Monday, August 13, 2007

BOMBASTIC Comcastic Comcast



After a running battle with Comcast over Internet services, the final skirmish was fought and though Comcrass-t may feel they have won, they’ve actually lost.

Internet service to this apartment has been abysmally slow for nearly two years (or, since I moved into this place). I have had a succession of tech guys out here to try and correct the situation. (I don’t seem to get the cute ones, by the way. Or, maybe there aren’t any cute ones.) They all take out the Comcast version of the Star Trek Tricorder and hook it up to the system. And, lo and behold, all of them say, “You’re connection is way slow. It shouldn’t be this bad.”

Okay, good first step. Then I ask can they fix it. No one has an answer. The problem is always “outside” the building. But getting the independent contractors to fix the outside problem seems to be a hurdle over which they can never make it. Consequently I’ve been paying HIGH SPEED prices and getting less than dial-up service.

Service seemed to marginally improve for a few weeks – “let’s throw the guy a bone” – I imagined them saying. Just to shut me up. Well, the improved speed and the fact that I had a lot to do, did keep me quiet for a little while. But then last week, the connection was back to the Speed of Sludge.

I made the obligatory call. The usual tech came out. Took a look, said he’d have to look in the utility closet where all the cable connections are for this floor. Went to get a key.

Turns out the building can’t give him a key because a tech who had been servicing another call by someone else the day before, took the key and never returned it.

And no one can find the guy or do anything about it! Nor, I suspect, do they really care.

I was screwed again. Or, was I?

It turns out that a few weeks ago a new ally in the battle against Comcast monopoly has joined the fray. Verizon FiOS!

So, Comcast loses another customer – as soon as I can arrange an installation, I’m getting Verizon to come to the rescue. After a nearly two year battle, my troops are depleted and badly in need of rescue – I’m hoping this will help.

Competition. It’s swell. And – ain’t that what capitalism is all about? The way companies like Comcast act, you’d think that competition was a communist plot to undermine the glories of capitalist money grabbing. The hogs at the trough are none too happy when another, leaner, meaner piglet comes to feed. Oh well, they are pigs after all, aren’t they?