[ale] Comcast HSI was Re: 10M service

[Jim Popovitch]

Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 20:13 -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
>> Well, I've just had a non HSI experience with Comcast NO customer 
>> service.  Had a service call scheduled for last saturday AM.  I told 
>> them to call me on my cell phone before they came and they agreed.  I 
>> went to a neighbor's house at 9:50.  Returned around 11:30 to find a 
>> work  order on the door from comcast with 'sorry we mist you, 9:30'  No, 
>> that's not a typo, that's what the note said.
> 
>> #1.  I was here until 9:50, so either the tech doesn't know how to tell 
>> time, or doesn't know how to ring a doorbell.
> 
>> #2.  I was never called as they stated they would.
> 
> 	They swear they always call first.  But, in all my experience with them
> for both cable and HSI, I've never had them call, even when they've
> shown up for a scheduled call.

I've had BOTH experiences over the years.  However, the past two times 
(latest was yesterday) they did call, BOTH the tech as he pulled into 
the area, and just prior to him a person from the Comcast service center 
to let me know that he would be calling shortly.

I did have a problem w/ Comcast last week, and all weekend, I thought I 
had resolved it by moving things around and getting a new modem. 
Yesterday when the tech was here we reviewed everything, and all was 
working like a champ.  The lady who called me from Comcast before the 
tech arrived said that an engineering team had discovered a neighborhood 
problem that they had just resolved, and at that time of the morning the 
HSD was rocking.  So, based on her word and the tech's specs from the 
signal check, I was a happy camper.  But.... today, just like this past 
Saturday and Sunday, HSD was up/down/up/down/up/down.  It went down 
again while I was typing this email (argh), but the good news is that I 
just now got notification of a VM from my boss (of course he had called 
  5+ hours ago, more on that later).  With Comcast, my PC and/or Router 
hooked to CM can always renew an IP during these outages, but IP routes 
nowhere, so to me this sounds like a serious RF issue (different 
frequencies for diff protocols, right?).  Damn I wish I had paid more 
attention back when my dad was dragging me to those Amateur radio 
technician licensing classes. ;-)

I'm convinced that it has to be Sun flares.  ;-) There is no other 
explanation for it.  Lately my Cingular coverage has sucked (both AT&T 
Wireless and a second true Cingular phone), Ga Power has been browning 
out in the AM regularly around 7:14AM.  No, I'm not normally up that 
early, but apcupsd txtmsgs me when this happens.  However because the 
the txts are sent to my AT&T Wireless cellphone they don't arrive until 
several hours later (that's an inconvenience that in and of itself 
approaches my understanding of the pain of childbirth).  I can live with 
HSD going down every now and then, but when txtmsgs and vm notifications 
are late and out of sync it just bugs the heck out of me. ;-)

-Jim P.