The Perils of Comcast
It appears that I have found a company that rivals the former SBC/Ameritech for lousy customer service. Comcast has now joined the list of my most-loathed companies. Last Friday night, my company's Comcast business Internet connection went down. I didn't think too much about it, since it frequently goes down on Friday nights. (It's Comcast, after all.) But when the connection wasn't back up on Saturday, I realized something was wrong. I reported the problem to technical support, and the 24x7 "business-class technical support" informs me that they can't look into the problem until Monday. So perhaps Comcast's definition of 24x7 support is what most companies call "8x5 next business day".
My problem then descended into technical support misery. Comcast replaced my cable modem on Monday, but has been unable to provision it. All of the technical support staff say that somebody in their data center needs to fix the problem, because their data center equipment isn't using the right DOCSIS specification. I've been assured that it will happen right away (by some people), or sometime (by others), but nobody knows how to fix or escalate the problem. And in the meantime, my company's servers have been without Internet access for almost a week.
I have discovered that Comcast doesn't have real 24x7 support, despite their claims to the contrary. After about 6pm, the staff turns into a glorified answering service. I was told (by technical support) that they don't have technicans that work outside of normal business hours. I even had the joy of talking to one Tier 2 support person who was extremely upset that the Tier 1 support had sent him a phone call -- and let me know about it. I must have disturbed his World of Warcraft game or whatever he was doing.
There is one minor advantage to having a business service agreement though. I have a written contract agreement, and under the contract, written notice needs to be sent to the "Director of Business Customer Operations" and the "Senior Vice President & General Counsel". So if service isn't back up tomorrow, I will have the pleasure of sending a formal notice of default to these individuals. I don't have much faith that it will change anything, but it starts a thirty day countdown so that I can terminate the contract with cause. (Yes, Comcast thinks that 30 days is a reasonable time period to not provide service under the contract).
In the meantime, I'm back to using Internet cafes, borrowing friends' systems, etc. It's quite frustrating. I'm also looking at co-location options so that I can move my servers, so that I won't need to rely on Comcast's services.
So if you ever thought about getting Comcast Business Internet, I would recommend against it. It's the same as their lousy residential service, but you just pay a lot more for it.
My problem then descended into technical support misery. Comcast replaced my cable modem on Monday, but has been unable to provision it. All of the technical support staff say that somebody in their data center needs to fix the problem, because their data center equipment isn't using the right DOCSIS specification. I've been assured that it will happen right away (by some people), or sometime (by others), but nobody knows how to fix or escalate the problem. And in the meantime, my company's servers have been without Internet access for almost a week.
I have discovered that Comcast doesn't have real 24x7 support, despite their claims to the contrary. After about 6pm, the staff turns into a glorified answering service. I was told (by technical support) that they don't have technicans that work outside of normal business hours. I even had the joy of talking to one Tier 2 support person who was extremely upset that the Tier 1 support had sent him a phone call -- and let me know about it. I must have disturbed his World of Warcraft game or whatever he was doing.
There is one minor advantage to having a business service agreement though. I have a written contract agreement, and under the contract, written notice needs to be sent to the "Director of Business Customer Operations" and the "Senior Vice President & General Counsel". So if service isn't back up tomorrow, I will have the pleasure of sending a formal notice of default to these individuals. I don't have much faith that it will change anything, but it starts a thirty day countdown so that I can terminate the contract with cause. (Yes, Comcast thinks that 30 days is a reasonable time period to not provide service under the contract).
In the meantime, I'm back to using Internet cafes, borrowing friends' systems, etc. It's quite frustrating. I'm also looking at co-location options so that I can move my servers, so that I won't need to rely on Comcast's services.
So if you ever thought about getting Comcast Business Internet, I would recommend against it. It's the same as their lousy residential service, but you just pay a lot more for it.
posted by David at 11/15/2006 10:36:00 PM
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