January 30, 2007

Received a call from Jackie in the escalation department. She said either her or her boss will give me a call to work out the details. They apparently were still trying to figure out what to do with me. There are concerns they can't meet my bandwidth needs. I carefully explain to her that I'm building a new linux firewall with bells and whistles so I can monitor my traffic. I mention I'm a Sr. Systems Engineer with 17 years professional experience :-)

Running Debian Linux with rrdtool for the firewall. I can monitor my traffic and throttle it with other linux tools. I should have done this years ago. I don't have a clue what my monthly usage has been and of course Comcast doesn't provide a link for me to check (unlike other companies with a professional staff such as Xmission.com). They could be lying and I wouldn't know. If this doesn't work out with them, my next ISP I'll be watching closely. Just in case.

We discussed other options which in my mind sounds doubtful they will pan out. At this point I'm losing confidence in Comcast's ability to deliver anything but frustration. What truly amazed me was she tell's me I was using the entire bandwidth for my neighborhood's node. I'm very surprised a 6 Meg pipe can saturate a segment of their network (called a node) unless Comcast “forgot” to cap my cable modem when they replaced a faulty cable modem in November 2006. It seems this is when they began to complain about my traffic.

My wife shows me a bill from Comcast for a business account. I emailed Ryan asking why did I receive a bill for a business account if I'm not getting the service? He said he would "take care of the bill" and it should be no big deal. While I respect him, I can't help but feel I'll be getting a call from a collector asking for their money. So far Ryan has (I believe) been treating me with respect and honesty which is a far cry better than I can say about his company. I'm almost positive those collectors will be telling me I should have taken the bill seriously. Don't laugh. You never know with these guys.

I also mentioned to Ryan I'm telling people everywhere about my situation. By now I've had a dozen people who were considering Comcast, decide go with DSL or UTOPIANET.ORG which was available in their city (lucky them!!). Ryan must be twitching every time he hears the phone ring and sees my caller id :-) Poor guy. If someone is looking to hire a customer service oriented super salesman then please hire Ryan and his boss Larry. They deserve to work for a better company than Comcast.

At this point I'm ready to call Bill Gephart back and get that interview scheduled. I've now filed complaints with the FTC, FCC, City Hall and the BBB. I'm done being a nice guy. Before all this I left a message with the Abuse department (they are properly named as they are good at abusing people) and basically tell them I'm filing complaints against their "unfair business practices". At this point I'm even looking at replacing their cable service with Direct TV or Dish. Just wish I had something available for Internet. Dial up isn't acceptable.