Comcast In The Crosshairs
By Greg L | 16 November 2007 | Manassas City | 27 Comments
Next Monday evening at Manassas City Council Chambers, it’s going to be “pile on” night for Comcast. City Councilman Marc Aveni “appalled” at the stories he’s been hearing about how abusive Comcast has been to his constituents, and is determined to get their attention. A constant barrage of public criticism, and even a customer attacking a Comcast office with a hammer still haven’t gotten Comcast to change its ways. Now it’s time to get local governments to take action.
From the Potomac News:
Manassas Councilman Marc Aveni is “appalled” at the recent rash of complaints he has heard from residents concerning Comcast Cable of Virginia, the city’s primary cable provider.
So much so that he plans to use his “councilman time” during this Monday’s regularly scheduled council meeting to bring up the issue to the public.
Aveni wants to the send the company a message that the city won’t tolerate consistently substandard customer service now or in the future.
What might actually get the attention of this corporate entity that seems so enamored with the idea of torturing its customers would be for the City Council to have a discussion about terminating their contract with Comcast. Hit their revenue stream, and that should get their attention. If it doesn’t, at least city residents would no longer be subjected to these outrageous predations by Comcast.
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27 Comments
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A better solution than elimanting comcasts franchise, would be to let another franchise in. A little competition makes everyone better. Booting out comcast would cause massive disruptions as customers are migrated to the new company enmasse. Another solution might be a class-action filed against Comcast for poor service.
Excellllllent smithers
I definitely agree with Batson. Another provider to spur competition would be the way to get it done. I’m always suspect of governments at any level getting involved in consumer issues.
Verizon needs to get on the stick and start upgrading infrastructure most ricky tick to support FIOS. Then and only then will comcast get its head out of its a$$. They have grown complacent in the past 5 years since they know they are the only game in town. It’s time to cure them of this idea.
You got that right, Park’d. I have my name on the notify list for when FIOS get ported out to us in MP. Of course, It’s been on that list for a few years now…
Been reading all the Comcast stuff here for a while now.
I switched from them a couple years back to Verizon DSL after me and my neighbor (who also switched) were at our wits end with them trying to get our service line fixed. I kid you not, I called them 8+ times, with about 5 of those times having to spend a ton of time repeating the sameeeee darnnnn thinggggg to someone new on what was happening. We gave up after about 4 months of this nonsense and went Verizon.
Comcast service is a joke. Sure many may be fine, but when you really do need them and it’s anything more than simple routine stuff, good luck getting fixed.
My service with Comcast seems to be OK, although I’ve had a few outages (3-5 in about 4 years) where phone support was only marginally better than trained chimps mashing buttons on a Speak n’Spell. I remember actually having to give a synopsis of DHCP to the service rep. because she had no idea how her own system worked.
Stay classy, Comcast.
I had intermittent outages with Comcast for about 4 months before they finally fixed it at the end of August.
It remains to be seen if Verizon is any better–here’s a hint: They probably recruit from the same labor pool.
Oh, I had 9 tech visits to my house to try to fix this problem and I probably know more about cable TV than any of them even though I don’t work in that industry and never have. I even had one try to tell me that intermittent outages were normal during periods of high use, also tried to blame my computer.
I said, “High usage is not going to cause the cablemodem’s upstream power to increase from 49dB to 61dB in two minute’s time, yet that’s exactly what’s going on. That also is not a computer problem as the transmit power level is between your headend and this cablemodem, the computer has nothing to do with it”.
As far as I could determine it was a problem between the tap and the headend, but all the people they kept sending to my house knew how to do is change splitters and connectors.
I even generated a nice graph of the cablemodem’s transmit power showing it bouncing around like a seisomgraph during an earthquake but importance of that escaped these idiots.
You need to get a copy of their franchise agreement and make sure they are meeting their legal responsibilities.
