You know... Comcast just sucks.

I’ve had beef with this company for a while now. I originally got broadband Internet service via a cable modem with Excite@Home when we lived in Hyrum. The service was provided through AT&T’s cable television system at the time. Then, Excite@Home folded and AT&T bought all the assets and converted all the @Home customers over to be AT&T customers, raised the monthly fee, and capped the bandwidth.

It wasn’t too bad, though. Download rates were still pretty dang fast and the monthly fees were reasonable. On top of that, AT&T’s support people were pretty cool to deal with.

Then, AT&T sold their cable Internet business to Comcast. Again, the monthly fee went up. The Comcast support system sucked big time as it required users to run Windows and install all kinds of Comcast-specific spyware on your computer so a technician could remotely see your desktop and/or control your computer.

Shortly after this happened, we moved and I (gladly) cancelled my account with Comcast. Well, where we are now, it’s the most practical solution for high-speed access, so I had to gulp down my bias and order it again.

About 3 weeks ago, I went to Comcast’s website went through the qualification process. The website said our Riverton address qualified for high-speed Internet service so I placed an order. An installation date was tentatively set up for the first week of December and I was told I would get e-mail about a firm install date and time.

After the third of December rolled around and I still hadn’t heard anything from Comcast about my install, I called them up. They had no record of any order placed by me and told me I’d have to place a new order. So, I went through with it — placed a new order. They scheduled a new installation date of 10 December. This wasn’t happy news. It meant I’d probably have to limp along with dialup for a few days, but what was I going to do?!

So, on the morning of 10 December, a gentleman from Comcast came to install the cable modem. He ran some cable across my yard (because there was no buried cable to the house yet) and hooked everything up the house. I knew they’d need a Windows system to set up my account and activate the cable modem, so I had my laptop booted into Windows 2000 for him ready to go.

He had a webpage up which was asking for my preferred username and password when my phone rang. I answered it and found myself talking to another gentleman from Comcast. He was very polite and said it was a ”courtesy call” and he regretted telling me that high-speed Internet service was not available yet at my address. I laughed and told him there was a Comcast technician sitting right in front of me and everything was working just fine. He asked to speak with the onsite technician. I heard the technician say something about the area being available for over two years.

After that phone call, the technician had me choose a username and password and then he left. Everything was set up. I moved the ethernet cable from the modem from the laptop to my Linux gateway and everything worked fine.

A few minutes later, the sincere gentleman from Comcast called me again. He proceeded to tell me that high-speed Internet really was not available yet in my area, but the lines were being prepared for it — Comcast was still doing some line-balancing and testing and couldn’t have me sitting on the system before it was ready for deployment. So, he was going to dispatch a technician back out to my house to take the cable modem away.

I told him it was a bit ridiculous considering the fact the Comcast website had said for weeks the area had high-speed Internet service. He agreed it was a problem and said he’d talked to his supervisor and there was no way around it.

I told him I needed Internet service to do my job and wanted a call from his supervisor as soon as possible. He told me he would have his supervisor call me soon.

A few minutes later, he called me back and asked me if I was in Riverton or Layton. I told him Riverton. He said they had two orders with my name and phone number on them. One had a Riverton address and the other had a Layton address. The area that wasn’t ready for high-speed Internet deployment yet was Layton, not Riverton.

“Please disregard everything I told you before,” he said.

“I will gladly disregard everything you’ve told me.” I answered.

So... Comcast continues to suck the big one, but at least it works.