I don't have a story of stupidity off the top of my head, maybe I'll think of one once I hit submit, but I wanted to say I love that little glimpse of the man with the boat on your desk. What is it and what's his story?

I will repeat my words from a prior thread I started: I HATE COMCAST. We finally got our internet issues resolved but now they are toying with servers and as a result, no mail is being forwarded to Outlook. The only reason we know what the cause is is because after not being able to receive email in my outlook account for several days, all of a sudden it was like the gate opened and all these emails came flooding in. It was working all weekend and now, it's not working again. grrrr....if you call them, they just say it's not them and there is something wrong on our end. My husband is an IT guy and says, nope, it's them f*ck*ng around with the servers.

I just pray for the day that another cable company is introduced to our area so they'll have competition. The minute that happens, I'm dropping them for good.

We had our share of comcast stupidity, which is why we now have DirectTV. Unfortunately Comcast is still the fastest internet provider, so we use them for that.

My humble O is that what you've experienced is the direct result odd corporate bureaucracy in action.

Instead of allowing front line workers to make pertinent decisions-and paying these people decent wages and benefits) they rely on a model set forth by some white collar upper level management drone who has seen power point presentations by his middle managers that show a streamlined model that can save the company millions in annual revenue by reducing staff, salaries and associated cost, this boosting the bottom line for the shareholders and resulting in a modest 6 figure bonus for said manager. Meanwhile, they've got a monopoly on the market, consumers have no choice but to put up with their ridiculously inept business models. The bottom line for the Corporation doesn't pencil out in reality, so they raise prices to make up for it all.

-Rant over-

Gee, Pesky - tell me what you really think and stop beating around the bush ;-) !!! Honey, you hit the nail on the head, IMO - well said, and it sadly outlines the downfall of so many of our great American businesses. They stopped responding to the consumer and listened to clueless 'experts'.

lukki I'm sorry you're still experiencing trouble - not surprised, but still sorry :(

chispa we only have internet service with Comcast - nothing else, but that's enough to cause headaches!

hhireno - you like my little guys?! There's actually 2 of them, one on either end. My favorite local independent home store, now closed, specialized in items from Mexico and Central America and I have a few pieces. I'll get a better picture for you.

Me, too. HATE them. I think all cable companies are agents of the devil. I won't even go into what I've been through. I'm switching to Verizon to take advantage of an introductory rate, but I don't expect to have any fewer hassles.

dedtired as long as you keep your expectations low, how disappointed can you be, right? Sad but true. :-/

hhireno here's a better look at that piece - it sits on my porch table, not a desk. It's ceramic and I've used the little boat/bowl to hold rolled napkins or those dried, pierced citrus things.

Awww, how cute, I love it.

Sometimes I spell stupidity h-h-i-r-e-n-o. Last night I forgot to make broccoli for our dinner and today I forgot to add the minced garlic to the vinaigrette, even though both times the ingredient was right there, in front of me. Luckily, both meals were perfectly fine without the missing item. I guess tomorrow will be having broccoli with garlic.

Thanks DLM2000, after posting here yesterday, I finally took the plunge and called them. Of course the person I reached said he didn't know what was wrong and he didn't have rights to even look into it. What the heck? He'd have to set up a ticket and someone from "Tier 2" would call me w/in 12 hours.

Well, just as I feared, I missed the call. They left a message with the ticket number saying I needed to call them for help at 800 Comcast. So I call back with the impression that I would at least be transferred to the Tier 2 people since I now had a ticket number and was returning a call, but no. They not only cannot look at the system, they also have no number or ability to transfer someone calling back in. Instead I have to basically start over and wait yet another 12-24 hours.

So basically now Comcast has no tech support that you can reach immediately to help you. They now have untrained personnel creating tickets and if you want help you are at their mercy to be available for up to 24 hours after the initial call. I have never in my life seen anything more ridiculous. These people aren't even required to make more than one attempt to contact the customer!!! And they wonder why callers get irate on the calls!!! To say I hate this company is an understatement. There really are no words to explain how much I absolutely loath it.

