COMCAST: A NECESSARY EVIL...

Let me start this post with WE HATE COMCAST. However, we are seeing that becoming a customer, once again, is becoming a necessary evil in our very-near future.

Many of you have noticed that we haven't posted anything for about two weeks. Well, the reason for this is because the heavenly wireless signal that we had been "borrowing" for the past eight months finally disappeared from our lives. Bummer. Huge Bummer.

Let me tell you where this all began. When we moved to Washington, DC, we found out that Comcast was the only servicer in our building - therefore, we were required to use them if we wanted any cable and/or internet connection. We signed up with them with their wooing offers of $19 internet with cable, etc. The first three months were great! Small bill = internet connection. Then our bill hiked to an exorbitant $63 a month...for BASIC cable and internet. What a rip!! After speaking with several other people who were able to get Cox or RCN for about half that, we felt trapped, angry, frustrated, taken advantage of...obviously, "free market" did not apply to us in this situation. Comcast had a monopoly on our building!

Then the big whammy happened. Our internet and cable stopped working. After a week and a half on the phone with them, they finally sent someone out. The man claimed that it was an area outage - something that I did not believe, since our neighbors two floors down from us had a very strong connection to the internet with the same service. So, he left saying that they were fixing the "area" issue that afternoon and our service would be working that night. NOT THE CASE. After calling again and again, taking time from my precious day talking to people who obviously didn't give a darn, they finally agreed to send another serviceman out. So, I took a sick day from work to meet with him. He came, said the same thing about the "area outage" - I politely remarked that this is what the man said two days earlier, and our service still hadn't been working. As he was trying to scoot out my door (claiming he was doing a "courtesy" stop for us because we weren't officially on the books), I put my foot down and told him he was NOT leaving until my service was working again. It had been out for two weeks, (which I reminded him I was paying $63 a month for), and that he was going to fix it because it did not have anything to do with the area outage crap he and others had been giving us.

After this, he obviously knew that I meant business and he went down to get some cables to check out things. Come to find out that the cable box on the floor of our building had been tampered with and our connection from the cable box was "frayed." To me, this looked like someone was attempting to steal our cable. He said there was no way this was happening and assured me that the ONLY people that have access to these boxes are the Comcast workers, to which I replied, "So, that means that one of your workers damaged my line and this is all the fault of Comcast." The line had definitely been tampered with. It was very obvious - even to my layman eyes. It it wasn't anybody else (as he had claimed), then who could it be? Needless to say, he fixed it and said that he was going to make sure that we get a two-week refund on our bill that next month and gave me a confirmation number.

After another eight calls to Comcast, the confirmation number he gave us was bogus, we never got the refund and then they kept trying to charge us for a digital cable box that we had returned after our three-month promotion ended. When all was said and done, they ended up with an extra $150 of ours. No refund from that two weeks of no service...and they got the money for the cable box that apparently we "had" (they were threatening to take us to collections.) So, we just paid the darn bill and said good riddance.

Now, here in Tucson, the only servicer in our apartment complex is, of course, Comcast. After the bitter taste in our mouths from our experiences before, we are having a hard time forking over good hard-earned money to that crooked company. Bitter? Yes. Frustrated? Yes. But what else can you do? I can't live without internet anymore and I can't keep going to Beyond Bread on Campbell to get a wireless signal that I can borrow to check my email! So, here we are at a crossroads. I guess it all comes down to the fact that Comcast is a necessary evil. Sigh.