Cable Story For Ben

My story about Comcast customer service for Ben
(a reply to his own weblog update that become inappropriately long)
(yes, I thought I'd told this story here before, too, but I can't seem to find it anywhere on my blog. maybe I told it to you guys in person or on UPN only or something ... anyway ...)

Four to five months ago, my Internet connection began randomly cutting out on me. It would come back after anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. The local cable company, Insight, had been purchased by Comcast in late 2007 and the switchover became effective on January 1 of the new year. I ascribed these disconnects to a DoS by Comcast in response to my moderate use of BitTorrent a) because I would of course paranoidally do that and b) because the Internet only ever seemed to go when I was using BitTorrent and yet not when I was downloading equally-large files from DDL websites.

Some time in April or May, I decided that it was possibly not Comcast but rather a) my cable modem dying or, much less likely, b) the integrity of the line in the wall succumbing to degradative forces like mold and Grass/Bug dual-type cockroaches. I decided to call Comcast and (in my paranoid mind) take the risk that the tech rep on the other end of the phone would have access to and consequentially discover the relative extreme nature of my Internet use.

What I had originally hoped to do was to call the local branch here in West Lafayette and get a local redneck to come out to the house, test the lines, test the modem, and (if the modem was indeed what was broken) give me a replacement. I had not wanted to call Comcast HQ. But when I googled for such things as "comcast internet lafayette" or "insight broadband", I was always given the same phone number for 1-800 -COMCAST. I could not even find any proof that Insight/Comcast existed in Lafayette, despite my knowledge that they surely did because a) they hook up Internet for Purdue students regularly and it would be a nightmare for them to have to drive all the way from Indianapolis or Chicago every time to do it and b) because I had physically visited their office in 2004 when I came to Purdue! Confused and disappointed, I chalked it up to the Comcast takeover. Comcast has earned an extremely negative reputation amongst technophiles as well as Joe Average consumer. It makes sense that it is in Comcast's best interests to make it quite, quite difficult for the average consumer to find out where Comcast's local offices are located. Angry consumers might storm onto the premises and make it difficult for the employees to get their day-to-day work obligations fulfilled. They might even come with weapons and coerce company members into fixing problems expediently. So in order to shelter Comcast's employees from the ultra -company's poor image in the public eye, they paid a lot of money to Google, to the Yellow Pages, and to AT&T to erase any sign that they have offices outside of the six major American metropolises. (And of course they allow people to find these regional offices: because nobody is going to drive to Chicago or New York City when he lives over 200 miles away. He'd rather just call 1-800-COMCAST. Even if he knows that the moment he starts cursing or threatening to sue he's just going to be hung up on.)

So anyway! Having established in the previous paragraph that I was unable to locate either the phone number or the physical address for Insight/Comcast in Lafayette, I resigned myself to calling 1-800- COMCAST. I'll skip past what we discussed since it's not relevant to this story, though I will say (in defense of Comcast's 1-800 line) that the person I talked to seemed technologically semi-competent even if she was stationed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and had no idea where Lafayette was once I clarified "the one in Indiana".

No, the real issue comes from the end of that phone call. Suffice to say, she was not able to solve my problem. She interacted with my computer from her "terminal" in what I had thought was Chicago and discovered to be Baton Rouge and in so doing was able to confirm that I had a good, solid uplink with the company. The two of us concluding that the problem was most likely with my modem (and me still paranoidally convinced that it could be Comcast disconnecting me), she offered to make an appointment for a company serviceman to visit my home and inspect the modem. I thanked her and accepted the offer. She said it would take about a week for the serviceman to arrive, perhaps as soon as in 4 business days.

