I'm potentially moving, how's Comcast?

Nakatomi2010

I've been a bright house cable ever since I started using the intenret, but I'm thinkin' about moving to Tallahassee, FL and the cable provider up there is Comcast... I'm probably not going to get their triple play and just stick with my cable/internet/vonage combo.... But I was wondering if anyone in here has any experience with Comcast service wise... I do a reasonably good chunk of torrenting and have a server in my own home that gets an average of 40kb/s upload rate on the network....

Will Comcast punish me for downloading too much, or will it be more like brighthouse where as long as my bills are paid, they don't care?

brandotheninjamaster

Comcast will not punish you for DLing don't worry about that. You have had cable internet before so this shouldn't be much of a switch. Their customer service is pretty good and well trained. But when it actually comes to their field guys I've had mostly bad experiences. Like my service wouldn't work the first 5 months I had it, then on demand wouldn't work after that, and it took 3 different techs to come to house and realize (after I told them) that there was something wrong with the main line in my house. Their customer service was more than happy to oblige though. Through all this bad service I got a bunch of deals and credits, which more than made up for the crappy field workers.

mugginns

Comcast is super expensive and will nickel and dime you for anything they can.

TrippyDK

Recently, it has been rumored that comcast is punishing torrent users. They pretty much use a third party service to kill your uploading speed. No one is quite sure how they are doing it, but both me and my friend have noticed it happen to us in Maryland. Also, In Maryland, the service is completely unreliable, the customer service is awful, and often the bandwith sucks. But hey, when its good, its good.

EggyToast

Had comcast, speeds were good, never punished for anything. Only had 2 or 3 outages over 3 years or so, and it was when the cable was completely out.

They do throttle torrent traffic in a lot of the country, killing it completely. You can bypass this with a VPN, if torrents are important to you.

I switched because paying $60 for just broadband is pretty steep. As in, more expensive than it should be, esp. for such shitty upload speeds (download's very fast). We now use a local place for wireless internet that's about 3mb down and 400kb up, for $29, so I cancelled comcast last month.

But I was happy with the service. Calling tech support was surprisingly fast, the few times I had to. But, like most "utility" companies, the service depends entirely on your region. For instance, Verizon in Baltimore is utter shit. Outside Baltimore? It's pretty fast.

brandotheninjamaster

TrippyDK wrote: »

Recently, it has been rumored that comcast is punishing torrent users. They pretty much use a third party service to kill your uploading speed. No one is quite sure how they are doing it, but both me and my friend have noticed it happen to us in Maryland. Also, In Maryland, the service is completely unreliable, the customer service is awful, and often the bandwith sucks. But hey, when its good, its good.

I'm in MD too, what a coincidence. Service sucks here thats why I went with Verizon.

Wonder_Hippie

I've had my share of troubles with Comcast, but I'm not sure how they compare to other companies. All I really know is that I very frequently get dropped signals in both my TV and internet lines, but not both at the same time. The customer service in my area is a bit iffy, but I think that might be because I pissed off one of the ladies in the office one day by requesting that I not have disconnects once a night.

MichaelLC

I've had Comcast for a few years now, and no major complaints here in Chicagoland. Uptime is fairly impressive; had a few storms that I was surprised cable worked through.

It's expensive, and oddly service was better in the city than out here in the 'burbs.

CrossBuster

I used Comcast in northern California for about a year. I just had the basic cable/internet deal. I never had any problems.

I had heard some horror stories, but nothing bad ever happened with me. The internet service was very fast and reliable (torrents would routinely reach 1 MB/s down), and I never had to deal with their customer service, because nothing ever went wrong.

PirateJon

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21376597/

redhead

My family's had Comcast here in norcal for a few years now. Until a year or so ago, our internet and tv cut out at random so often that I would have told you it's a terrible, terrible service and to stay far away if possible. But since then it's gotten much more reliable, and I can't remember a really recent problem. I'm still not convinced it's a good service, but I no longer think it's that bad.

And customer service was spotty- I called once for a problem that I knew was on their end, and I was told it was on my end and given no help at all. I called again, got a different rep, and he fixed the problem in about a minute.

