Comcast update for Wednesday. We hook up my kid's TV. It shows the program guide, but no programming. I call Comcast Customer "Service". I am on hold for 20 minutes. I then describe my problem and am told that they'll need to send a technician...and he can come out *next Wednesday*. A week from now.

I tell him that isn't acceptable. He says too bad (essentially). I ask for a supervisor. He says they don't have one, and he'll have one call me within 24 hours. I say "yeah, right, like that will happen". I then go on to query him about my telephone setup. He says there isn't anything in my account about a telephone. I tell him to look at the original order. He does. Yup, there it is. Still, there's nothing going on about a telephone setup, despite the fact that it appears in the original order. I go on at some length about how I am the customer and he is the service provider, and if I tell him I want a service, he's supposed to make it happen. Bottom line...I have no idea if or when I am getting phone service from them.

This company is remarkably inept, understaffed and incompetent. This is what having a monopoly gets you.

But it's Comcastic!

I fear that, to be in a given business these days, all one needs is an ad budget and a catch phrase. Whether or not you can actually provide the product or service you are advertising is irrelevant. All that matters is appearance. Substance doesn't count for shit.

Now they're crying the blues in ads, all day, about Verizon not playing fair. Boo Hoo. :mecry:

The utter hypocricy of them complaining that Verizon is a monopoly exempt from competition and casting themselves as champion of the little guy (witness the garbage-bag Robin Hood ads) is revolting.

Note that the ads in which they cry are free to them; they can run them all day.

And do.

I'm waiting for Home Depot to notice how similar the music running under some of their VoD ads is to Home Depot's theme...only one or two notes difference with nearly identical insturmentation. They also run another ad with a soundtrack insanely derivative of the theme music for "I Dream of Jeannie".

Competition? From whom? Not in my market, man. Comcast is the only cable game in town. Otherwise, I'd have to go DSL, and then I'd be a victim of ATT.

Its like choosing acid or poison...

Not so. There is lost opportunity cost for each of those ads you see on their medium. They would *much* rather have sold that spot to some other customer than use a filler ad for themselves.

Better yet...the money they lose running their own ads is probably then written off as lost revenue.

I haven't seen any Robin Hood type ads, but I am becoming quite fond of The Slowskis.

I know that Comcast is supposed to be something less than Comcastic, but I haven't had any problems ... great service, almost no interruptions in the three or four years I've had them, and very responsive to problems and service requests. AND the repair tech was at my house at the scheduled time.

I never had that happen with any of my prior cable companies ... Cablevision, Adelphia, or the proprietary crap company that my apt complex had before Comcast did their rebuild.

Based on the quality of the ads they do insert, and how hard they market the time, I'm assuming they're able to insert *much* more advertising than they have actual paid ads to run.

Lost opportunity cost: zero

Whatever.

You understood my answer to your economic point, and you evaded with a snarky comment on the quality of the ads. The ads they run are not free, no more than the food samples offered to shoppers as they walk through the store, regardless of the quality of the food.

Yes, I understood your economic point, I didn't evade it: I just think it's bogus.

The airtime used to run their ads doesn't cost them anything...it occupies bandwidth that otherwise would have been used by (and generated additional revenue for, through improved ratings) the channel originator. It's not displacing a revenue-generating insertion for one of Comcast's advertising customers. The only thing limiting the insertions is

-1)the agreements they have with the channel originators and

-2)how much they can annoy the subscribers before they start showing up at Comcast offices intent on mayhem.

The comment on the ad quality isn't snarkism so much as an aggravating circumstance of the carpet-bombing intensity of the insertions (for Comcast ads) and the bargain-basement prices they must be offering the paid advertisers as indicated by their production quality.

I'm sure they "would rather have sold the time". But once it goes unsold--which it obviously does a lot--it's like an empty seat on an airliner; might as well put a deadhead in it. Which they do.

So there's no "lost opportunty cost". Do you work for Comcast or something?

News flash...Comcast still sucks.

Today, the guy came (made the appointment a week ago), looked around, did nothing, called his office, had my wife talk to them and tell them our problems, and then he left...having done nothing.

So...we still have glitchy cable tv and glitchy digital phone service. I wonder what's not going to happen next?

That probably depends on whether you pay them or not.

I haven't seen any correlation between paying the bill and service received, yet.
No, I haven't tried not paying the bill. I only know paying the bill doesn't guarantee service. :(