Oh Internet, how I’ve missed you!  Actually, probably the worst part about no Internet is that the TiVo was all messed up and didn’t have any channel information!  The other problem is that when you first move somewhere and don’t know where anything is, the Internet is VITAL! Don’t take for granted how easy it is to go to Target’s website and do a store locator and then hop on Google maps and find out how to get there. We actually considered using the phone book at one point! ::gasp::

So I have TONS to blog here about in the past month or so since the move, I think tonight I’m just going to focus on venting my Comcast problems.

So, without further ado…

Let me just start off by saying that I’ve been a loyal Comcast customer for years and I’ve *NEVER* had a problem with them.  I know lots of other people that have, but I’ve seriously always had good service from them.

So where to begin.  Okay, so first off they said it was going to cost $60 for my cable modem installation because you can only get the do-it-yourself installation kit if you are already a Comcast customer.  So what they made me do was get my cable first and then call back the next day and order Internet so that I could get the free installation kit.  Then we had to pick it up which was like 45 minutes away in some bad neighborhood in the city (Sara did that part).  So we got the cable first and it was kind of fuzzy, but I didn’t know what else to do about it, so we just figured we were going to have to live with it.  The only jack in the living room was in the stupidest possible place so we had to run a cable across the middle of the floor, which was annoying. 

So we finally got our cable modem we plug it in and none of the lights come on on the cable modem.  I tried like every possible combination of wall jacks, splitters, cables, etc. and I just couldn’t get connected to the internet.  But in the living room I was going through 3 consecutive splitters, so I figured that had a lot to do with it (and the fuzzy cable).  So I went to Radio Shack and bought a 4 way splitter and a female to female connector and replaced those 3 splitters, but still no dice.  Also around this time we noticed that some of the T.V. stations weren’t coming in sometimes, such as NBC.  Finally I admited defeat and called Comcast, so they sent a guy out on Saturday.  He took a look and said we weren’t getting enough signal strength and they would need to run a new line.  He said he couldn’t do it, that was a different crew and the other crew doesn’t work on weekends.  We told him we had to work during the week, but he took the name of our landlord and called his disbatcher and they said they’d work out a time so he could let them in.

This was really the begining of the problems.

So they called me on Monday at work and said, “We’re at the door, let us in.” and I was like, “Uh…I’m at work.  You were supposed to call the landlord…” and he was like, “Oh okay, we’ll call him now.”  So they called him and he wasn’t there, so I got a call back from an angry disbatcher saying that I would have to reschedule.  Now at this point I actually felt bad because I wasn’t there to let them in.  So they rescheduled for Thursday and this time I wanted to make sure somebody was going to be there.  So I got ahold of the maintenance guy and asked him to be there and also both my landlord and wife work about a 15 minute walk away.  So I had them all on high alert and I figured I was pretty set.

Now this is really what put me over the edge with them. 

I called them and said, “Hey, can you call me like before you get there just in case I need to have my wife walk home from work?” and the lady was like, “Oh, that’s our standard procedure, but I’ll put a note.”  So Thur. rolls around and aparently when they got there I was walking through the building at work and I didn’t get cell phone service for a few minutes.  So when I got back to my desk I got a voicemail and so I listened and it was 3 minutes after they called me!  So I hurried up and called them back and they were like, “Too late, this crew isn’t going to sit around for you, they’re already gone.  You’ll have to reschedule.”  So I was like, “You have to be kidding me, I only missed them by 3 minutes!” and the lady like wasn’t sympathtic to me at all.  Her tone of voice the whole time was just like “this guy is giving me a problem.”  So she was all like, “Look, we called your phone number and rang your doorbell, what else do you expect us to do!?”  And I was like, “Well I thought they were going to call before they got to my place?” and the lady was like, “Oh they don’t do that.”  So my temper kept rising and by the end I didn’t even want to have Comcast anymore.  It had already been a week with out it working.

Now here’s the kicker.

After I got off the phone with them I called the maintenance guy to tell him he didn’t have to wait any more, but he told me that he saw the Comcast guys and tried to let them in, but they refused to be let in because they couldn’t get a hold of me!  OOOOohhh I was so mad!

So I had to reschedule again until Monday and take work off because I absolutely had to be there this time.  So finally I get an actual honest-to-god Comcast guy here.  There were apparently lots of problems.  First off, we didn’t have our own line into the building; we were just split off another line in the basement.  Also there was a bad connection from where that split was to the line that ran into our apartment.  It took a long time to run the line because he had trouble fitting the cable in the hole in the wall.  He said anybody on our side of the building is going to need a line run like we had and that he was glad he got here first because the next person who did it was going to have to drill a hole to fit another cable.

After he got that all hooked up he was ready to leave but I pointed out that all the lights on the modem still weren’t lit.  So he tested the line coming out of the wall by the fireplace and said there was something wrong with it because the signal was really weak.   So then we had to figure out where the central line was coming into the apartment.  Now here was the one bright spot of the whole thing!  The central line comes into the apartment directly behind the T.V.! So now we have the cable connected there and we don’t have to run a line across the living room!

So then he noticed that 1 line came in and there was a 3 way splitter, 1 line to each bedroom and 1 to the living room.  So he tested that and found out that splitter was bad.  So he replaced that with a new one and plugged the modem into that directly and the lights came on.  So he was going to close everything up and I was like “wait a minute, you have the modem plugged directly in but you don’t have the TV plugged in anywhere!”  So then he said, “This is too many lines to run from 1 line, you’re not going to have a strong enough signal.”  Now I think the correct solution to that problem would have been to run us another line, but he wasn’t going to do that!  So what he did instead was to disconnect the line to our bedroom and the line to over by the fireplace.   

So anyway, as he was packing up his stuff I tried to get on the internet and still couldn’t.  I told him that and he said, “Oh, that’s because you’re trying to do wireless.  You have to call them because they have to set up your modem differently for wireless.”  Now I was sure he was talking crazy talk there, but I didn’t argue with him.  So I called Comcast and was on the phone with tech support for a long time, maybe a half an hour.  They said there was nothing different they had to do with the wireless, but they couldn’t get it working.  So they had me plug the laptop right in to the cable modem and we were never able to get the Internet working that way either, however, I was able to ping yahoo.  That meant that the connection to the internet was there, even though I couldn’t bring up webpages. 

So, of course, the Comcast people said it’s not their problem and gave me the phone number for Compaq and said I’d have to call them.  They said the internet was there so it must be something in my computer stopping it from connecting, although they didn’t know what it could be.  So I had to go to work at that point and then when I got home I worked on it for awhile and didn’t get anywhere and then I called the Comcast tech support again and got a more helpful guy who at least got the laptop on the internet when it was directly connected to the modem.  Then from there it took me a simple hour or so to get the wireless router connected.

::whew!::

That took even longer to tell then I thought it would.  But the good news is, it’s working now and Comcast is refunding like $28 for all the cable and Internet that wasn’t working.