Rant: Comcast Support: Fail++

Ok so for the past few months I've had connectivity issues in the evenings from home.  I assumed that the culprit was the number of wireless access points in my community or possibly an overload in the shared last mile connection.

A couple of days ago I got fed up and started debugging the problem.  I turned the modem off, disconnected the WiFi, and plugged my laptop directly into the cable modem.  And tada!  the problem was still there.

Then I though to myself, I wonder if the signal is borked so I connected to the cable modem and tried to load the status page... this is the response from the cablemodem's server:

Safari can’t open the page “http://192.168.100.1/signal.html” because the network connection was reset, which sometimes occurs when the server is busy. You might be able to open the page later.

So I did what any frustrated engineer does... I keep trying and tada it worked after about 30 tries.  signal looked good and tried again.  and I got the same reset message.  (Firefox shows the page loading and then being reset prematurely).

Ok, so my cable modem is borked.

I called the Comcast support number and the first thing I hear is not an apology for problems, nor was it the call tree I expected.  No!  I got a bloody advertisement for pay-per-view WWE RAW.  (INSTANT FAIL!)

Ok, so I breath and start working through the call tree and was offered two options:

1) Is your cable modem not working?

2) Is your cable modem slow?

uhhhh...  call tree repeats.

Select #1 - on the basis that I might hit a technically literate person rather than a sales drone.

nope.  I got an automated cable modem reset that took 30 seconds.  Then an automated request to go to comcast.net to make sure the cable modem worked with a 30 second delay while I "did that."

How about an option for intermittent problems folks?  i.e. I had a problem last night but didn't have time to call.

I tell the call tree that my problem was not resolved and get told that the wait time would be about 15 minutes (I don't remember the range) and would I like a call back, so I go through the hoops of setting that up.

3-4 minutes later I get the call back and then after verifying that I am me. I'm told that all representatives are busy.  10 seconds later I get connected.  If someone was ready, don't tell me everyone is busy.  And if no one is ready, don't bloody call me back on the chance that someone will be free shortly, get the person on the line before calling!

Then after I've entered my information, the phone dialer has verified it, I still needed to give it to the customer service rep! Seriously Is this 2009 or 1960?

Tech guy checks the signal strength and fairly quickly conludes that it could be the modem, as I told him, and since I'm renting it, that I should just go to the Comcast store and exchange it.

overall customer service score: fail++