install again. I explained what had happened the first time I picked up a cable card (that it was provisioned as a cablebox) and asked him to make sure that it was provisioned in their system as a cablecard. He assured me it was correct and I was off to try again.
I called the “cablecard activation hotline” again and ran through the same thing again. Once again, the cablecard was entered into the system as a box and not a card and they said that it was not something they could change, only the local office could change it. After being transferred approximately 12 times over 4 hours, they finally changed it in their system but was still unable to get the card activated properly. Now they are telling me the card had already been paired with a cable box, so it’s impossible to pair it with my Tivo.
Since it’s the holiday weekend, I now get to wait until Tuesday for another truck-roll. Most likely, they will neglect to bring a cable card with them.
I’m curious WHY Comcast has such poor support for cablecard devices and why nobody (even in their cablecard hotline) seems to know anything about cablecards or tivo.
I’m over it. I’m DEEPLY regretting switching back to comcast.
On a side-note, the Roamio does a great job with Netflix, Amazon and Youtube. Since I can't watch TV, it's keeping me entertained.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire