Phone and Internet Service Providers – my recent experiences

December 26, 2007

Reviewed:  Qwest, Comcast, and Peak.  Conclusion:  Avoid Comcast phone service.

Warning – this is a bitter subject and the following is laced with negativity.

The phone company and the cable company have a loose duopoly over phone, television, and internet service.  You don’t technically have to deal with them but the chances are that you will, at least in some way.  Most of the competition involves DSL through other providers, coming to your house on the phone company’s copper, or Voice over IP for cable modem subscribers.  In Corvallis, the phone and cable companies are Qwest and Comcast.  The best DSL provider in town is definitely Peak Internet – and their service comes to your house on Qwest’s phone lines.

Have you ever been overcharged by the phone company?  Have you had awful support from the cable company?  Obviously, you are not alone.  I wish I had a solution, but I don’t.  However, I have learned some valuable information the hard way.

First of all, don’t believe what you’re told regarding (1) how much your Qwest bill will be or (2) if and when Comcast will help fix your problems.

When I started my business in 2005, I signed up for Qwest home phone service and DSL.  I have a home office, so they don’t require me to get a business phone package.  Qwest’s phone service works very well – more than 100 years in development, so it ought to work perfectly.  Their DSL service was great too, although Comcast internet is noticeably faster.  When I had problems, they were very responsive and responsible about it, and the problems were fixed promptly and properly.  They also offer television and cellular phone service, but I have never subscribed to those services.

The downside to Qwest service is that the bills (1) don’t make any sense, (2) are extraordinarily long, and (3) are simply higher than what they tell you when you sign up for the service.  Item 3 is not in reference to the taxes and fees, which are also outrageous.  The price before taxes, when you add up all the charges and subtract all the credits spaced out over about nine pages, was more than they had told me it would be – and apparently that is the typical situation.

Many people have responded to this situation by switching to the cable company.  That’s what I did: after a year of wildly varying Qwest bills that clearly added up to more than they should (on average, with some bills too low and some too high), Qwest finally sent me a whopping bill for more than double the monthly rate I was supposed to have been paying.  I called them and complained, and I called and complained again.  I was about to call them again, when I decided to call Comcast instead.  I left Qwest hanging for the $90 they had overbilled me, and they eventually sent my account to collections, and I ignored the collection agency calls.  When I called back a year later to switch back, they reduced that $90 to about $25.  I swallowed hard and paid.

Here’s how Comcast phone service works.  They rent you a huge cable modem that plugs into (1) the Cable TV line, (2) your computer or home network, and (3) your phone jacks.  They send somebody out to your house to screw up the Qwest wiring (they yanked the wires out of my phone box and left them sticking up out in the rain, and cut the wires inside) and plug the cable modem into a phone jack.  The tech they send out will also string cables all over your floor and leave a phone jack (which you have to have) sloppily plugged in but not wall-mounted.

Comcast’s phone service operates over the cable modem network – it’s called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.  The huge cable modem includes a battery which is supposed to keep the modem on in case of a power outage.  They tell you that the phone will work during a power outage – which is false in my experience.  Every time the power has gone out since I’ve had Comcast Digital Voice, my phone has stopped working until I went and reset the cable modem after the power came back on.  It is true, however, that the battery did keep one green light lit on the modem during the outage.  Unfortunately, if the power goes out at my house, it’s probably out at a Comcast office somewhere so of course the whole mess is offline.  So much for it working in an emergency…

A few years back the government implemented “portability” for phone numbers.  This means that you can now move your number from one carrier to another (as long as you don’t involve a VoIP company like Skype, Vonage, etc.).  It is more complicated and less automatic than you might think.  And, again, some yahoo at Comcast not doing their job can be a real pain in the neck.

So I ported my number to Comcast.  (The port worked just fine.)  Comcast sent a “technician” out to my house to install my service.  It was wicked sloppy.  He ran a coaxial cable along the floor where you cannot possibly hide it (and it was several feet too long for the job); then he connected the one phone jack I said I needed to another phone jack that he provided, and hooked that jack to the cable modem.  This left me with one jack to plug my phones into.  The other phone jacks in my house stopped working.  He ripped the Qwest wiring out of the phone box outside and left it open to rust.  (As in, he didn’t even close the Qwest box when he was done!)  He cut the Qwest wiring at the jack inside.

I later ordered a second line from Comcast, and ported my girlfriend’s phone number from her old house (Qwest service) to here, and Comcast insisted on sending a “technician” out to handle that as well.  What a joke!  The guy immediately got on his radio and started asking “where does the yellow wire go?” and “where does the black wire go?”  I told him to hang up the radio and I’d just show him how to do it.  And I did – the only reason there was anything to do at all was because the previous Comcast guy had screwed up the existing wiring.  We got it done, and this Comcast guy said, “wow, that was hard!”  I didn’t know what to tell him – this is a little apartment, all the wiring is exposed, and we’re only dealing with two phone jacks here.

Comcast had my name spelled wrong on Caller ID for months.  I called them time and again to ask them to fix it, and eventually a technician from Comcast in Portland called me from his cell phone and we got it all set.  Along the way, I begged and pleaded with every rep I talked to, asking them to make double and triple sure that my name would be correctly spelled in the phone book.  My name was misspelled in the phone book.  What was I supposed to do at this point?