Funny, but I was just on the phone with Comcast this afternoon. We installed Infinity service last year and originally ordered one main box and three mini boxes (not the technical term I know). I decided to get two more mini boxes for other tv's and they sent me not only the two mini boxes but two more of the big receivers which we don't need. The bill comes and I am charged $160.00 for the two boxes. Called Comcast and they offered to pick them up tomorrow - didn't work cause it's Father's Day so they are coming Monday afternoon to get them. No fee and they have already given me the credit for the extra two boxes. So all I can say is, maybe try again. You may get lucky with someone else.

Don't know if it matters but I am in CT.

It's Comcast. Enough said!

Lynn, I hope your good luck with Comcast continues, optimism is always a plus but receiving the two extra boxes is a clue that your future with them could also go awry. Years ago, we experienced a very similar situation in that we had to exchange one of the two boxes we had at the time; they sent and charged us for two instead of one. I honestly believe the little bit of gray hair I have is partly due to having to deal with them on a fairly regular basis. :c)

lukkiirish - You think I'm supposed to be impressed about your Tier 2? Ha! That's nothing! Why, last summer, I got all the way up to an "escalation supervisor"! Yup, I was an "escalation" customer - or perhaps Comcast thinks more in terms of an "escalation" incident, and, while I'm not quite sure what that is, I have the feeling it is closely akin to someone on the verge of going postal. :) Which is what could easily happen when you either wait on the phone or wait for a call back from a Comcast rep for 5 HOURS. Yup, you heard it right - it took me FIVE HOURS on a Saturday to get a promise that our problem would be fixed the next day.

I don't know what kinds of things you guys keep on your desks at all times. As for me, the stuff changes, but one thing that remains constant is my Comcast folder. It's always at hand so that I can call whenever we have a service interruption. A bill is in it, cause who wants to bother remembering the Comcast phone number and your account number? (Although, on that 5-hour marathon day, you'd think I had a photographic memory the way I could punch in the entire string of numbers at blazing speed.) I also keep a log in the folder to record the date and kind of service outage. (It's usually a total service interruption, but sometimes we get variety! Just the phone and computer instead of computer + phone + TV makes things interesting!) Plus, I always demand credit for the incident, and I record how much the credit is so that I can check the promised amount against the next bill....at one point, there was a period when service was so lousy that I figured Comcast would soon be paying us to use them!

All you have to do is turn on the tv to see that we live in a *world* of stupidity. ;o)

You think I'm supposed to be impressed about your Tier 2? Ha! That's nothing! Why, last summer, I got all the way up to an "escalation supervisor"! Yup, I was an "escalation" customer - or perhaps Comcast thinks more in terms of an "escalation" incident, and, while I'm not quite sure what that is, I have the feeling it is closely akin to someone on the verge of going postal. :)

Ha, sounds like we could spend hours sharing and comparing. Tier 2 is NOTHING special. They've just set it up so you can't get help immediately. The tech calls go to a call center of no nothings and they write up the work order. This is actually just the latest fiasco I've been going through. Last time it was the speed/bandwidth of our service that had me going ballistic. Finally after getting the name of a corporate head in Chicago and threatening to call them, they had a technical supervisor finally call me and subsequently come to our house. He arranged for the "big guns" (his term, not mine) to come out and scour the area for problems in the lines. They found tons of stuff all of which was contributing to the problems they swore weren't real and just a figment of my imagination for weeks. I have that guys card and direct number now. :c)

This is my favorite dumb a*rs story, one of the first technicians I complained to said he didn't see anything wrong and asked me type www.disney.com in the address line of our browser. Then to time it, he told me when to hit enter and to let him know when it loaded up completely. (I thought this was ridiculous but did as he asked) 45 seconds of silence pass and finally he says to me, "Um, Mam, did you forget to tell me when the page downloaded?" "Nope" I reply, "it's still working on it" In all it took almost 1.5 minutes for one page to come up. His response was "Well, that is slow. It should certainly be quicker than that." YA THINK?????