Cruix

I had Comcast back in South Florida (now in Central Florida I had to switch to Cox, yegh.)

I never really had many problems with them at all, for the most part the speeds were very fast both up and down, we never really had any problems with the cable going out aside from during major storms when the power would go out and things like that.

Their tech support is pretty terrible, though. If you need a technician to come out, it generally takes around a week (which is average, I guess) - and then the techs who do come out don't seem to know what they're doing.

Aside from that, the service was pretty great.

slugabed

I just moved and got triple choice. I hate Comcast, but I also hate Bellsouth/At&T. Since I don't use my home phone much, and cell service is good, it didn't make sense to pay so much for local phone service. I heard alot of bad stuff about Comcast local phone service, but I figure that I'd try it out. The deal for the first year was so good, it didn't really matter.

I've had it a month and have been impressed. The tech that came out actually knew what he was doing and answered most of my more technical questions. He even upgraded the box on the outside of the house.

Moving my existing phone number was slightly weird and took a few attempts, but by the install date it worked. The local phone device didn't require nearly as much wiring as I imagined, it just plugs into a normal phone socket. I thought it would have to go into the box outside or a NIU. The modem/phone thing also has a rechargeable battery, so it worked when the power was out. The coolest thing so far about it has been the online options. I can get an email when I get a voicemail and listen to it on their site. Also selectively (based on CID or date/time) forward calls to another number. I've always wanted something simliar but didn't want to mess with a home voicemail system like Asterisk. I might switch to skype or vonage at the end of the offer depending on how it has behaved during the year.

The tests I did using a few "measure your broadband speed" sites showed a huge increase vs. my dsl. I haven't tried torrents or any large downloads yet.

The cable tv will freeze the image every 10 minutes or so, but that doesn't bother me much since the sound stays steady.

Gafoto

Comcast is good for the most part (good speeds) but sometimes they'll just cut service for the entire area from about 1 AM to 8 AM. I assume it's necessary, but it's still annoying.

naporeon

mugginns wrote: »

Comcast is super expensive and will nickel and dime you for anything they can.

Absolutely not my experience with them.

When my "intro package" pricing lapsed, I called to cancel everything but my cable internet. They not only offered to extend the pricing deal, they credited my account for the difference between the actual and discounted rates that I had paid for the two months previous.

So no, they really don't nickel and dime you. Unless maybe you don't know how to talk to them.

Nogs

I had road runner cable here in minneapolis when I moved in to my apartment a year ago. I was paying $30 a month. They got bought out by Comcast. They raised the exact same service, to $45 a month. They then contacted me a few months later saying that the $45 was a promotion rate, and that they were going to raise it to $52 a month.

I just got a call last month saying that they were gonna raise it to $68 a month for JUST internet, but that I could bundle it with basic cable and pay only $62 a month.

so comcast has basically fucked me in the ass over the past year and raised my rates by over 100%.

necroSYS

You can't really predict the service you're going to get on a national level. You should probably go to www.dslreports.com and check out the local Comcast ratings.

And to add to the wealth of anecdotal evidence in this thread: I tried Comcast in Dallas for a month. They never got my service to work, even after repeated house-calls, and they tried to charge me for the time they claimed I had service after I returned the modem.

In short, fuck Comcast of Dallas.

If it's available in your area, you might want to investigate FiOS by Verizon. Fiber internet to your house is oh-so-sexy.

RNEMESiS42

Nogs wrote: »

I had road runner cable here in minneapolis when I moved in to my apartment a year ago. I was paying $30 a month. They got bought out by Comcast. They raised the exact same service, to $45 a month. They then contacted me a few months later saying that the $45 was a promotion rate, and that they were going to raise it to $52 a month.

I just got a call last month saying that they were gonna raise it to $68 a month for JUST internet, but that I could bundle it with basic cable and pay only $62 a month.

so comcast has basically fucked me in the ass over the past year and raised my rates by over 100%.

Same here, it sucks

PirateJon

PirateJon wrote: »

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21376597/

Did you not see the link this dashing young man posted?