I’ve actually had good cable tv and internet connection with them. My problems arose when one of their lines fell across my sidewalk after a storm. I probably talked to five or six different people on either the service or construction end and after a month of stepping over their line, I called PWC’s ombudsman and the problem was fixed the next day. A few months later during a storm another of their lines came down across my driveway. I gave them one day to fix it. When they didn’t get here when they said they would, I called the county’s ombudsman again and the problem was fixed the next day. (During the first call to the ombudsman, I asked if it would help if I went to their office personally and he told me not to bother…that their doors were locked to the public. How did hammer-lady get in?)
Hammer lady went to the bill payment office.
Comcast routinely runs temp lines along the ground that take them 2-3 months to replace.
It amazes my that CrumCast has fought tooth and nail to keep AT&T out of providing television! They seem to think that they are the only ones that can provide “quality” service.
Except for two days I can’t get one of my favorite channels.
You know Comcast bought AT&T Broadband? Apparently AT&T wanted to get out of providing television.
Batson D. Belfrey said on 16 Nov 2007 at 12:48 pm:
A better solution than elimanting comcasts franchise, would be to let another franchise in.
Mercifully, that’s what Manassas Park is doing. Verizon has been laying their FIOS cables all week. I can’t wait to ditch Comcast!!! Maybe for those who choose to stay, competition will improve their service experience. My service experience will improve when I drop my equipment off at the Comcast office.
MP Mom - Where is Verizon laying FIOS cable at?
The neighborhoods off of Manassas Drive between 28 and Eucild.
Sweet fancy Moses, I hope they make it out to Belmont Station soon.
I’ve heard horror stories of FIOS contractors cutting buried power, telephone, and cable lines.
Hopefully that won’t happen in Belmont Station. I’d rather not find out if my whole-house surge protector can handle a direct hit from a 7.2kV primary distribution line.
Incidentally, my router/firewall just died one day. Went to lunch, came back, it was dead. Kind of problematic since I work from home.. I decided to use my Linux machine as a router/firewall instead of buying another router/firewall. I should have done that a long time ago since I’m getting MUCH faster downloads than I was before. Guess the old router just couldn’t handle the speed. Now I’m routinely getting 5mbps downloads, I was lucky to get 1-2mbps before.
We have had no problems this week with the laying of the cables. Some of the equipment for the dig is noisy, but they have tried to be unobtrusive and incredibly polite.
Comcast routinely runs temp lines along the ground that take them 2-3 months to replace.
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That is what scares me. I moved into Manassas 5 years ago and noticed temp cables running down Battlefield St in Cloverhill along the sidewalk. Each year during Halloween I notice the cable, guess what this year it still there. The thinking that they own Manassas and the intimidation tactics of their employees must stop. WE NEED TO TAKE BACK MANASSAS and BOYCOTT COMCAST!!!
I hope that you all will show up to the City Meeting on Monday and voice your concerns. I certainly will be there. I’m sure you saw the MJM this morning covering the story that was first brought to attention here at bvbl.net. We really need to show up and let Comcast see that we are Not going to back down!
Would they let someone from MP speak about the issue? Since Comcast customer service (using the terms loosely) office is on Center St., anyone in MP, Manassas City, and the County are potentially customers. I know the council is concerned about their constituents, but everyone is using the same customer service office based in the city.
MP Mom - I believe Manassas City and PWC allow all local-area residents to speak during citizens time, regardless of their home address. Only Manassas Park restricts the podium to residents within their city limits.
MP MOM- Rob Smalls - Patriot Temp is correct. Unlike Manassas Park the County and Manassas City both let people other than residents speak.
I find it laughable that your government prohibits non-residents from speaking at their citizens time. All three jurisdictions are so intertwined that we should be able to speak at any of them.
Mayor Jones really needs to re-think MP’s policy. But then again MP is run as a dictatorship and can do what they want.
I think that it long overdue that the counties should end Comcast’s monoply. How does it benefit anyone other than Comcast that they have a monoply. The cables that they laid years ago have been paid off mnay times over. On top of it they keep raising the rates for less and less service. In addition, they are now kicking off users who are “using too much bandwidth” yet they won’t disclose what that limit is.