(relating to letter F below, but read now) Wanting to possibly expedite the process, I asked the lady if I could get Comcast in Lafayette's local phone number. I explained to her that my attempts to do so had all ended up with me getting 1-800-COMCAST. First, I found a website talking about our local Lafayette cable branch that instructed me to call 1-800-###-####. That number was for Insight's last bastion of operations -- in Toronto, Canada. Then I found 1-800-266-2278 (1-800-COMCAST). Finally I found a phone number (can't remember what) that looked like it was local again but, when typed in to the phone, auto-redirects you to 1-800-COMCAST. After she heard all this, she said she'd see what she could do. Thinking she'd found it (or maybe she really knew), she gave me a number that I did not recognize until I hung up with her. It turned out to be that third phone number from before.
Dismayed, I decided against calling 1-800-COMCAST back. What could they do? Either they couldn't find Lafayette's number either or they weren't willing to provide it to me for the reasons previously explained. I just had to wait it out with my dying Internet connection until the cable guy showed up 4-7 days later.

30 minutes later, there was a knock on my door. Half-naked and my face lathered in shaving cream, I went to see who it might be. And I saw ... a scary redneck! Stereotyping I noticed his bronzed skin, grizzled look, and denim jacket and pants. Thoughts of Jeffrey Dalmer raced through my head as I asked myself who the hell he could be and what I should do. Then reason entered in. "Don't be so !@#$%'ing stupid" I said to myself as I shouted through the door, "Hold on a second!" I ran to the bathroom, incompletely wiped off the shaving cream, and threw back on my t-shirt. And when I answered the door?

There he was, the Comcast serviceman. He had a black baseball cap on that read "Comcast" and a dufflebag hanging at his side. My place was an absolute mess (and I had thought I would have a week to clean it all up!) but the cableman said he did not mind and that it was not as bad as some places he services. I led him into my bedroom and he got to work with me as his helper on diagnosing my problem.

A, he knew what he was doing. I don't know that a "smart man" would wind up as a cableman but this guy was no dummy: he knew what he was talking about on both the software end and the hardware end of things. I learned he was an electrician by training and had later gone on to work for Insight Broadband (and now Comcast). He had been working for them for the last 10 years.

B, he diagnosed my problem quickly. (Dying modem.)

C, he improved my situation. Rather than have me purchase a replacement modem, he allowed me to take a brand-new one free of charge. In addition, despite the fact that he diagnosed the problem as being with the modem, he went on (with my permission) to exam the wall lines and discovered that my cable Internet was connected to one of three cable jacks. He explained, "This middle one is the Primary feed. These two are the Secondary feeds. Normally most people want their cable tv on Primary and their accessory cable on Secondary because they don't tolerate signal degradation for TV, where you can see it, over the Internet, where they don't hardly notice it. But in your case, you tell me you don't watch TV" (he saw that I didn't even own one) "so I'm going to move your Internet cable over to Primary, okay? and we'll test the speed after I do that." Now, my speed had already been very good before. (Knock on wood, God-blessed, etc. etc., I have experienced this with now two different computers at two different apartments.) But the cable guy's effort did in fact increase my signal strength by about 5-10%.

D, he joked about Comcast with me. He had no special love for them.

E, when I told him about 1-800-COMCAST and how I couldn't find their (Lafayette) number, he chuckled. He then obliged me when I asked him for his office's address and phone number should I need to get back in touch with him after he left (just in case whatever he had done to fix the problem hadn't really fixed it after all). And sure enough, I got a good ol' 765-area code number and an address on familiar Creasy Lane.

F, (fast forward to today, August 31), I don't know whether it was me talking with him that did it or a more proactive consumer with a complaint, but I see now that a search for "insight lafayette" correctly turns up their address by means of Google Maps as the very first hit. (That is in fact the correct address. Whether the phone number is the one the cableman gave me or not I don't know. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's that third false phone number -- see the last paragraph from the Baton Rouge lady section.)

Anyway, this has gotten to be way too long way too quickly. All I had wanted to originally say was:
1) Comcast's regional help was ineffective and an unpleasant grainy, long-distant experience
2) Comcast Lafayette's "redneck" cableman was intelligent, polite, generous, and very helpful
3) stereotyping is bad
4) and a return to the old days of LOCAL CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE and especially getting to talk with somebody on the phone not even from the same country but from the same same region/state as you is sorely needed