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

Nrthstar

I gotta agree with whoever said that the field support pretty much sucks, but the customer service is amazing, even at 12:30 a.m. The first guy who came to our house to set up just blew. My roomate was the only one that was home at the time, so she had no idea what to do. When my other roomate and I got home, we went into the crawlspace under the house and fixed the problem ourselves. Basically, this tech didn't understand the concept of in lines and out lines.

Since that initial visit, our service has been great. Even with me playing XBL while downloading from torrents and my roomate streaming nbc.com feeds, I still don't pick up much lag. Our old box went haywire on us and failed at playing On demand programming, so I called tech support and the guy was extremely helpful.

Overall, decent service, unless you can find a local company like EggyToast said. Our local company here in the Shenandoah valley in Virginia is NTC. They suck in comparison to Comcast.

john fechon

TrippyDK wrote: »

Recently, it has been rumored that comcast is punishing torrent users. They pretty much use a third party service to kill your uploading speed. No one is quite sure how they are doing it, but both me and my friend have noticed it happen to us in Maryland. Also, In Maryland, the service is completely unreliable, the customer service is awful, and often the bandwith sucks. But hey, when its good, its good.

I heard about the bandwidth throttling. I'm in MD too, and I used to have a max upload of 40kbps. Then something went wierd and I was going over 200kbps with torrents. Not sure what happened, mine went up while everyone else went down.

The service is patchy tho. Mine used to drop out once a day. They'd send tech's over, who might replace a wire or the modem itself fixing the problem for a few weeks until it returned. Never really had a problem with the tv portion.

Zifnab

When you say you have a server, what exactly do you mean? If you have something like Apache that's taking inbound connections, be careful because they can and will shut you down. If you have like two dudes a day connecting to it, it's not that big a deal, but if it gets noticeable, their monitoring team might pick it up and close off the ports you're using.

Other than that, I'll echo what everyone else has said--their phone support (and IM support) is really good 99% of the time, especially as of late, and their to-the-house service is iffy. It's very dependent on whether you get a Comcast tech or a subcontractor. It's been my experience that if you get a guy who is actually hired by/trained by Comcast, your house service will be pretty good, but if you get a subcontractor, you might get pretty bad service. It also depends on where you are, since each region hires and trains separately.

john fechon: How recently? They bumped their up speed for all three speed tiers recently, but I'm not sure how recently. That might've been what happened, though.

Nakatomi2010

The server is a Windows Home Server, so it's strictly internal...

Zifnab

Oh, yeah, you're cool then. I just wasn't sure from the OP.

Raere

See if FiOS is available. $45/month for a 20/5 pipe where I live.

YodaTuna

The worst part about comcast is the cost. I fucking hate telecom companies, one gets ahead and just rapes you.

The second worst part about comcast is the torrent killing. My modem actually disconnects when I'm using bittorrent. Now I don't know if it's because the modem is older or because comcast is full of assholes. But I highly doubt they'll send me a new modem on request.

Phoenix-D

YodaTuna wrote: »

The worst part about comcast is the cost. I fucking hate telecom companies, one gets ahead and just rapes you.

The second worst part about comcast is the torrent killing. My modem actually disconnects when I'm using bittorrent. Now I don't know if it's because the modem is older or because comcast is full of assholes. But I highly doubt they'll send me a new modem on request.

The latter. See this thread in G&T.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=39261

Gorilla Salad

So, wait. Comcast in Dallas is shitty too? Because Charter here is pretty fucking bad.

necroSYS

Yeah, Comcast-Dallas is full of thieving douchebags. The only luck I had with broadband in Dallas was with SBC DSL, which was comparatively slower, but more reliable and less likely to fuck me over.

TexiKen

necroSYS wrote: »

Yeah, Comcast-Dallas is full of thieving douchebags. The only luck I had with broadband in Dallas was with SBC DSL, which was comparatively slower, but more reliable and less likely to fuck me over.

I thought Comcast left Dallas to come to Houston, because they had an agreement with Time Warner to switch locations this year. It was essentially a big switcheroo.

Anyway, Comcast is ok in Houston, but they just raised rates 5% and we may see another increase beginning of the year. One thing is that internet goes down more often than before the switch with Time Warner. It's now twice a month in my area of town during business hours, which really screws up getting orders and stuff.