These two screenshots were done less than 5 minutes apart.
Comcast pisses me off so much right now, I feel a migraine coming on.
3 days ago, we started having issues with our internet connection speeds. First noticed that there was an issue when Paulette started dropping calls on her VOIP work phone. Then I started noticing when I turned on the 360 and my lag was so bad, it's almost unplayable. I called Comcast and waited on hold for 30 minutes, somebody picks up the phone and then hangs up on me. I call again, and am told that the "business side" is closed, I explained that I just got through, but was hung up on, so I was transferred again. This time somebody did pick up and proceeded to tell me that their network was down, and that she couldn't help me with anything, check back in a couple of hours.
The next day, Paulette calls, and they have an automated response stating that there are multiple outages in the area, and expected repair time was unknown.
Today, Saturday June 5th, I attempt to play on the 360 again. My connection is like I'm on dial-up. People are warping all over the place, I fire a shot at somebody, see them round the corner and about 2 seconds later, they die from my shot. Instead of 3-4 bars of green connection, I am lucky to get 2 bars in yellow, and spend most of the time with 1 bar in red.
The problem lies in the fact that it is not like this 100% of the time. It has it's good moments, and it has it's bad moments. The bad moments seem to outnumber the good ones by a large amount though while trying to game online.
So, I call Comcast. I spent about 40 minutes on hold before someone answers. I explain to the person on the end of the line my situation, telling her that one second I can ping yahoo.com at 35 ms, and a minute later, I ping yahoo.com and get a speed of 300+ ms. She says to me, so you can't get on the internet? I said, no, I can get on just fine, it's just unbelievably SLOW! She tells me a tech can be here between 1 and 4 PM. This is GREAT news to me! It was about 12PM at this time, so I wouldn't be wasting the day waiting.
The tech arrives, and proceeds to spend approximately an hour here. He came in, sat at one of the 2 computers in the office and proceeds to run ping, tracert, and Comcast's own speedtest. Having the computer hooked directly to the modem (as it is usually), he was pinging and getting the same results that I was. He proceeded to do the speedtest on the web, and it was giving excellent pings. But, as soon as we went back to DOS and did the testing, it was crap.
After about 4 phone calls to other techs in the area, he decided to replace the modem. After that ordeal was done, no change. I say ordeal because he had to make 2 separate phone calls to switch out a modem, which meant 2 different times he had to sit on hold. He was getting great ping from speedtest, and not from DOS. Another couple of phone calls, and we had accomplished NOTHING! He basically said that was all that could be done, and that the last phone call was to "Level 3 Tech Support". WOW, REALLY??? Level 3 out of what? 3? 100? At this point, he left, and basically told me that it was as good as it was going to get. He said he would check the line outside, and walked out the door, got in his van, filled out some paperwork, and left. He never did check the line.
My problems with this whole ordeal is:
1) Don't have techs answering phone customer support that don't even know what "pinging" is!
2) The tech did what he knew how to do, and what he could do with the equipment he was given. I hear him say multiple times that, "Oh, we don't have those here." and "Yes, we have the tool, but what I need isn't "unlocked" on ours" WTH people, you are sending techs to go handle problems without the TOOLS that they NEED! Get with the flipping program.
3) The tech NEVER ONCE tested the line coming into the modem. Pinging to speedtest was fine, it only sends out one signal to ping back. Then it takes 1 minute for the process to run to show speeds. He only did this a couple times, and it always came back with good response. I just did 5 tests consecutively, as soon as one was done, I started the next. Guess what? First 2 showed great results, 31ms and 32 ms. Guess what the last 3 did?? Yeah, 116, 212, and 174....
Now, what do I do? The techs answering the phones don't understand laymen geek speak. The techs in the field are overworked, and don't have the equipment needed to do the testing that needs to be done. I have busted frickin internet, and all they can do is say, well, that's as good as it's going to get. But, when I go to get off the phone with them, they LOVE to say, "And thank you for choosing Comcast!" LIKE I HAVE A FLIPPING CHOICE???
Now send somebody here to monitor my line for 1 hour, hell I'll let you get away with half of one. THEN tell me there isn't a problem! Oh wait, they don't have those tools here... Just remember, not all of your customers are idiots that believe everything they are told, some of them do know their stuff. This is business class internet for a reason, there is a business being run here. If my wife can't answer the phone to run the business, then we don't get paid. Guess what? We don't get paid, YOU DON'T GET PAID! GET OUT HERE AND FIX IT!
I'll be calling again on Monday, since I'm sure I won't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting somebody on the phone line on a Sunday without at least an hour wait! And I don't have much more time to waste on Comcast! Don't believe me, check the previous fun we've had trying to get a Tivo hooked up!.