Yes, Comcast internet service is fast.  But everything else is a total joke.  I can’t believe how unprofessional everyone I’ve dealt with there is, and I mean everyone.

Have you ever had a good experience with a Comcast technician?  Have you ever been impressed with their honesty, or with their helpful attitude?

Or have you felt like you’re talking to a bunch of yahoos who flunked out of all the other jobs they had, and found a path to success at a company where shit floats?

Comcast tech support people have lied to me.  Yes, straight up lied to me.  They have also (more commonly) told me everything is fixed when it isn’t, or told me whatever else they thought would get me off the phone in a hurry.  In general, if I can’t figure something out, I don’t expect that they will be able to help figure it out.  And they don’t seem to believe in follow-up either.  If you get disconnected (because, say, they reset your VoIP cable modem remotely), don’t expect to ever talk to that particular rep again.  They won’t call back, and if you call them, you’ll wait on hold until you talk to someone else.  I deal with these people for a living, and I speak from experience.

Now, Qwest’s tech support department isn’t exactly Cloud Nine of service, but at least they’re a little more mellow and a lot more professional.  They will call you back if you get disconnected.  They will have somebody follow up the next day, when appropriate.  They don’t lie to you.  And, get this – they get the problems fixed!

So I’m discontented with Qwest’s billing, and with Comcast’s technical support.  In both cases, I just can’t believe what I’m seeing. 

Well, my business has grown considerably in the last year, and I’m starting to feel like I need good service and it’s probably worth paying Qwest whatever they bill me for, while trying to avoid thinking about it in moral or ethical terms.  But on the other hand, why would I really want to do that?

I thought it over and decided to sign up for Qwest phone service and Peak DSL.  I can get long distance service from www.ld.net and hopefully I can find a competing voicemail service as well – though for now I’m signed up for a Qwest package for all of that, mainly because I was afraid to try to attach third-party services to my phone number before it was ported back from Comcast.

The people at Peak are really cool.  They have been referring customers to me for computer repair, and basically every time I’ve called them with a problem I have gotten very helpful service.  We will see if it’s really Cloud Nine, but at least I have somebody I can deal with.  And I can go over to their office at 15th and Western if I need to.  Where are you going to go if you want to shake down the idiots at Comcast, or if you want to straighten out your bill forcefully with Qwest?  The answer is nowhere (although they do have local offices), because basically nobody at these big companies will fess up to being responsible for the problems, and I’m pretty sure that neither you nor I are welcome to stop by their headquarters for a chat.  Please hold.

Peak offers DSL at the same bandwidth as Qwest, which for my house is up to 7 Megabit.  This is more bandwidth than my 6 Megabit cable service, but I am expecting to notice more lag when browsing the web on DSL (because of higher latency, which is the time it takes each bit of data to get from A to B).  I am very confident that Peak’s DSL will be at least as fast as Qwest’s.

Sounds great.  But I can’t sign up for Peak DSL until I get my phone number back from Comcast.  Who says that Comcast will give up my number easily, as they are required to do by the FCC?

A little earlier in the saga, my girlfriend Karen had her service ported to Comcast here at my house.  Well, she moved out and took her phone number with her.  Sort of.  She signed up for Qwest and had her number ported back.  Now her phone works at her house, but it also works at my house.  Specifically, if you dial out, it comes up on Caller ID as coming from the same number.  If you dial in, where the call goes depends on what phone service you have.  If you call her number from a Qwest line, or from a cell phone, it goes to her phone at her house.  If, however, you call her number from a Comcast line, it goes to the cable modem at my house.  This has been going on for over a month and I just called Comcast about it for the fourth time.

Now I have the same problem with my phone!  Comcast promises that they will have it fixed on both our lines within 72 hours – which sounds like a way to get me off the phone.  We’ll see what happens in the next three days, but I can foresee another call to Comcast when nothing changes.

My patience with Comcast is totally gone.  They are the most irresponsible phone and internet company I have dealt with to date.  I cannot believe the level of incompetence that they display.  And did I mention they’re not very professional?  Shit floats at Comcast.  Thinking about it reminds me of the time ten years ago when I failed a personality test to work at a Radio Shack in New Jersey – and I went in to a couple Radio Shacks to see what kind of people they hired.  OMG, I’m glad I failed that test.  (The people at Radio Shacks here and now are a lot cooler than the people at Radio Shacks in Jersey in the nineties.)

If they don’t get their act together and get my phone number out of their system, I will complain to the FCC.  There are requirements on phone number portability that Comcast has to meet – including service timelines of about five days – in order to be allowed to provide phone service.

But I don’t want to complain to the FCC.  I want decent service and honest dealing.  I am looking forward to getting Peak DSL.

Update 1/10/08:  Looks like Comcast got me out of their system.  My phone now rings.  Peak’s DSL service is great – by some measures faster, but by some measures slower, than Comcast Cable.  The people are way nicer, and that makes all the difference to me.

Rick Shafer, Technician
Rix Computer Magic